I wrote a story last year and I don't hate it
Aug 1, 2017 20:40:01 GMT -6
Random, Jade, and 2 more like this
Post by Dash Sean the Ragemonster on Aug 1, 2017 20:40:01 GMT -6
Sole Survivor
Ever since I was 17, I’ve been trying to figure out what I was. Cursed, blessed, haunted? I’ll start with the beginning.
There were eight of us, all either 17 or 18, at the camp site. We’d grown up together and were the best of friends. We had the weekend planned out as perfectly as newly minted proto adults can: build a bonfire, drink lots of beer, smoke some pot, possibly get laid, go back to bed and repeat on Saturday. Only, there wasn’t a Saturday.
My memories of that night are a mixture of hazy blurs and super sharp, ultra high definition pictures. Running, screams, fear, dread, all in a blurry miasma that formed the backdrop to the sharper images. Lisa with her head facing entirely the wrong way, Brett with a tent spike through his heart like a vampire, Greg completely eviscerated… I’ll spare you the gory details, but by the time the sun rose I was the only one still alive.
Somehow I’d managed to escape, tearing ass through the woods until I reached a road just as a state trooper happened to be driving by. It didn’t take much for me to convince the cop that something was wrong (being exhausted, in a state of utter panic, with torn clothes stained with other people’s blood will do that) and he radioed for backup. A sweep of the area found the bodies of my friends, and in a startlingly short time also nabbed the killer. It turned out he was a defrocked priest who had gone out to live in the woods alone and had caught wind of our underage everything party and something in him went “ping.” He didn’t just confess, he bragged about the holy justice he’d doled out.
For the rest of my senior year of High School I didn’t do anything except sleep and school. I retreated into myself, mourning the deaths of every single real friend I had. I didn’t go to parties, or sporting events, or dances, or even try to make friends with anyone new. It’s not like that last part was hard, since everyone suddenly viewed me as the creepy kid who “survived a horror movie” and the nicest things people had to say were usually crass jokes about how I was the Harry Potter of our school: The Boy Who Lived.
I actually ended up getting pretty good grades, and got a free ride to a really decent school for engineering work. I started that fall, and slowly, very slowly, I started to reemerge from my shell. It started with just a few kind words from strangers, and then those strangers became people I knew and before long I had friends again. I was still guarded and shy but I was starting to give the world another chance. I’m still not sure if that was such a good idea.
The frat party was a spring fling type event, and the biggest on campus that weekend. It took a lot of work, but my new friends convinced me to go,even claiming I might enjoy it. And, ya know what? I did. For a bit. Until I heard the first scream.
“FIRE! SHIT! THIS SHIT’S ON FIRE!” was what I heard, and for a blissful moment I thought somebody was bragging about their mix tape. Then I heard more screams, and could smell the smoke.
I struggled to get my friends out, but for one reason or another I failed. One was too drunk to walk and too fat to carry. A few got blocked in a room by falling timbers (the frat house was old, made of wood, and described by the fire inspector later as “a tinderbox made out of match heads soaked in gasoline on the surface of the sun”) and one was tripping on more acid than I’d even seen and actually threatened me with a knife when I tried to get him to escape. The fire, apparently, was his “friend” and I couldn’t understand it’s message.
Honestly, I probably could have disarmed him, overpowered him, and forced him out of the building. Yeah, I could have done that if I wasn’t already half dead from smoke inhalation and also inside a burning building. Still, I tried my best, I did everything I could. It just wasn’t enough. Ninety college students in the building when it caught. One survivor: me.
This pattern continued throughout my college career. I learned to avoid groups and group events of any kind. Any time I slipped up, any time I ended up on a class camping trip or got guilted into a skiing holiday, tragedy would strike and I’d be the only survivor. Sometimes unscathed, other times with multiple broken bones and everyone talking about the “miracle” that I’d cheated death, again.
I retreated into myself further and further with every incident. Somehow, nobody but me seemed to see the pattern where everyone but me ended up dead. It was a series of “tragic accidents” that “nobody could possibly see coming” except I could. I only ever left my hermetic lifestyle when I had no choice.
Despite no friends, no relationships, and no social identity at all, I somehow managed to graduate with a Master’s in mechanical engineering. I knew, however, that I couldn’t get a normal job. Bring my curse into an office full of people’s moms and dads? No thank you, I didn’t want that piled on top of my guilt. I looked for jobs where I could work from home utilizing the skills I’d acquired at school and I found one in the strangest place possible: the comments section of a video on a porn site.
Somehow I struck up a conversation with another random masturbater and by the by found out that he owned a technical consulting firm looking for people with my training who also had an open mind about things in general. The best part was, it was all telecommuting and partially freelance so I could pick and choose the jobs that interested me.
That’s how I got a job doing technical writing, repair and service manuals and the like, for the adult novelty market. If your dildo breaks, and you need to find out if it’s worth fixing, you’ll be reading either me or one of five other people who specialize in the field. Well, specialized. One by one, in seemingly unrelated incidents, they all died.
One died in a car accident. One was killed in the middle of the night when a down and out heroin addict broke into his house and made a bit too much noise, prompting a half asleep investigation, a desperate struggle, and a single gunshot. It was his own gun, too.
Another was backpacking in the woods with his wife and five kids (who I like to pretend thought their dad wrote instruction manuals for space ships, and not just things that occasionally resemble them for comedic effect) when he lost his footing and plunged 500’ into a ravine, smashing his skull on the rocks and dying instantly.
Number four was in the wrong mall at the wrong time, and died alongside a crazed shooter’s other 13 victims.
Number five overdosed on heroin, which I thought brought grim closure to the circle of horse that started with number two. Hakuna Matata.
Maybe I’d grown cynical by this point, but I didn’t even question being the sole survivor this time. My workload increased, as did my asking price, since my experience and skill set were now truly unique. Still, despite the house I was able to buy, (and the new car, PC, and huge TV) 5 people were dead and I still wrote the technical documentation for robot schlongs.
I didn’t grieve them, though. It was their own fault. Nobody forced them to accept the request to join my closed Facebook group for industry professionals.
Anyway, I need to wrap this up. I met this guy at the supermarket the other day, where he was loudly complaining about how the “Niggers, wetbacks and faggots” were ruining America and that the oppressed straight white men needed to finally stand up to these fascist pigs. I chatted with him for a bit and found out that a bunch of “like minded” folk were planning a camping trip this weekend to drink beer and be cartoon character bigots together.
I wouldn’t miss it for the world.
Ever since I was 17, I’ve been trying to figure out what I was. Cursed, blessed, haunted? I’ll start with the beginning.
There were eight of us, all either 17 or 18, at the camp site. We’d grown up together and were the best of friends. We had the weekend planned out as perfectly as newly minted proto adults can: build a bonfire, drink lots of beer, smoke some pot, possibly get laid, go back to bed and repeat on Saturday. Only, there wasn’t a Saturday.
My memories of that night are a mixture of hazy blurs and super sharp, ultra high definition pictures. Running, screams, fear, dread, all in a blurry miasma that formed the backdrop to the sharper images. Lisa with her head facing entirely the wrong way, Brett with a tent spike through his heart like a vampire, Greg completely eviscerated… I’ll spare you the gory details, but by the time the sun rose I was the only one still alive.
Somehow I’d managed to escape, tearing ass through the woods until I reached a road just as a state trooper happened to be driving by. It didn’t take much for me to convince the cop that something was wrong (being exhausted, in a state of utter panic, with torn clothes stained with other people’s blood will do that) and he radioed for backup. A sweep of the area found the bodies of my friends, and in a startlingly short time also nabbed the killer. It turned out he was a defrocked priest who had gone out to live in the woods alone and had caught wind of our underage everything party and something in him went “ping.” He didn’t just confess, he bragged about the holy justice he’d doled out.
For the rest of my senior year of High School I didn’t do anything except sleep and school. I retreated into myself, mourning the deaths of every single real friend I had. I didn’t go to parties, or sporting events, or dances, or even try to make friends with anyone new. It’s not like that last part was hard, since everyone suddenly viewed me as the creepy kid who “survived a horror movie” and the nicest things people had to say were usually crass jokes about how I was the Harry Potter of our school: The Boy Who Lived.
I actually ended up getting pretty good grades, and got a free ride to a really decent school for engineering work. I started that fall, and slowly, very slowly, I started to reemerge from my shell. It started with just a few kind words from strangers, and then those strangers became people I knew and before long I had friends again. I was still guarded and shy but I was starting to give the world another chance. I’m still not sure if that was such a good idea.
The frat party was a spring fling type event, and the biggest on campus that weekend. It took a lot of work, but my new friends convinced me to go,even claiming I might enjoy it. And, ya know what? I did. For a bit. Until I heard the first scream.
“FIRE! SHIT! THIS SHIT’S ON FIRE!” was what I heard, and for a blissful moment I thought somebody was bragging about their mix tape. Then I heard more screams, and could smell the smoke.
I struggled to get my friends out, but for one reason or another I failed. One was too drunk to walk and too fat to carry. A few got blocked in a room by falling timbers (the frat house was old, made of wood, and described by the fire inspector later as “a tinderbox made out of match heads soaked in gasoline on the surface of the sun”) and one was tripping on more acid than I’d even seen and actually threatened me with a knife when I tried to get him to escape. The fire, apparently, was his “friend” and I couldn’t understand it’s message.
Honestly, I probably could have disarmed him, overpowered him, and forced him out of the building. Yeah, I could have done that if I wasn’t already half dead from smoke inhalation and also inside a burning building. Still, I tried my best, I did everything I could. It just wasn’t enough. Ninety college students in the building when it caught. One survivor: me.
This pattern continued throughout my college career. I learned to avoid groups and group events of any kind. Any time I slipped up, any time I ended up on a class camping trip or got guilted into a skiing holiday, tragedy would strike and I’d be the only survivor. Sometimes unscathed, other times with multiple broken bones and everyone talking about the “miracle” that I’d cheated death, again.
I retreated into myself further and further with every incident. Somehow, nobody but me seemed to see the pattern where everyone but me ended up dead. It was a series of “tragic accidents” that “nobody could possibly see coming” except I could. I only ever left my hermetic lifestyle when I had no choice.
Despite no friends, no relationships, and no social identity at all, I somehow managed to graduate with a Master’s in mechanical engineering. I knew, however, that I couldn’t get a normal job. Bring my curse into an office full of people’s moms and dads? No thank you, I didn’t want that piled on top of my guilt. I looked for jobs where I could work from home utilizing the skills I’d acquired at school and I found one in the strangest place possible: the comments section of a video on a porn site.
Somehow I struck up a conversation with another random masturbater and by the by found out that he owned a technical consulting firm looking for people with my training who also had an open mind about things in general. The best part was, it was all telecommuting and partially freelance so I could pick and choose the jobs that interested me.
That’s how I got a job doing technical writing, repair and service manuals and the like, for the adult novelty market. If your dildo breaks, and you need to find out if it’s worth fixing, you’ll be reading either me or one of five other people who specialize in the field. Well, specialized. One by one, in seemingly unrelated incidents, they all died.
One died in a car accident. One was killed in the middle of the night when a down and out heroin addict broke into his house and made a bit too much noise, prompting a half asleep investigation, a desperate struggle, and a single gunshot. It was his own gun, too.
Another was backpacking in the woods with his wife and five kids (who I like to pretend thought their dad wrote instruction manuals for space ships, and not just things that occasionally resemble them for comedic effect) when he lost his footing and plunged 500’ into a ravine, smashing his skull on the rocks and dying instantly.
Number four was in the wrong mall at the wrong time, and died alongside a crazed shooter’s other 13 victims.
Number five overdosed on heroin, which I thought brought grim closure to the circle of horse that started with number two. Hakuna Matata.
Maybe I’d grown cynical by this point, but I didn’t even question being the sole survivor this time. My workload increased, as did my asking price, since my experience and skill set were now truly unique. Still, despite the house I was able to buy, (and the new car, PC, and huge TV) 5 people were dead and I still wrote the technical documentation for robot schlongs.
I didn’t grieve them, though. It was their own fault. Nobody forced them to accept the request to join my closed Facebook group for industry professionals.
Anyway, I need to wrap this up. I met this guy at the supermarket the other day, where he was loudly complaining about how the “Niggers, wetbacks and faggots” were ruining America and that the oppressed straight white men needed to finally stand up to these fascist pigs. I chatted with him for a bit and found out that a bunch of “like minded” folk were planning a camping trip this weekend to drink beer and be cartoon character bigots together.
I wouldn’t miss it for the world.