[hr] [center][img]https://txt.1001fonts.net/img/txt/b3RmLjEwNi5kYTcwZDYuUVhWemRHbHVMQ0JVWlhoaGN3LCwuMA,,/cowboy-junk-demo.regular.webp[/img][/center] [hr] An uncomfortable silence filled the interior of a luxury car and mixed with the smell of new leather and stale cigarettes. The professional driver eyed the radio dial as the car idled in construction traffic, uncertain if turning on some music to cut the unease was worth the risk of drawing the ire of either of the two occupants sitting in the back. The woman stared out a tinted window that reflected her tight jaw and furrowed brow. Between her elegant updo and fancy dress she looked as if she had just come from some black tie affair. She cleared her throat. The man sitting next to her in his cowboy boots and blue collar shirt was one orange vest away from being mistaken for one of the construction workers standing around in a circle on the side of the highway, watching the traffic jam that they had created. He didn’t look the woman’s way as she cleared her throat yet again, his face glued to the screen of his phone as he slowly scrolled through emails. “The least you could do is man up and tell me who she is.” The driver’s gloves tightened on the steering wheel as the woman spoke up. The man let out an exhausted sigh and slid his phone into his jean pocket. He looked up, but not at her. Instead, he stared at the empty passenger seat before giving it a subtle nod. “As I already told you, there is no other woman.” A quiet chuckle came from up front. It wasn’t the driver. He liked having a job, even if the Bauers failed to ever use the privacy divider. This wasn’t his first time hearing Mrs. Bauer accuse her husband of infidelity, just like it wasn’t the first time he had to bite his tongue. He felt bad for the woman, but again: he liked having a job. The laugh had come from the fourth passenger in the car, unseen by all but Senator Bauer. She couldn’t help herself as she eavesdropped. Sometimes the truth was so farfetched that it became funny. “Margo told me she saw you leaving the Driskill with some little tramp.” The soft laugh came to an abrupt halt. The joke wasn’t so good when it was on her. Most people would never see her unless she wanted them to, and frankly she wasn’t a big fan of being seen. It made everything so much more complicated, introduced too many unnecessary factors that were out of her control. This Margo lady sounded like a threat. The eavesdropper looked up at the rearview mirror, her dead eyes making contact with the Senator’s bright baby blues and lingering. “Margo has had it in for me ever since college. She’d say anything to drive a wedge between us.” “She wouldn’t lie to me.” “She would if she was jealous of you.” The silent passenger shifted in her seat so she could better look at the Senator. She knew what he was thinking and knew what he was going to say. Even if she couldn’t tell him to shut up, the look on her face would’ve done it. However, the Senator’s ego was bruised, hurt that his wife would choose to believe some woman and not him–even if, in this instance, that woman was telling some version of the truth. “And why would she be jealous of me?” A groan of defeat came from the passenger seat as the Senator leaned back, turned towards his wife, and gestured with both hands from his head down to his lap. She looked towards Mrs. Bauer and watched as the confusion on her face shifted upon realization, the touch of blush on her cheeks darkening deeply as her mouth fell open. Mrs. Bauer stammered out a few unintelligible words as the car behind them blared its horn at the driver for not inching forward with the rest of traffic. Then, the words found form as Senator Bauer pulled back out his phone. “Are you FUCKING KIDDING ME!?” Mrs. Bauer’s fist slammed into the doorframe. “Not every woman wants to fuck you, Teddy!” “Then you need to stop pretending like they are,” he fired back as he returned his attention to scrolling. “I’m not–” The fury in her voice cracked and fizzled as Mrs. Bauer’s expression darkened. She glanced out the window once again in defeat. “I’m not doing this. Not anymore.” “Good. I can finally get some work done,” said Senator Bauer dismissively. That uncomfortable silence returned. The fourth passenger had expected a more bombastic reaction from Mrs. Bauer instead of a quiet acceptance of defeat. All these centuries and people still didn’t make any sense to her. “Richards, pull over.” They really didn’t make any sense. “Seriously?” “Richards! Pull. Over.” “Stop being so dramatic. We’re stuck in traffic. Where would you even go?” “Anywhere but here.” She watched as Mrs. Bauer stepped out of the car and began shifting through the maze of honking cars stuck in a standstill. Nothing would please her more than to see the woman suddenly struck by a construction truck and rendered as little more than a smear of red paste and black satin on the I-35, but the woman was a necessity. A dead wife might garner some sympathy in the public eye, but it didn’t play well at the polling stations and it especially wasn’t a good look when that dead wife’s husband's door-to-door campaigning had included several side trips into the bedroom. Senator Bauer surely knew that he would have to go after her. But he didn’t look up from his phone. [color=orchid]“We need her,”[/color] she said. “She’ll come back,” said the Senator. The driver glanced at the rearview, assuming the man was talking to himself in disbelief. [color=orchid]“C’mon, Teddy. Go get her,”[/color] she insisted. “She wants me to chase after her. I’m not letting her win,” he hissed. “Fucking bitch.” Fine then, she’d do it herself. She ignored the Senator’s scream of “Where are you going?” as she passed through the passenger side door without opening it. She floated through a truck and perched upon the roof to give herself a better vantage point as she scanned for Mrs. Bauer, catching sight of her bun several hundred yards away. It wasn’t often that Mrs. Bauer went out without wearing high heels, but the gap she’d covered in that short time span was truly impressive. Impossible, even. There was a horrific sound of metal grinding on metal followed by a loud pop that would’ve left real ears ringing. She watched as one of the cranes stationed above the highway snapped and collapsed, but instead of crashing down on the cars below it folded upwards into itself and hung in suspended animation as if it were weightless. The toned-out chorus of honks began to disperse, replaced by a rise of screams that was crushed beneath a thunderous sound of something big. She watched in muted indifference as a tidal wave rushed down the I-35, clearing traffic as it went. The loss of life would surely be astronomical, but there was only one life she cared about and his didn’t end here. Senator Bauer wasn’t going to be just some tallymark on a bodycount. Oh, no. This was nothing compared to the torment that he’d endure. She smiled as the grinding noise returned. The smirk wavered as she turned to the Senator’s car only to find that it had been replaced by a sports car. Her head snapped up the lane, catching sight of his vehicle far ahead, the tidal wave closing in. Suddenly, the truck beneath her collapsed into the ground, a cloud of dust engulfing her as she remained aloft, pushing forward towards the Senator as fast as she could go. She flickered, but she didn’t stop. Onward and onward she floated, dust giving way to darkness. The Senator, his car, the highway, the flood, everything long gone. She was surrounded by emptiness. There was a familiarity to it. One that she didn’t like. One that made her feel things she was never meant to feel. It would be okay, she told herself. She’d come back. She’d come back. She’d come back. What would happen to her if she didn’t come back? She couldn’t say for sure, but she felt like it would be heartbreaking. [hr] [center][img]https://i.imgur.com/QYnzMxr.png[/img][img]https://txt.1001fonts.net/img/txt/b3RmLjk2LmZmYjZjMS5WR1ZrSUNZZ1JHRnliR1Z1WlEsLC4w/valentine-redwood.regular.webp[/img][img]https://i.imgur.com/oCm7LoH.png[/img][/center][right][code]???[/code][/right][hr] Ted wasn’t a stranger to finding himself in dangerous situations. The difference today was he normally could recall how he’d gotten himself in them. The last thing he remembered was pulling a chair out from a table across from his wife, and now he was stuck upside down in the backseat of some car that smelled like new car and sulfur. Pain shot through his head and his arm, and there were a few cuts here and there from broken glass, but he was in one piece and as far as he could tell nothing was broken. The same couldn’t be said about the driver. Ted wasn’t anything close to a doctor, but he didn’t need eight years of schooling to know that a head wasn’t supposed to be turned that way. The graphic sight of the dead body would’ve been more unsettling if the whole thing wasn’t so confounding. Where was Rita? Why was he wet? How’d he get in the back of the car? How’d the car get upside down? How’d it get upside down roughly ten to fifteen feet in the air?What was in that chemical pool beneath him? How’d the car fuse–not crash, but fuse–into the concrete wall that was keeping it held up, and how much longer would the car remain mounted on the wall like a trophy before gravity made it tear itself in half and kill Ted in the fall? That one in particular he didn’t want to know the answer to, at least not until he was no longer in the backseat. He tried reaching for the seat buckle to unlock himself, grunting in strain as he did an inverted crunch. He fumbled awkwardly with the belt, pressing his knees into the back of the driver’s seat to help fight against gravity tugging him the other way, and finally found himself able to reach it. There was a click, followed by an [color=lightpink]“Oh shit!”[/color] as Ted tucked his chin into his chest just in time to avoid spiking himself on the top of his head as he crashed onto the interior roof of the car below him. He let out a groan of pain and gave himself a breather, hoping that the haze might clear up now that all the blood wasn’t rushing to his head. Unfortunately, the only thing that became clear was the mechanical groan of the car as the shifting of his weight being the final thing needed to make the vehicle stop defying gravity. As the car started to rumble in warning that it was going down, Ted reached for the door handle to find that the back door was jammed shut. [color=lightpink]“Oh shit, oh shit, oh shit.”[/color] He shifted his body so that his feet were towards the back windshield and delivered a mighty kick to the glass. With each kick the car rocked and shrieked louder, joining in with the cacophony of distant explosions and crashing waves. Unlike in action movies, where the windshield popped out in one or two punts, Ted watched in growing panic as the glass cracked and spiderwebbed but did not break out. Sure, he was grateful for modern safety features when he was engaging in some stunt driving for a commercial, but right now the fucking asshole designers who thought all luxury vehicles should be as durable as a tank were going to get his ass killed. He kicked again, his heart catching in his throat as the windshield budged from its fitting. Another kick took out an entire corner. Another one took out the other corner. One more should be enough to knock it loose, and then he could climb out to the steel support beam holding up the room’s roof. Ted pulled his foot back and then sprung it forward with all of his might, the windshield crashing free of the frame as the car pitched and started to plummet. He closed his eyes as he felt something tug on his jean leg and heard the half-a-car splash into the pool below. There was no new pain and the lack of sizzling anticlimatically revealed that whatever was in the pool was not corrosive. When Ted opened his eyes he found that he wasn't only outside of the car, he wasn’t even in the pool it had landed in. Miraculously, he was somehow beside the chem pool. Ted sat up and let out a startled yelp. [color=orchid]“That was close,”[/color] said the woman in front of him, staring at him with blackest eyes. [color=orchid]“Good thing I was here to save you.”[/color] The same thing could be said about how near to him she was squatting. She was so close that Ted had nearly headbutted her. He scooted back, able to get a better visual of the woman. She was young, maybe early twenties, attractive, with platinum blonde hair and porcelain skin. She was dressed in a black, two-piece skirt suit with a matching dark beret that made the outfit feel less business professional and more American Girl doll. Her eyes were even a match for the black, beady ones that haunted the nightmares of many young men who were told that the collectible dolls were just for girls. [color=orchid]“I’m sorry about earlier. Are you hurt?”[/color] she asked, unblinking. [color=lightpink]“Who are you?”[/color] asked Ted. He wasn’t suspicious of the woman as much as he was confused. There was a soft titter. Her mouth smiled. Her eyes did not. [color=orchid]“It’s me, Darlene.”[/color] [color=lightpink]“Okay, uh, Darlene?”[/color] he asked in clarification as she nodded her head. [color=lightpink]“I’m Ted.”[/color] The smile thinned. [color=orchid]“You must’ve hit your head.”[/color] [color=lightpink]“I’ll be alright. I gotta pretty thick skull,”[/color] said Ted, brushing it off. [color=orchid]“Look,”[/color] she said, reaching out to brush his temple as she opened the mental connection between the two to snoop around for signs of brain damage. [color=orchid]“You’re blee…”[/color] [color=B2AFA9]”Oh. [i]My. [b]GOD![/b][/i]”[/color] a girl screamed from another part of the chemical plant. [color=B2AFA9]”[i]What the fu- [b]WHERE THE FUCK AM I?![/b][/i]”[/color] [color=lightpink]“There’s other people,”[/color] said Ted, standing up to his feet, grimacing through the pain. His wife was surely with them. He extended a scratched up hand to Darlene, the blood on it already starting to dry. [color=lightpink]“C’mon, maybe we can start making some sense ‘bout what the hell’s going on here.”[/color] Darlene took Ted’s hand and followed behind him as the duo exited their personal honeymoon suite to join the gathering in the main floor of the chemical plant. As they moved through a service hallway she stared a hole in the back of Ted, listening in on his brain focused solely on finding this Rita bitch when it should be focused only on them. Something was wrong. Something was off. She had to dig in deeper. Darlene demanifested herself and reached her hand upward, shoving her fingers harmlessly through Ted’s spinal cord and into his mind. A second later she froze, staring after the stranger, arm still outstretched, uncertain of what to do as Ted continued walking away from her. She went invisible and followed after, feeling that feeling she wasn’t supposed to feel. Ted emerged from the service hallway alone, looking battered and bloodied and barely maintaining a brave face in the face of insanity. A crowd was gathering around a striking woman wearing some kind of combat gear, needlessly calling for the group to look at her. Well, okay, maybe not needlessly, as Ted's eyes were drawn towards the thing on the ground that looked like someone had taken a shark and tried to transform it into an area rug. The lady in charge spoke some wisdom about not freaking out, but given, well, everything he felt that maybe it would help her out if he threw his voice in as well. [color=lightpink]“Hey y’all, she’s right. The best thing we can do right now is remain calm,”[/color] said Ted, raising his deep voice to be heard over the sounds of pandemonium outside. Ted took the lead as the woman’s eyes shifted towards a corner of the room, distracted by something he didn’t notice. [color=lightpink]“I’m Ted. This here’s…”[/color] Ted turned to introduce Darlene, surprised to find that the woman had vanished. He pivoted. [color=lightpink]“This here’s, uh, a crazy situation but we’ll get through it together. Is anybody injured? Does anybody know how they got here?”[/color] He gestured towards the shark…thing…and flashed a smile, trying to disarm the tension with a bit of levity. [color=lightpink]“Does anybody want their picture taken with the catch of the day?”[/color]