Total pages in book: 74
Estimated words: 70546 (not accurate)
Estimated Reading Time in minutes: 353(@200wpm)___ 282(@250wpm)___ 235(@300wpm)
Estimated words: 70546 (not accurate)
Estimated Reading Time in minutes: 353(@200wpm)___ 282(@250wpm)___ 235(@300wpm)
Four days and nearly twenty-five hundred miles later, I face something head-on, alright.
Unfortunately for me and my very low-to-the-ground, very uncomfortable, very sporty car, that head-on bit is a big pothole in a bumpy, rutted-up, muddy asshole of a back road just four—and this one deserves full-on, capital letters to showcase my internal shouting—FUCKING miles from my intended destination.
CHAPTER 2
Thaddius
I don’t know if there’s a saying that goes assholes finish first as opposed to the nice guys finish last thing, but I do know a quick and easy recipe to make an asshole.
The first step is to take a nice person and do some not-so-nice things to him. Then add a tablespoon of humiliation, a cup of heartbreak, and a heaping pinch of crazy grannies. Lastly, put it in the oven and bake it in a world where things are already pretty shitty. When it’s done baking, out that asshole comes, freshly baked, golden brown around the edges, flaky, crispy, and chewy-ooey-gooey.
That’s me in a nutshell. A freshly minted asshole. But this asshole? He has no interest in conquering the world, breaking hearts, and being a dark, broody, moody son of a biscuit who needs saving. This asshole is the kind of asshole who would rather remove himself from life in order to find just a second of peace. This asshole doesn’t have an imperiled soul. This asshole isn’t mired in sludgy darkness, and his soul is just fine, thank you. This asshole was also made, not born, but it doesn’t make this asshole a bad person. It just makes this asshole someone who likes to refer to himself as an asshole using the third person.
Maybe I’m not an asshole. Maybe I’m just someone who needed to take himself away from the city, away from everything and everyone. Someone who needed some sheep, chickens, one ornery donkey, a dog, some cats, and one old farmyard in the middle of nowhere to get on with getting on.
Alone.
And still refer to himself in the third person.
I suppose that, right now, I’m not really alone. The sheep are behind me, watching me intently and half guardedly while I fix the fence where it’s starting to sag. I didn’t say the place was perfect. It’s perfectly far from being perfect. The two cats that are kind of feral barn cats—they came with the place—are out skirting the perimeter of the yard, hunting. They’re perfectly happy to be left alone. My guard dog, who isn’t much of a guard dog at all, is passed out on his side, twitching as he dreams, his tongue lolling way out in the grass. Shaggy’s only a few feet away from me, as per usual, and his long, fluffy white coat flutters in the breeze. He might also have been inherited with the place, along with the sheep, the donkey, and the chickens, but he hardly ever leaves my side when I’m out here.
My side of the world tends to be more forest and less grass. When you go northwest of Seattle, you hit the more touristy parts of the country. The woods, mountains, scenery, lovely nature, endless skies, and vast, rugged terrain…all of it attracts some pretty good attention in the warmer months, so I made sure I was tucked away in the least valuable part of the area. I have enough grass for the sheep, a few scraggly trees minus the maple, some decent fields that are decent because the previous owner fertilized the hell out of them to get the grass to grow for grazing, and pretty much no view of the mountains even though it’s impossible to hide them. I also live off a gravel road that, if it were ever driven on, would choke us all with dust. Thankfully, almost no one ever comes this way. It’s kind of a dead-end, end-of-the-line place to live.
Although, with the pleasant baa’s and clucking of the chickens in the yard, the warm sun on my face, and a long, drawn-out fart from Shaggy as he dreams, I can’t say this feels like the end of the line to me.
Being out here feels like living. Plain and simple.
Also, another thing that’s plain and simple?
I have pretty good hearing, and my ears are telling me that something isn’t right. A noise is out here that doesn’t belong to the regular noises I’m used to hearing. It’s a scraping, dragging, and plodding sort of noise.
I pause, my hand on the wooden fencepost I was about to pound into the hole I just dug for it, lift my head up, and search the horizon with my eyes.
What the ever-loving hot sauce is that?
A shape. It’s a shape on the road, and it’s getting closer and closer, coming this way. I can’t say it’s walking so much as dragging its feet, which would account for the sounds of gravel crunching and scraping. I’m glued to the spot, half in horror and half in fascination, when I realize the shape is a woman. What’s a lone woman doing out here in the middle of nowhere? I suppose she could be a tourist who has run into some extremely bad luck. Or maybe her car broke down. If that were true, then there were lots of places a lot closer than wherever I am, though.