Thread: Abandoned Openers

I've accumulated so many abandoned openers, but this one is still a favorite. It was written for something closer to collaborative storytelling than traditional roleplay, wherein we would write first-person accounts--statements to the police--from different, possibly unrelated characters who all converge by the end on a scene of black mail and murder. See more Sometimesmost the time, reallyIm perched on the edge of a roof and have to jump off. But I dont. Annie and Lucas met me outside a little strip of a ghost town in the middle of Oklahoma, with gunmetal clouds mottling the sun and sweat drizzling down my back. While I was thinking of giving my thumb a rest, about a hike to that abandoned old service station Id seen near a mile back where I could shelter out the gathering storm and reconsider my strategysince I hadnt had a ride all morningthe two of them rounded the corner on the highway and got their first look at me. I saw her bare feet first, legs crossed up out the side window and lean body leaned back on the bench seat. Long and dark with a blunt fringe, her hair suited their early 60s station wagon. She looked me up and down behind her sunglasses before she tipped them down to survey the sky. Looks like rain, she said to me, or the driver, or the air itself. Her man nodded, his eyes still straight ahead at the road, never looked over at me, hands at ten and two with the motor running and the brake pedal held down and gear shift still in drive. I need to get to Tucson. I set my hands gingerly on the burning edge of the door and leaned in, the acrid cold of the ac shivering the sweat on my cheek. The interior smelled of old vinyl and cigarettes, and I tried for the life of me to pay attention to my spidey senses. Tucson or thereabouts, I added, just to break my own tension. The driver nodded long legs slid back through the window, slick sweat against my wrist, and Annie shimmied up to reach behind her seat and open the back door. Annie introduced herself and her old man and lit a cigarette, and they passed it back and forth between them. Where you from? she asked. Or something like that. I wasnt listening. I was watching Lucass eyes in the rear view. Eyes watching me, sizing me up, making plans I couldnt imagine, but that half-frightened me and chilled me and made me squirm a little and rub my thighs, all at once. Spidey sense. Ruth, I answered, wrong, but my voice was so quiet against the wind of the open window and the blast of the air conditioner that Im not sure she heard. Annie took a long drag off the cigarette, spun around in her seat, and rested her chin angelically on the head rest and peered at me with a smile. Where you from? Kansas, I said, and tore my gaze reluctantly from hers to check the mirror. Between glances at the road ahead, Lucas still held me. Liberty. Kansas. Annie saw it, traced a line from my eyes to his and back again. I mustve reddened a bit, because she mussed his hair until he caught her wrist and moved it back into her lap. Lucas is quiet, she told me, and held the cigarette to his lips so he could take a long drag. But hes a alright sort. Annie kissed him a smack on the head, rolled, flipped, and ended up in the back seat next to me. She twined her fingers with mine and pulled our hands into her lap. Nails short and cracked, I could tell she chewed themand the skin around themand I liked that she didnt try to hide it. So tell me about Liberty, she said. Then smirked sideways and added Dorothy. And just like that, Annie made us friends. Can I smoke in here, Officer? Mmmm, thats better. It took longer than usual to get Joe into the ground, on account that there was some question of jurisdiction, and once that was sorted out, the coroner had taken ill and they had to bring another one in special from a different county, so that by the time that was all finished and the detectives signed off, there was no seeing my fiance buried. The police may have cleared me of wrongdoing, but I was damn well toasted in the towns eyes, and while they all filed in to their football heros funeral, Mom thought it best I stay home. But I didnt say any of that when Annie asked. Instead, what came out was less than the truth and more than I expected. Liberty, I said, is the sort of place where everyones had their hands in your panty drawer your whole life. Where you marry your high school sweetheart, who just happens to be a boy youve known since you were five, so that its like incest without the cross-eyed babies. Lucass eyes squinted in the rearview mirror with a grin. Annie squeezed my hand. Then? Then you get a single-wide and worry about bills and take the same shit jobs your parents took. And when the jobs run out, you get food stamps and welfare and wait for the next shit job. So you ran? I watched my hand in Annies, trembling. Im sure she felt it. I ran, I said finally. I ran because when you dont have the sweetheart to pump out the babies with, when everything else has been worn out, youve got to run. You dont want to be that girl. Not in Liberty. No one spoke for a while, until the ruts of the road thunking under the tires filled the cabin and became the only sound. Maybe that had put me into an otherworldly frame of mind, or it really was something in his voice, but when Lucas finally spoke for the first time, I nearly jumped. Sometimes thats all you need a new place. Somewhere clean And the way he drawled out the word clean made it feel anything but clean and ready and waiting. You cant write your story on a soiled page. He turned his head and looked directly at me with a dangerous grin, for just a moment, but it was enough to know. He expected to be part of that story. There was nothing that scared me more. Hell, that was the whole reason I was about ready to high-tail it when I saw their car coming down the highway. Contrary to what I told you earlier, Id seen them before.