The Only Son of The Ladiesman

By: Eric A. Martin
 

 

Chapter One:

The Great War

 

            I was somewhere out in the middle of nowhere, my mind quickly, and savagely, losing its grip. My hands, wrapped taut around the stiff leather of the steering wheel, were nearly quivering from a fatal combination of twisted mental violence, which was very nearly spilling out of control, and deep introspective thought: a brand of which I had never quite experienced at a time like this one.  I extended my foot even further, the gas pedal cowering under the pressure, drilling my car deeper into the night. Jesus, I thought. How long have I been driving on this road? Where does it lead? Why was I driving along the side of a mountain in the middle of the night?

 

 

            The lives of these questions were unceremoniously cut short, as someone like me had more trifling matters to contend with. Like watching the road – making sure I didn’t run into any of these menacingly slanted trees, or driving off some cliff… All of which were entirely plausible, considering the circumstances. Of course, I couldn’t concern myself with the outside world. Not at a time like this, with my mind embroiled in some terrible war that I wanted absolutely no part of. Fear, anger, sadness: all of them vying for control of my body, which was nothing more than a vial of pathetic neutrality, holding its own against the foul elements.

 

 

            Why was I angry? Why was I afraid? I was running, and I was sure of that. But to what? Or what from?  I honestly couldn’t recall. Not yet, at least. The time wasn’t right.

 

            Right now, I was more focused on the tantalizing task at hand: driving the feral beast rumbling under my feet to safety, away from these terrible mountains. Why didn’t I choose a nice, flat highway? Something that’s good for the nerves. Instead, my war-addled brain decided that it would be best to drive along some winding mountain parkway at close to eighty miles per hour, like some kind of madman. No, not madman… I was in a dress, for god’s sake - the classic affirmation of what it means to be feminine. I was, by all rights, what one would call a “girl”. Of course, in troubling times like these, such definitions held no merit. A girl could’ve been anything. A dress could’ve been attributed to anything. Jesus, I could’ve been anything! I could’ve been part of some mysterious space lizard clan, here to brainwash the entire human consensus into believing that the holocaust was, in fact, okay.

 

 

            Fortunately, killing millions of innocent people has never really registered in my mind as justified. But being a girl? There’s some sort of kick to it – something in the back of my head telling me over and over again that being female is inherently right, and true… So, for the time being, let’s just stick with that explanation, and hope that the rest of humanity agrees with me.

 

 

            As the road wore on… all these cliffs and trees… they certainly began to rub off on me. Was it the power of suggestion? The mere idea of driving off one of these damn cliffs in some high-octane Hollywood fashion was suddenly very appealing to me. Suicide was always the last thing on my mind for a reason, and only now, with my car going eighty on a mountain highway at one in the morning, did my mind’s insatiable lust for a dramatic death decide to fuel one of the most successful coups in known history: the overthrow of my own sanity.

 

 

            I believe my car had a slightly different idea, however. We couldn’t get into that stuff yet. No coup business, no uprisings, and certainly no insurrectionist dogs gunning me down in the imaginary streets of my subconscious. My mind was set ablaze by a hell-storm of strange, deluded visions: suddenly, I wasn’t on this road any more, but instead, some cheap motel room out in the middle of nowhere. My Faithful Car was now somehow my Faithful Attorney of some sort, here to violently lecture me about all the wrongs of suicide. I held about a pound of incredibly dangerous narcotics in my hand, about to shove them all down my pipe, when my Faithful Attorney kicked the bedroom door down, and slapped those terrible pills out of my hand.

 

 

            “What is wrong with you!?” I screamed within my waking dreamscape,

           

            “You know exactly what’s wrong with you. You can’t take those pills, man. They’ll stop your heart!” My imaginary, portly companion told me calmly, as if I was the craziest one in the room. I lurched forward and socked him right in the left eye. But before I knew it, he had plucked some cheap decorative vase off the wall, and smashed it brutally over my head. I was on the floor instantly with this 300-pound black-suited fiend now sitting directly on top of my stomach, practically nailing my body to the dirty carpet.

 

 

            “Get off of me you bastard! I’ll call the cops!” I spat into his thick, black mustache, which was now mere inches away.

 

 

            “No you won’t.” He said in a breath.

 

 

            “Why not?”

 

 

            “Because you need to get out to California. You know that. That’s why I’m here.”

 

 

            He was right, I knew. It was absolutely imperative that I made it out to California by Thursday, and time was closing in all around me. I couldn’t run myself off of any cliffs, and I understood that now. Thankfully, my Attorney, my faithful Old Car, had been here to stop me.

 

 

             Jesus Christ, was I losing my mind? My brain was having a fit about all of this nonsense, and it seemed that all sense and logic were long gone by now. All of that horrible slobber had assembled itself in my head: a gross miscalculation of the actual events that my car and I had just endured. I was speeding along this old winding highway when suddenly I saw a kid out in the middle of the road, standing there like some kind of maniac. I swerved off the road in one magnificent wrenching of the wheel, burying myself in a truly menacing mound of old leaves - trapped in a ditch off the shoulder of the road.

 

 

            “Who put that kid there? He could’ve killed me!” I rambled in a disoriented slur, allowing my vocal cords to freely cry out whatever they felt they had to, “What time is it, anyway?” I frantically searched the passenger seat for my phone, which had actually launched itself into the floor. I picked it up, wiped some of the grit off of it from the dirty floor mat, and checked the time, which was eternally sitting pretty at 1:23 AM. I sighed, and smacked my head on the steering wheel with a touch of disappointment: disappointment in myself for running my prized automobile into a ditch, and disappointment in the fact that I would have to get out and see if that kid was okay. I mean, I did almost run him down, after all. I desperately desired to continue my incredibly hazardous eighty miles per-hour trek through these terrible mountains, but instead, I would have to deviate from that entirely. I had to go do something about this, I knew. And I wasn’t sure how I felt about that. 

 

 

            My dilapidated door, which had been in such a deplorable state for as long as I could remember, creaked open – my foot, followed by my leg that I tentatively assumed to still exist, snaked out of the car, and hesitantly embedded itself within the old and raucous leaves that seemed to coat just about everything. It happened to be the bosom of late winter – the cusp of spring, really - but all of these leaves just kind of stuck around here in these old mountains. They weren’t necessarily trapped, but merely chose to stay here. It was comparable to just about everyone who lived in my old, sleepy town: the one that I was currently fleeing from.

 

 

            My feet sunk deep into those leaves, which threatened to swallow me whole. I was scared to death of those leaves - in fact, they chilled me to the marrow. But they were just old, useless leaves, with the withered ground so obviously beneath them. So why was I afraid? What could it have been? Was I just imagining this irrational fear? Or was I right to be afraid of this horrifying pile of leaves?

 

 

           “Dammit! Get a hold of yourself, you quivering animal! It’s just a pile of leaves!” I whispered to myself, attempting to keep quiet in these terrible woods. I decided to wade through those ankle-deep conduits of fear, the leaves crunching and crackling beneath my unstable step. I left my car running and my door wide open, not caring enough to bother either the ignition or the door handle. I didn’t have any real pockets; the dress I was wearing under my jacket wouldn’t abide by any such doctrine. In fact, I wasn’t quite built for these mountains at all, with my recently dirtied flats, my irreparably torn leggings, my gnarled and misshapen glasses, and of course, my irrefutably rancorous demeanor. Mountain travel was a terribly dangerous ordeal, and one would be both wise and practical to come prepared. I was of course neither of these things, and surely this mound of rock and mud splitting the earth would one day become my tomb.

 

           I hesitantly placed my foot on the worn asphalt of that old mountain highway. Suddenly, a dank, heavy wind blew past me, only further disheveling my already rather unruly and scraggly locks, thoroughly bound up in dried sweat and grease. The road was wet: a brand of unkind, dormant wetness, overshadowed by the spotty darkness offered by the shifting rain clouds above. Don’t worry; the rain had already halted its invasion into my territory long before I became engrossed in my current escapade, and their big, fluffy gray tanks were retreating far to the east. I wouldn’t dare engage in something as dangerous as saving some poor boy from those ruthless invaders. Not even if I had boots up to my thighs and a full body poncho would I ever dare tread through such treacherous muck.

 

           I gazed down the slick onyx of the road, yet the kid was nowhere to be seen. I slowly drug my feet forward, my recently acquired limp now clearly apparent. Popping my knuckles unconsciously, a nervous habit I’ve retained for several years, I swiveled myself around, my eyes thoroughly scanning the encroaching forest about me. The fear these woods impaled me with was indescribable, and I was convinced that such a wound would certainly bleed me dry. But instead of the foul taste of iron frothing up onto my tongue, a single, terrified word spilled out of my mouth,

 

            “H-Hello…?”

 

           I waited only for a moment, my eyes flashing back and forth across the thick air between my enigmatic partner and I, who was still nowhere to be seen, and currently reigned over this old mountain highway with a fist of deafening silence. I must have waited for the longest time, it seemed. However, the only sound my ears latched hold of was the uneasy shuffling of my own feet, the slight sound of my nervous fingers interfering with each other’s business, and my own wretched breathing.

 

 

           “Hey, uh… are you okay? I didn’t mean to run you over… I mean, almost run you over. Look, I just want to know if you’re all right. That’s it, I promise!” I somehow regained my foothold in this notably abhorrent situation, and managed to actually form something resembling coherent language with my anarchist of a tongue. Yet, even with such a careless rebellion raging within my mouth, all around me a wild and unfettered stillness blanketed the underbrush. No footsteps, no strained breathing, no whimpering expected of such a small child – except for the footsteps, strained breathing, and whimpering that I seemed to be accomplishing all on my own. And then, a peculiar thought occurred to me: Was I just imagining this boy? Was he just a figment of my mind, which was currently embroiled in such uncivil rabble?

 

 

            But then, just as I thought my own sanity was taking the death plunge, an unexpected voice from the forest, a tongue shriller than all the rest, pulled me back from the harrowing ledge. 

 

 

            “Lady, I have a gun, and if you come any closer, I’ll shoot!”

 

 

            The voice in the distance nearly paralyzed me: my spine locked up, my hands wrapped themselves into fists, and my toes curled in their casings. Suddenly, my world shifted violently, and I realized that my ominous adversary wasn’t a young boy at all. The voice was one on the brink of puberty - that kind of ripe, adolescent shrill that was characteristic of a teenage boy with a head brimming with angst and skinny girls. A number of questions ran through my head, each and every one of them pertaining to how I’d possibly escape this rotten muck alive. How was I to handle this boy? How long was it until he gunned me down where I stood? Think, you trembling idiot! Your life depends on it!

 

 

            “I’m sorry, okay? I didn’t mean to! Don’t shoot me! Please!” I said these words with utmost sincerity. I had no qualms with this boy, other than the fact that he had the nerve to quell my treacherous journey through these mountains. In all reality, he could’ve actually saved my life. Mountain travel is a terribly dangerous ordeal, and this boy, with his gun in hand and his life intact, perhaps had both the wit and the gumption to survive such a place.

 

 

            “What’s your name?” The boy purposely wondered aloud, enlisting an answer from me. At these words, my already addled mind fumbled to find an answer. I searched the slick black of the road, with its broken twigs and wayward pebbles, trying to find my name among the absolute chaos that characterized the world around me. I did indeed find my name among the smoldering rubble, but just as I was about to tell him, I had something of a mental lapse. My name was there, clearly etched into the near invisible asphalt… but another name came to mind. Suddenly there were two names lying among the chaos – equal in both function and purpose, but both distinct in their relation to me. I needed to pick one, however… before this crazy fiend decided that his trigger finger was getting itchy.

 

 

            “I’m… Rosaline.”

 

 

            “What’s your last name?” Jesus, the kid wouldn’t quit, would he?

 

 

            “Rosaline Anders!” I screamed at him in my own panic. I now realized that the insurrectionist forces inside my head were suffering at the hands of the loyalists: the coup was failing miserably, and suddenly…

 

 

            Dying was the last thing on my mind.

 

 

            “Be quiet, dumbass! You know there’s wolves and bears and stuff around here, right?” He was still nowhere to be seen: the darkness of the forest beyond the road cloaked him indefinitely.

 

 

            “Sorry… I’m sorry…” I pleaded timidly. I truly was sorry about what I almost did to this boy, and sorry about the fate that I undoubtedly doomed us both to bear. Although, the wolves would likely end up picking my skin and bones clean, my body already long dead with a gaping bullet wound in my chest. I was convinced that this boy was incredibly dangerous, and that in a few worthless seconds, I’d be bleeding out all over this road from the menacing bullet glaring at me from inside the barrel of that pistol.

 

 

            “God, you’re a mess… Quit your crying and all, I’m not gonna shoot you.” Finally, I felt some relief in the thick of this tender situation. My legs loosened themselves, and my hands quieted their trembling. I heard some rustling to my left, and suddenly, I came face to face with my formidable adversary.

 

 

            The first thing I noticed about the boy was how short he was. I mean, Christ, he topped out at like five feet – shorter than the shortest girls I knew. I towered over the poor fool, and I almost felt bad. Here I was, an insult to his masculinity: a girl nearly breaching the six-foot threshold… It was a height that nearly all pubescent boys dreamed of, I was sure of that. I had dreamed it too, once; and I had certainly achieved such a feat. But now it was quickly becoming a hindrance to the possibility of this boy and me becoming allies… My very existence insulted him.

 

 

            “You’re a tall one, aren’t you?” I pursed my lips, and tensed my chest, “Oh well. Not all of us can be skyscrapers, I guess…” The boy trailed off, his voice tinged with the slightest hints of sadness. In those moments though, I found myself inspecting his appearance: something that anyone would do. He had sharp black hair, curtailed to one side of his face - kind of flipping out to the side, like it didn’t want to be attached to the rest of his head. His eyes were either grey, or blue… or perhaps both, because to be honest, I didn’t want to look at them for too long – he would likely take it as some sort of subtle threat to his existence. And most intriguingly, his skin was of a tan complexion… was this boy of Samoan ancestry? Part Cherokee, maybe?

 

 

            “Why are you out here?” I asked him. It was a mistake, I knew; he would likely mistake my line of inquiry for hostility, “in the middle of the woods…” My bumbling continued. I wasn’t wrong in my appraisal; we were, in fact, in the middle of the woods, if that wasn’t already apparent. I was somehow hoping he would take my statement of fact as a facilitator of peace. I didn’t want him to think I was some bloodthirsty psychotic who couldn’t discern fiction from reality – and hopefully, by acknowledging the forest that clearly surrounded us, he wouldn’t make any such grim connection.

 

 

            The boy’s face noticeably drooped, “Well, uh… That’s kind of a long a story. I was just… I don’t know, actually. I honestly have no idea why I’m out here. I mean I do, but I don’t, if that makes any sense,” I gazed at him for a moment, absorbing his story, or rather lack thereof. “Listen… I know I kind of threatened you a minute ago… with a gun… but you’re the only person I’ve seen out here on this road tonight. So… would you mind giving me a lift back into town?”

 

 

            Suddenly, my heart froze up, and shattered into pieces. I couldn’t go back there. Not tonight. I couldn’t see it again, not that wretched place – with its lazy suburban houses, vacant orange-lit streets, and oppressively normal attitude... I was leaving for a reason, right? And now this boy wanted me to take him back?  

 

 

            “I know, I know… It’s a lot to ask.” The boy spoke, and I could tell he was receding only further into himself the longer I stood here without saying anything. Truthfully, I couldn’t figure out what to do. Here he was, this kid… was he fifteen? Sixteen? Fourteen? Regardless of his age, he was a kid, out here, in the middle of the woods. What exactly had happened to him? Drugs and alcohol gone awry? Had his friends, after a long night of senseless partying, left him here as some sort of intoxicated joke? Or was it he alone who ventured out here to this lonely mountain road, taking a gun for protection? Was he running from something?

 

 

The questions chased each other around in my hyperactive mind, like kindergarteners in the low end of a pool. These thoughts had no reins, no collars: their parents lying in the sun with headphones in their ears, listening to tunes of a bygone age. A better time, perhaps when they, instead of their own children, went to pools to have fun and thrash around in the water like senseless fools. I was effectively caught up in my own desire to truly discover this boy, and at the same time, drive as far away from this place as humanly possible. If I was to do both, I would have to compromise.

 

 

            “Look, you don’t have to, or anything, okay? I honestly don’t live too far from here, in the grand scheme of things. I don’t really have any business asking you to do anything for me anyway, right?” The kid forced a laugh, although his dismay at how the current situation was turning out clearly showed through. I was still stone silent, my eyes presumably glossed over and completely unresponsive. Jesus, he knew I was a psychopath now. I made too many mistakes, all too quickly. The general rule for psychopaths is to always gain their trust first… Then you can let your tendencies be known, little by little. Soon enough, they’re passed off as normal, and a beautiful friendship has hopefully been secured. But that’s not how it went at all this time. I was still stuck behind the fence, not sure if I was completely up to the task of going back to the place I was running from. But honestly? Maybe going back there, with this boy, was exactly what I needed to do. And there was only one way to find out.

 

 

            By the time I made my decision, he had already given up hope on me, and was walking in the other direction, head hung forward ever so slightly.

 

 

            “I’ll take you.” I said, as normally as I possibly could.

 

 

            “No really, it’s okay! You don’t have to. Just… forget that I asked, alright? It was kind of rude of me anyway. Sorry, by the way. You know, for me being in the road and all. But thanks for checking to see if I was okay, at least, even if I did kind of threaten to shoot you and all.” He just continued on, in spite of my offer, down the old mountain road.

 

 

            “You’re welcome…” My voice died half way through the reply, fading out amongst the subtle ambience that the damp late-winter night afforded us. I stood there, my hands dangling by my sides, wondering what to do next. The answer should’ve been clear, I knew - get back in the car, erase my memory of this peculiar experience in these terrible woods, and drive on – back on the course of what was to be my certain doom, if I wasn’t careful. In effect, the kid may have even saved my life, preventing me from continuing my tyrannical escapade on this old road and vaulting myself over some cliff in my stupor. I was thankful, yes. For a moment, there I was, most certainly losing my grip… but encountering this boy may have forced me to regain it, if only to delay the inevitable.

 

 

           But what to do now? Where to, and what next? Was I to just continue down this sullen road, toward my ultimate destination? And even then, once that was all wrapped up, where did I go from there? Back home? Jesus Christ, that was a terrible thought to bear. No, I was convinced that there needed to be some variation from my original plans: a deviation into unknown territory. I was sure that this boy was the answer to my problem: the undeniable key to regaining my tentative hold over my unstable reality. Taking him home would lead to a host of new experiences, even if it turned out to be a short and silent car ride. But I needed to do this, I felt. Being alone at a time like this was something I couldn’t afford. Not now, at least. Not in the middle of my mind’s seemingly unending season of battle. I needed to take my mind off of it, if only for just a while.

 

 

           I quickly trudged back into the woods, my car’s taillights intensely visible in the profane darkness that bathed the underbrush. It was a good thing that I had left it running, too: a coat of stark black paint coddled the old car, and would’ve likely made it nearly invisible in woods like these. Suddenly, an intensely frightening notion occurred to me: had I damaged my precious vehicle? I did, after all, run it into a ditch for Christ’s sake. I couldn’t necessarily worry about the condition of the damn thing, with my last bastion of hope making his way down the road and into oblivion. So I made it a point to shove myself into the driver’s seat as fast as I possibly could, and lock the hunk of metal into reverse. I punched the gas, and the car sailed back onto the highway, righting itself with my trained hands on the steering wheel.

 

 

            I aimed my great 72’ Cutlass Supreme to the side of the road and screeched to a halt beside the bewildered boy, who was likely frightened that I had come to run him down once more. But to his surprise, I merely rolled down my window, and leaned my head out, “I said I’d take you, man. Generally when people offer to do things for you, you take them up on it. It’s all about reciprocation of kindness… or something.”  

 

 

            The boy stood there for a moment, looking up and down the road as if he was still unsure about it all. I wanted to blurt out something along the lines of ‘Jesus God man, you’re the one that wanted me to take you home in the first place!’, but I knew that line of thinking would only further convince the boy that I was some blood sucking fiend come to rob him of his sanity. Yes, the rules had been broken: he thought I was some crazy person. But maybe there was a way to fix that.

 

 

            “Look, it’s honestly no trouble to me. I’ll take you back. I need to go back myself, to be honest. I left without something.” That was a lie. Perhaps the biggest lie I’ve ever told. But there was, at least to some extent, some truth in it. I was leaving part of myself behind here. My childhood, my old friends, my family, and most certainly all the torture I’ve endured here. But I had absolutely no intention of taking those things with me on this trip. No, everything that was here was to stay here, and I was to flee this place, leaving everything behind.

 

 

            “Well, thanks, uh… Rosaline, right?” He outstretched his lanky arm, presenting his almost delicate hand to me. It was far smaller than mine in comparison, and once again, I started to almost feel bad for him, and for myself. We were both the antithesis of our respective genders: I was tall, somewhat broad shouldered, my face was angular, and my limbs were larger. He was short, and petite, with all the features you would naturally expect on a female. Even his hips seemed to poke out beyond where they should have, and his voice was higher than a kite. Regardless of our respective idiosyncrasies, we seemed to both take solace in the kindred notion that we were out of place among the gender dichotomy.

 

 

            The kid booked it over to the passenger seat, desperate to finally be rid of this horrible place, I imagine. Who wouldn’t be, with all the bears and wolves and out of control teenagers with classic cars? Hell, I was ready to beat feet too, and I was the out of control teenager with the classic car. It must go to show that mountain travel really is one terrible ordeal, not even reserved for the best and brightest of humanity - and we were living proof of this irrefutable fact. Once my unlikely passenger settled into his seat, I revved the engine of the great behemoth encasing us, and blazed a trail out of that horrible place – leaving my mind’s Great War far behind us.