The Story So Far...

The Story So Far
Based On A True Story

Written By:
A pair of clever and funny guys

For Kat and Keller

All characters, events, and places in this story are purely fictional, except for the characters, events, and places that are real. Christ, it’s based on a true story!

Chapter 1

It was a bright day, and Keith Smith was only on his second round. He had made one trip down to the far end of town, and back, but he was already tired. He had driven only the typical morning customers, businessmen, and hippies with out jobs who don’t own cars because they harm the environment.
As he stopped at 4th and Yestler, he smelled a strong odor of roasted turkey over his right shoulder.
“Please, Keith! Darling! You haven’t eaten anything since last night. Here, it’s turkey! Your favorite!”
Keith roughly pushed the sandwich away, and the acrid smell of day old mustard spread over toasted bread followed.
“Darling” Keith responded, sarcasm dripping from his voice, “I told you, I don’t want a sandwich! I have told you over and over not to bother me on the job.”
Silence engulfed the driver’s seat, but as Keith slowed down, and the rumble of the engines dies away, he could hear Cathy whimpering, sulking, in the seat behind him. He looked into the wastebasket beside his chair, and saw crusts of break, jutting out of the Kleenexes and condom wrappers so usual is bus waste bins.
“Your just mad about bed last night.” Cathy muttered, not intending Keith to hear. Keith heard, He whirled around in his seat.
“What did you say?”
“Nothing. I was just, uhmm, talking to myself.”
“Oh, I heard what you said. Listen, I can’t believe that you’re doing this to me. You have such a fragile ego that you can’t even take a rejection in bed without blowing everything out of proportion.”
Cathy, wanting to avoid more trouble, dropped into the sullen silence that was so customary of their marriage these days. Dark thoughts flickered through Keith’s mind, but then an elderly woman needed assistance reading the schedule, so these thoughts drifted away into the dark part of his subconscious where thoughts of this type inevitably went.

***

Keith arrived home later that night at 8:00pm tired from his long, listless day.
As he picked up a porno mag and sat down to “read” he almost shat himself seeing the time and coming to the realization that his second job started in a half an hour. He jumped out of his seat pulled up his pants and hurried out the door. Upon arriving at the sex shop a few minutes late he got a short lecture from his manager and he was set to work. All night “no sir, your dildo has not arrived yet” and “that’s $10.50, Oh, wait that’s the inflatable kind, $21.75”. Then walked in Keith’s old advising friends, Tanner and Noah.
“Hey guys, usual”, asked Keith in an uncommonly uplifted voice.
Noah replied, “Yeth me and Tannerkins are celebrating our annivirsity”.
Tanner and Noah had discovered together that they were gay and that they both wanted to become interior designers. Noah was dressed in faded pink flip-flops, a light blue swimsuit, and a tight wife-beater, at least 3 sizes too small for him. His hair was spiked and bleached at the pointy tips. Tanner was sporting stiletto heels, khaki capris, an open Hawaiian shirt, with out buttons, those had comes off years ago, as Noah liked to give Tanner surprises after a long day of decorating, and a sun bleached pink visor. They were Keith’s beloved regulars at the Chaotic Erotic. Every day after they got off the job, they would pick up about a pound and a half of Viagra, Keith had taken to selling it in bulk because of this.
Lately Keith had been wondering what happened to his old friends. Ezra had died of a cocaine OD seven years prior. But Tanner and Noah were the only two of the “gang” that he still kept contact with. Keith thought that this just went to show how terrible his life had become. Tanner and Noah had departed long since, and Tuesday was a slow day for sex toys.
At 4 am, he took his coat off the peg, and handed the keys to the register to his successor. He stepped into his rust covered 1982 Ford pickup truck.

***

Keith closed the door to his two-room apartment behind him, and noticed, much to his surprise, that the bedroom light was on. He enters, and Cathy, as usual, was trying to renew the lust in their relationship by disporting herself is some manner of erotic costume. Keith fended off her attempts to seduce him, and calmly took off his pants and shirt, hung up his bus driver slacks and shirt, and lay down in their hard, broken spring mattress. He fell asleep, readying himself mentally for the big day ahead of him.

Chapter 2

Keith awoke the next day, and sliding his hand to the other side of his bed he realized something was different, due to his sad and depressing life, it took him sometime to figure out what it was. And then it hit him, Cathy was not there. His already shitty life had become even shittier. He rolled out of bed, jamming his eye into the corner of his bedside table. After putting ice on his eye, he checked his crap-shack of an apartment once again for Cathy. She was not there. He was late for work; he walked out of his house, got in his truck, and drove down to the city bus garages.
As he arrived at the garage and got out of his truck, his sad, sad life finally dawned on him. His two jobs sucked, he had no one to cook him food anymore, his truck would soon break down, his only friend were two gay interior designers, and his crap-shack had reached its peak. He collapsed to the ground and began to cry, right in front of all the other bus drivers.
After sobbing for half an hour, he gathered the strength to crawl to his bus. He got in the drivers seat, started his engine and was off. He drove all over picking up and dropping of people whose lives were almost as bad as his. After hours of driving he had another momentary breakdown. This, of course, caused an accident. For, as Keith was making a turn and he started to cry he turned to sharp. The bus rolled hitting cars and people. And then, darkness.
Keith awoke 80 feet away from the crash, his head throbbing. And, thinking he may have killed many people, he stood up the best he could and started running. He knew were he would go, Noah and Tanners.

***
Noah and Tanner had just woken up, and were in the process of devouring a particularly delicious strawberry milkshake. The doorbell rang. Tanner jumped up, wiping frosting from his mouth, and went to answer the door.

”Keith! What the weenie happened to you, sexy?”
“Noah,” said Keith. This was, of no coincidence, the last intelligible phrase he would utter for some time.
“Cathyleftmeandichrashedabusandidontgetanylovinganymoreandmylifesucksiwannakilleveryonebhwahahahahahhahoooo.”
Normally a levelheaded person, Noah was thrown off by this. He led Keith into the sitting room, and left him sobbing and hugging a pillow.
“I don’t know what to do.”
“Lets leave him there. He needs to vent.”

***

Cathy had been running for four hours. Her breath was rasping, and she could feel the blood pumping in her veins. It reminded her of when her marriage had still contained passion. She had made the decision to run that previous evening. As she sat down on a curb, her mind drifted to that moment, when she had decided to leave her husband of 3 years, the once love of her life, Keith Smith.

***

Cathy walked into the room, and heard pounding noises coming from the bathroom. She walked up to the door, tried the handle, and found it locked. She could hear Keith pounding away inside. She talked to the door.
“Keith, honey?”
A grunt.
“Listen, I know that things haven’t been working out lately, but I thought that we could use to spend more time together.”
A moan.
“Quality time. I invited Jay and Amanda over for dinner, why don’t we make it a lover’s night? Light candles, renew the passion.”
A sigh.
“Friday night. Listen Keith, sweet, I know that we can make this work.”
“Friday night? FRIDAY NIGHT!” Keith’s voice was rising with anger. “YOU CRAZY BITCH! YOU BITCH! FRIDAY NIGHT? THAT’S MY TIDDILY WINK NIGHT WITH NOAH! YOU FUCKING WHORE! I’M GOING TO FUCKING KILL YOU!”
Cathy screamed, a high, shrill, piercing shriek, as Keith advanced. He snatched up a floor lamp, and swung. It had been a long time since Keith had last swung a floor lamp, but his aim was still as true as ever. The base of the lamp connected with Cathy’s chest, and she let out a guttural moan of despair and disbelief, and collapsed in a heap. Keith kicked out savagely, and left the still mass on the floor. He pulled up his pants, and left for his 8:30 shift at the Chaotic Erotic.

Chapter 3
As Cathy sat there reminiscing she began to realize that she had put so much into their relationship, and yet, it still failed. It couldn’t have been her fault. It must have been Keith’s. For all that time Keith had been a complete fuck and caused their love to die.
Cathy moaned quietly to herself.
“Why?”
Kill him.
“No.”
Kill him.
“No. Stop, please.”
Kill him.
“I can’t”
Kill him.
“I must.”
Cathy rose from the curb promptly, her life filled with a new purpose, to make Keith pay. To make that bastard, her husband pay, pay, for al the things that he had done. Done to her. To her.
She ripped the sleeve off of her shirt with her teeth and wrapped it around her chest. The bleeding had gone down, but it still hurt like hell. She walked quickly, with a purpose, possessed by a demon of her troubled past life.
She had run far from home, and as she drifted past the rows upon rows of cornfields, she entered a small town. A town with large signs by the road to attract passers by. One sign interested her more than the others.
GUNS GUNS GUNS

Chapter 4

Cathy arrived at the only little gun shop in the little hick town her hours of running had lead her to. She entered. The walls were covered with guns, rifles, shotguns, pistols, SMG’s, and all assortments of automatic and semi-automatic weapons she had never seen before. The floor was dirty and covered with gunpowder. She walked up to the man at the counter; he was tall and lanky with tattoos, and gun oil on his hands. Cathy said sternly “I NEED A GUN… NOW!”

***

Keith walked back into his empty apartment. He could tell the smell of turkey from Cathy’s sandwiches had already dies away without her. He threw his bag onto the counter, poured himself a glass of cold Coors and sat down on the couch. He smelled his cheap beer, and heard the creak of the bedroom door opening, and then the clink of the latch shutting.
Good he thought. Cathy came home. He hoped to God that she would not be in a mood for make up sex, because, he, frankly, was not.
“Hi, Cathy.”
Silence.
“Cathy?”
Silence.
Keith turned around, and stared in pure terror down the barrel of the TEC-9 that was aimed directly at his forehead.
“Hi, Keith.”

***

Mrs. Smithe, an elderly English woman was in the middle of feeding her cat, Pitches, when a thunderous crash shook the apartment complex. She decided to put it down to her bad hearing, and poured the Purina into a bowl.

Chapter 5

The phone rang. Constable Roger Wilcox answered it with the terseness so accustomed of modern police officers.
“A 401-32-694?” he gasped, “that’s a murder!”
A large, meaty hand swung out from behind him, and hit him across the face.
“A 401-32-694 is not a murder. It’s a Level 3 Kitten Alert. That’s a murder.” Said Lieutenant Johnson, pointing to the police alert screen, which was flashing large red letters reading MURDER MURDER MURDER, with at least four wall-mounted sirens blazing. Underneath the heading of MURDER there was information scrolling across the screen, just above a picture of a young woman, whose beauty was marred with the signs of unhappiness. There was a caption under the picture. Cathy Costello: 1998 Tennessee State Fair; Largest Zucchini and under that File Photo the young woman was holding a very large zucchini.
“God. I don’t know how I get those two mixed up.” Said Constable Wilcox as he grabbed his coat, shouldered his gun, and hopped into the passenger’s seat of the squad car next to Lieutenant Johnson.
“Let’s roll. We’ve got a murder to solve.” Said Johnson.
The squad car peeled out of the garage and tore down the street, tires squealing.

***

The door to apartment 46 broke in, shards of cheap, laminated fiberboard flew everywhere, and running in, low and hunched, with their guns out in front of them, Wilcox and Johnson ran in.
The dust settled, and the officers took stock of their surrounding. A couch, overturned, with a trail of bullet holes running down it, across the floor, and up the far wall. Blood was spattered all over the room, and was starting to dry on the carpet. This was a fresh scene. Johnson gave it no more than 3 hours. Wilcox went over to the security box on the wall, which was beeping, pushed a button, and it silenced.
“Alright. We need to take stock.” Johnson said, “We have a blood spattered couch, no body, no perp.”
“Okee…” Wilcox said, rocking back on his heels.
“You’re supposed to be writing this down! Who the hell do you think I was taking to?”
“I…dunno. Maybe you were lonely, and you wanted to talk to yourself. My old grandma talks to herself when I forget to let her out of her closet. One time, she almost ate a whole set of toy train tracks…”
“Shut the hell up!” shouted Johnson, hitting Wilcox across the face with his meaty hand. “We need to think.”
“Wait!” said Wilcox, jumping up. “We don’t have the kitten! We need to get that kitten under surveillance as soon as possible!”
Johnson grabbed a floor lamp to beat Wilcox with, and noticed that the base was bent. He dropped to the floor, whipped out a pair of gloves, and a fingerprint kit.
“Hey, Wilcox. Shut up for a second!” Looks like we have a weapon here!”
“That would explain the bullet holes!”
“It’s a lamp, you jackass! It doesn’t explain the bullet holes!”
Johnson swung the meaty hand at Wilcox, and he collapsed, his consciousness fading into blackness.