Garage Door Help-Line -or- Sunny's Revenge; a cautionary tale.

**Editor's Note**This is a tale I penned some time ago that I rather like. It is a tale of new beginnings, deceit, violence, sex and murder. I give you Garage Door Help-Line!
"You dirty cunt," Ron mutters under his stinking breath. He repeats it as he finds that the aspirin bottle is empty.

Sunny sits quietly and lets him finish his morning routine.

"You better call those garage door people today or so help me God, I will belt you a good one," Ron slurs as he fumbles for his second cup of coffee. He takes a swig and brushes his hand down his face, then pulls open the junk drawer in the kitchen.

"Where the fuck are my cigars?" he demands as he turns to her.

She sits at the kitchen table and clinches her coffee cup tight and tries not to look him in the eye, "You said you were going to pick them up on your way home when you got gas and I didn't have to. Maybe you left them in the car," she says quietly.

The sting of the slap isn't as painful as the coldness of his hand. His hands are always cold. Not cold like ice or snow, but cold like a corpse. As she recovers from the blow, she picks up the cup and reaches for the paper towels. She just keeps watching her hands as she wipes up the spilled coffee off the floor.

He picks up last night's bottle and up-ends it into his oversized mug with a grunt of satisfaction. He puts on his coat and pats the pockets. He pulls a brand new cheap cigar out and bites off the end. He spits it on the floor and it lands wetly next to her hand before he goes out the back door into the garage to his SUV.

Sunny picks up the cigar end and says to herself, "This is it."

***

Dave sits down to his morning Mountain Dew and a Snickers and signs on for the next call. He munches loudly as he finishes his breakfast, much to the consternation of his cube mate, Phil.

Phil responds to a call and is frustrated by the noise that Dave can generate consuming one candy bar and a pop. He refers the caller to the help desk and hopes that Dave will be the one to take it so he can finish his tea in peace.

Dave gets a call over his head-set and tries to comprehend the woman on the other end of the line as his sugar rush peaks. "I will be glad to do whatever I can," he reassures her as he shakes the last few drops of his soda into his mouth. "What's your name Miss? How do you spell that? Do you know what model you have? On the side there should be a foil sticker, it will have the model number on it." Dave rattles the keys to his computer in time to the cadence of her speech.

"Yes, I'm still here. Yes, that's the model number, just let me pull it up." Dave checks the candy wrapper to see if there is one more bite left. There isn't. He jiggles his knee and raps his thumb on the desk knowing full well this irritates Phil to no end.

"Yes, I've got it now. This is one of our older models. So what seems to be the trouble?" Dave sits back in his chair and jiggles his knee a little slower as he tries to understand the lady's problem. She isn't like most of the boneheads that call in. She has genuinely checked it over and eliminated a couple of his easy trouble shooting suggestions. Might be a Midwesterner by the sound of her accent and she is trying to fix it herself.

"It sounds like one of the safety sensors might be acting up. Are they installed properly? How long ago did you purchase this unit? Oh, it came with the house." Dave scratches his nose as he flips through a couple of pages of expanded diagrams. "Check to see if the wires are making a good connection. Yeah, yeah, there is one more small screw at the front behind the light bulb and then the cover will come off. The wires should be red and white. You'll need a Philips."

Dave leans over in his chair and rests all of his weight on one leg and tries to quietly let one slip. It isn't as quiet as he'd hoped, but he is fairly sure the lady on the other end of the didn't hear. Phil gives him a dirty look and begins to fan the air away with a file folder as he swears under his breath.

"Well there you have it. The door should work properly now. Try it. Good. Well if you have anymore trouble, give us a call. My name? David. Thank you, always glad to help. Oh, we're based in Toronto. Yes, it does get a little chilly at times. Really? How soon are you leaving? Have you ever been here? Well, I should show you around. What hotel? That's just down the street. I have to pull the late shift that night but I think I can skate out of here by seven-thirty. Cool, cool. I'll meet you in the bar. No, I have a car. How will you know me? Um, I'll wear a red sweater. Oh, and something else. If the door has been jerking up and down like that for a while, you might want to check the connection on the manual release handle. Sometimes that can get worn and the whole door could come crashing down unexpectedly, and that is a very, very big door. You know, just for safety's sake. Well hey, I've got to take another call because the boss is giving me the hairy eyeball, but I'll see you Saturday, and remember to grease the track and oil the rollers." Dave smiles as she giggles at this.

"What the hell," thinks Dave, "this might be fun" and jiggles his knee.

***

Sunny stretches her back and then wipes her hands on a rag. She gathers up the tools and returns them to the tool box. She likes the sound they make as they drop in and clank against the other tools, especially the sound the file makes. To her, it just sounds like a job well done.

She heads into the house and goes to pour another cup of coffee when she notices her hand is shaking. "No more coffee for me," she thinks and pulls open the fridge instead. Hidden behind an assortment of left overs is a light beer. She carries it to the bathroom and turns on the small electric heater. The can of beer makes a sharp crack as she tips the tab in. She takes a large swallow and tries to remember when she last drank a beer. She and Ron were dating and they went to the roadhouse. He was so charming then. He put ten dollars in the jukebox and insisted they stayed until it was up. They sat and drank beer as the juke box played nothing but oldies. That was the night he proposed.

"Oh to have one night to live over again," she thinks. "I would have done things differently."

As she begins to crouch into the tub, she tries not to notice the bruises, but the purple and yellow are distracting. After the warm water washes over her and she settles in, she reaches for a bath bomb. She got a set of them for Christmas last year from her sister and this seems like an ideal time to try them. The water feels good and she feels clean for the first time in a long time. The bomb fizzes and stains the water red and she thinks about how this would loosen up the grease stains on her fingers. Sunny props her feet on the warm nozzle and thinks a bit.

Everything she needs is packed. Everything on her list is arranged. All the calls had been made, even the insurance company. Her sister is going to put her up, the neighbor is going to take her cat, and Ron will be a thing of the past. She is going to move on and embrace life and count her years with Ron as a tough lesson to be learned. "That part of my life is closed now," she thinks, "I am all about new beginnings from here on out."

She splashes at a few random bubbles and looks down her frame to her toes and lets the drain empty her hot bath. She lays very still, feeling the water ebb away leaving a ring of suds around her. "I still got it," she reassures herself.

She stands and turns on the shower to wash off the bomb, but she turns it as cold as it goes.

Sunny endures it for as long as she can, then bolts from the shower. The cold water was necessary, she reasons, as it makes her feel brisk and motivated. Her new clothes fit better than they did in the store, and in a few minutes, only the rubber marks on the drive way mark her passing.

***

Ron awakens to the feeling that his mouth has been recarpeted. He stumbles blindly for the bathroom. He clears his throat and spits as the empties his bladder. His head hurts like a Saturday and today is only Wednesday. He rubs his eyes and tries to think of why he got so drunk the night before. As he gives it a little shake he remembers the note. That was what got him started. That ungrateful bitch had walked out on him and left him some stupid note saying she was going to visit her sister and she would send for her stuff later.

Ron went to the kitchen for breakfast and gulped down three shots of rye to chase the aspirin. The coffee wasn't quite done yet, but he pours some anyway and the fresh drips sizzle as they strike the warmer plate below. The coffee is too hot to drink but some more rye cools it off nicely. Ron curses the bitch for her shortsightedness for not seeing his obvious good qualities so she could go slutting around. In Ron's book, if a woman wasn't at home, she was out slutting around. His dad had been very clear about this.

Ron climbed into the shower and noticed a red ring around the tub. He didn't think of it again until he climbed into his SUV and saw the pack of Big Red chewing gum on the passenger seat next to his new cigars. Ron gets his morning cigar going so it will cover the smell of his breath and he notices that the SUV is sitting crooked. He gets out to see that his front passenger side tire is flat. There is a roofing nail planted firmly in the tread.

"Fuck, of all days," he mutters and hits the button for the large garage door. "I gotta fix a flat on a day like today," he moans.

Ron heads for the rear of the vehicle to pull the spare tire from its rack as the three car garage door pulls itself up to a familiar whirring sound. A split second after his foot breaks the plain of the safety lasers, the door comes to an abrupt halt and puts an incredible strain on the manual release catch. The door groans a little as the catch slips and the door falls.

The door strikes Ron on the top of the head with the force of a train gathering speed and drops him. He is already sprawled upon the floor when it strikes him again with the full force of it's weight, and the sound of his ribs snapping echoes down the cul-de-sac. Ron lives just long enough to piss himself.

***

Dave gets a call from Detective So-And-So that Phil transfers directly to him. No, he can't remember a call from a Sunny somebody. Dave takes thirty-five calls a day and he can't remember every one. Dave hangs up with a reassurance that he will call Detective So-And-So if he remembers anything. Dave checks the clock that reads seven thirty-four. Quiting time was four minutes ago.

Dave takes his gym bag into the Men's room and changes his clothes. He has a hot date tonight with a foxy older woman who has just inherited a million dollars. "I still got it," he says as he runs his fingers through his hair in the mirror.

***

"Are you sure you don't want something else?" the bartender offers. Sunny brightens up and says, "Yes, I'll have a tall draft beer please." The bartender takes her tea cup and pours as she directed, then busies himself with the dirty glasses. The radio is tuned to an oldies station and it is the only noise in the room. The door swishes open and admits a chilly breeze and a skinny young man in a red sweater two sizes to big for him.

"Sunny?" he asks.

"Oh and you wore your red sweater! Good! Have a drink and talk to me a while." They chat for a few minutes until Sunny pauses and turns to the bartender, "Could you turn this up please? I love this song. Do you know the name of this song?" she asks with a smile.

"Cruel To Be Kind?" Dave offers.

Doc

A Fright

I'm working at the bakery last night and I had forty-five minutes left on my shift when Flannery called. She said Lucy had taken a bad fall on the trampoline and had hurt her neck. Now she couldn't move her head. Flannery was taking her to the hospital and I should go straight home. Her voiced wavered with fear.

I trembled as I drove home as I could only think of worst-case scenarios. Her neck was broken and she would spend the rest of her life in a wheelchair. She would never run and play again. She would need help going to the bathroom and she would have a tough time finding a date when the time came. I choked up thinking about how one misery after another would be piled on my little girl's shoulders and she isn't even six yet.

Long story short, she is okay. The doctor called it whiplash and she is going to be sore for a few days but there is no long term damage.

Good Lord, it's scary being dad sometimes.

Doc

The Night We Ran From Pan

Have you ever been scared shitless? Just flatout scared to the point that you could die from the fright alone?

I have. I have felt the chilly, lead-like drops of sweat stand out on my face as my heart skipped a beat in the uncertainty of whether or not it was going to continue to have a job in the next thirty-seconds. My feet filled with helium and my stomach turned into a fist. My eyes unbidden bulged, and I could almost hear my pupils snap all the way open in order to better perceive the threat, and worst of all, my bunghole clamps shut with the force of the will to live and 10,000 years of survival instinct. My thoughts were limited to two: fight or flight and devil take the hindmost. I have been scared shitless.

At the time, I had just arrived at the tender age when the state had deemed me old enough to obtain a driver's permit, but as cold, hard cash was not coming my way in more than five dollar amounts at a time, it just didn't seem that important. It was August and the heat and the humidity hovered at one hundred and the air was thick with haze. But no self respecting teen aged kid is going to let the discomfort of the heat to keep him from his regular round of shenanigans regardless of the cool of the indoors and the absence of mosquitoes.

I ventured out after dinner to meet my buddies, Matt and Carl, who were my partners in crime and my boon companions. These two miscreants were to introduce me to many adventures that I am mildly ashamed to have taken part in, but I wouldn't trade the times we had for a million dollars. We met at the fort to plan the evenings festivities. Now the fort was not a fort per se, but a comfortable shack we had constructed from left over lumber from my barn. It was a comfy 8x8 with paneling, a loft, a trapdoor that lead to the secret exit underneath. The furniture and stereo were "liberated" from the local junkyard and never really lost their wet goat smell.

The three of us would get together every evening after dinner to have a pinch of snuff (as that is when snuff tastes best- on a full belly) and shoot the bull while we played Rummy. This particular evening the topic of conversation could not seem to stray far from the heat. We had removed our T-shirts so we could use them to staunch the steady flow of sweat. Carl suggested that some cold beer would be just the ticket to our relief and he mentioned casually that he knew where some was. "We'll just go to Norm's" he said with a smile.

Norm was our neighbor and was a generally disliked cuss and possessed a foul temper. Norm also owned a keg in a fridge and a poorly locked garage door. Now I am heartily against stealing and always have been. I voiced my objections to Matt and Carl that evening, but was soundly outvoted by the majority. It was decided that Matt and Carl would purloin the beer as that was where their talent was, and I would serve as lookout in honor of my stance on stealing. As I grew older I learned what the word "culpable" and "accomplice" meant, but at the time this was enough to satisfy my loose code of ethics and we set out. "Besides," I reasoned, "Norm is enough of a dickhead that he deserves to contribute some cold beer to the common good." They jimmied the garage door up enough to slip inside and I watched the house with a nervous stare, thinking that at any moment, Norm was going to come busting out of the house with his rusty shotgun and give me something to think about other than my thirst or the humidity. After a few tense moments they scampered out with a milk jug full of cold, cheap beer. We headed for the fort in haste to enjoy our swag.

First off, beer should never be drank from plastic. It's just wrong, don't ask why. Beer from a plastic milk jug with a little bit of sour milk in the bottom should never be drank. Blatz beer shouldn't be drank at all, but there we were, passing the jug and giggling at the jokes from an old Playboy we had found by candle light while we began to scar our tender young livers. It was a hoot.

Now a young beer drinker is triply damned. First, he doesn't know what good beer tastes like and drinks swill, not knowing that good beer is much better, and it is always better when you pay for it rather than steal it. Second, He has no idea how much is too much or what to do once he has arrived at too much. Thirdly, his young bladder is not conditioned to hold a twelve pack at a time and quickly finds himself in dire need to make water.

By the time we consumed 2/3's of the gallon of beer, the air in the fort was thick with the smoke of our home rolled cigarettes (we used my dad's pipe tobacco) and our beers had hit bottom. It was time for some fresh air, a whiz, and a stroll. We stepped out into the cool night air and the fog had settled into the valley. The moon was bright blur behind the haze of clouds that promised no rain. In the gaps in the sky, I tried to pick through the handful of stars to spot Orion's Belt while I pissed loud enough to compete with the bubbling of the crick twenty yards away. The chorus of crickets and frogs croaked and chirped in time with the lightening bugs that were peppering the darkness. Every bug and animal seemed in full voice that night. The bats swooped in and out of the fog and stuffed themselves with mosquitoes without making a dent in the population. The grass was wet with dew and the air was hot, thick, still, and hard to breathe. Everything was awake, roasting, and restless, just like us.

It's is tough to describe the feeling of being young, thrilling to the off-kilter hormones and being mildly drunk to sauced, and seeing/hearing/feeling the world differently for the first time, while holding my dick in my hand and cutting loose with a racehorse-sized piss.

I finished and returned to my comrades as the moon faded completely from view. "Let's go for a walk" suggested Matt. "Let's go finish the beer!" Carl countered. "Naw, I think I'd rather have a little fresh air first. We can finish it later. Maybe if we stir around a little bit we can catch a breeze. Let's take a walk," I said. Carl looked more than a little sad that we weren't going to return to the jug any time soon, but majority ruled so we took a hike. We were drunken redneck country boys will a belly full of stolen beer, but we were a democratic lot and held to it.

"Where you wanta go?" Matt asked. I turned to Carl as I felt the dissenter should have some say. "Let's walk through the corn field" Carl said. While I didn't see much point in entering the cornfield in search of a breeze, Carl made the suggestion in such a way that he had something in mind. I figured that he was thinking of heading to the swimming hole for a late night dip and that didn't sound too bad to me. "Okay," I agreed, "but you lead."

Have you ever walked through a cornfield in late August? By this time the corn is full grown to seven or eight feet, yellowing, and the drooping leaves hang lower and have a sandpaper feel to bare skin that create papercut-like scratches, not to mention the amount of chaff that falls on you from the tassels on the top that tends to get caught in hair and sticks to sweaty bodies. There was a reason I asked Carl to lead and I followed Matt behind him. It makes a big difference if you follow someone as they hold back the leaves and all of the chaff falls on them; unless you are running.

Carl entered the cornfield at the usual point behind the fort but at the turn for the swimming hole, Carl went straight. Now walking a corn row at night, you get tunnel vision. There is only the back of the guy ahead of you and corn everywhere else. There just isn't anything else to see. Even the sky was blacked out by the corn. So you follow the guy ahead of you and try to not let the passing leaves slash you by staying close.

In midstride, Carl stops and Matt walks into him. As I'm crouching behind Matt, I hit him. "What's up Carl?" Matt says in a whisper. "There is a dude up there," Carl says in an ominous whisper back. "Let me see," Matt reaches over Carl's shoulder and parts a few leaves and looks down the row as the moon comes out from behind a cloud. "That's a goat," Matt said softly, "look at the feet. It's got hooves..." We held very still and tried not to breathe.

My first thought was that I had been the rube to a joke and that they were trying to pull a fast one on me. I can't see past them and the moonlight is only coming in a trickle anyway and all I see is corn, but I can feel Matt's back. I'm certain you have felt a cold shiver of fear run down your own spine, but have you ever felt it run down the spine of another? I have. It started at his shoulders and settled into his lower back like a coil spring sprung. Only twice in the thirty years I've known the man have I ever seen him frightened. This time and the time he had a heart attack. I'm not saying Matt is fearless, but it takes an awful lot to spook him.

I am not a witness to what they saw, but when Carl screamed like a little girl that "He's comin' at us!!!" I rethought his suggestion about relaxing on the comfy furniture that smelled like wet goat and finishing the rest of our beer. I mentioned this briefly as I turned tail and ran but I think it may have been articulated like "AHHHHHHH" amongst the sound of my pounding footsteps in the opposite direction. I have never been much of a fast runner as I built for endurance, not speed. This point was driven home when Matt decided that since he couldn't pass me, he would jump on my back and ride me like a rented mule, slapping me and screaming "Faster! Faster!". The extra one hundred and twenty pounds was not really much of a burden as the adrenaline dump was mixing with the alcohol in my system, but to complicate matters, Carl took a page from Matt's book and hopped on his back.

Now picture a running, screaming totem pole of mildly drunken kids bursting forth from a field of corn under the hazy summer moon. My feet only came to a halt when I threw them on the sofa of the fort and latched the door behind me. There was some discussion as to who should have the first pull at the jug now that we had returned, but since I was the one to haul their sorry asses from the maw of death by a vengeful faun, I felt I had every right to demand first pull.

Perhaps we deserved to be scared shitless by a mythical goat-man after swiping someone else's beer, but the slashes from the corn were to remind me of my transgression for days as I looked like I had been attacked by a cheese grater.

Doc

The Ride Of My Life

One of the greatist joys and challenges of my childhood was the swimmin' hole. This was a place of infinite entertainment. I have spent a great deal of time fishing, swimming, rafting, diving, and camping around a crick. It was my second home. I have spent whole summers roaming it's shores and every spring we would spend two weeks pulling the rusted car parts, tires, washing machines, and broken bottles out so the rest of the season we didn't have to worry about cutting our feet to ribbons.

Now I had two neighbors, my buddy Carl, and the brothers Goslin, Mike and Matt. These kind gentlemen were the ones who taught me how to lie, cheat at cards, syphon gas from a car, to spit (an important lesson to know should you ever have to syphon gas from a car), how to chat up a girl (a lesson I never learned very well), how to sneak out of the house, swear creatively, how to fish, dip snuff, and how to drink beer, as well as other things that a young man needs to know to get by in this world that his parents are hesitant to pass along. They were fine people, one and all, well at least Mike and Matt were. Carl was a shithead deluxe.

That being said, let me tell you my story. One warm sunny Saturday afternoon in spring, they came knocking at my door to enlist my help with a little project they had planned for the day. They had found a pulley that would be ideal for sliding down a length of cable and dropping into the swimming hole, and to sweeten the deal they had also found the cable with which to make this scheme possible. The only trouble was that the cable was at the top of the hill at a neighbor's oil well. The neighbor didn't need the cable, as he had left it out in the elements to rust, and it was up to us to "liberate" it before it lost it's usefulness and was wasted. That was how they explained it to me. At first this seemed like a just cause, but as I was sweating and swearing my way down the hill toteing my share of three hundred pounds of cable, I realized I had participated in an act of theft. To them, this was a lark. To me, this was my first entry into the criminal world.

At my realization that we had done a horrible wrong to someone who had never done us any harm, I entreated them to return it and forget the whole escapade. My words fell on deaf ears as we had reached the bottom of the hill and no amount of our paltry strenght could move it against gravity back to it's rightful place. So we plunged ahead.

Mike, the older of the two Goslin brothers, had had the foresight to find one cable lock so we could secure one end of the cable to a tree up the hill from the swimming hole, and had even found some pliers so we could tighten the lock down. What he hadn't found was something to cut the cable with, or another cable lock to attach the end of the cable we couldn't cut, to the other tree. But since none of us weighed more than a hundred and forty pounds each and the spool of cable weighed more than all of us combined, we solved the problem by wrapping the cable tightly around a tree and we hoped for the best. Later, this solution proved wise.

We cleared a path up the steep hill and tied a rope so that it could be used for a handrail. The pulley was produced and the cable was ready for it's first trial. We all looked at Carl. Carl was our guinea pig. This was why we kept him around, because it certainly wasn't for his company. Carl was dumb, and to add insult to injury, he was also gifted with a sense of foolhardiness. There was nothing he wouldn't try. I have seen him, sober mind you, pee on an electric fence that he knew was on. We all stepped back from the pulley and waited for Carl to take his rightful place and take the first ride.

Then Carl did something we had never seen before. He balked. He took a long pull at his Old Milwaukee tall boy and said, "I ain't goin' down that thing!" We were at a loss. If Carl wouldn't go, how were we ever going to know if it was safe? I was quick to nominate Matt as our second choice but he was quickly eliminated as he was the one who had found the cable. Mike exscused himself, as he had been the one who had found the pulley, the cable lock, and the pliers. They all turned to me.

"Oh Crap!", I thought to myself, "Why, oh why, have I ever let myself get talked into this mess." I tried to plead a weak heart. I tried to plead a bad back. I even tried to plea that my religion of being a coward prevented me, but to no avail. I had to go. I gave them one long last look, much like the soldier before a battle he knows he will not return from. Mike grinned. Matt smiled. Carl laughed out loud that for the first time he wasn't going to be the one in the emergency room and took another swig of his cheap beer.

With sweaty hands, I grabbed the hook under the pulley and lifted my feet. Before I could utter the "O" of "Oh Shit! I'm going to die!" I was racing along at breakneck speed. The trees on the hill raced past faster than Indy cars. The pulley made a whirring, buzzing sound as if a million hornets had been roused to anger. My arms felt as if they were about to be pulled from the sockets as the wind pulled tears from my eyes. But I held on. To let go now would be folly, as I found myself sixty feet above dry ground. "Just a half second more," I kept telling myself as I wondered how life would be confined to a wheelchair.

At last I cleared the trees and was over water, but still I had to hang on a little longer, as the water didn't get deep until the center of the crick. I screamed profanities, I screamed prayers, I screamed that dieing a virgin was no way to go. I distinctly recall slighting Carl's heritage at one point for not being the one riding down this kid-made deathtrap. It was about this point that I wet myself a little.

I was too scared to let go, but I couldn't ride this pulley to the other side of the crick as I would plow into a rocky mud bank that would have reduced my slender frame to pudding. I had to time it just right so that my forward momentum didn't carry me over the narrow channel where the water ran eight foot deep. I saw my chance and I took it. I let go and pulled my knees up to my chest and wrapped my arms around them, closed my eyes and hoped for the best.

Now one would think that such a harrowing experience as this would have made one's sphincter seal to a point of impenetrability. Such was not the case. I plunged into the cold water butt first and for my trouble was gifted with a quart of crick water rectally. This embarrassing side effect was quickly remedied as I used its propulsion to rapidly advance myself to the surface. I came up sputtering and cursing and then swam to shore to retrieve the pulley as my "comrades" cheered from the far bank. I crossed the crick with the pulley and climbed the hill to cries of "Me next, Me next!"

I looked them in the eye and said no. I wasn't done with my test and they would have to wait.

The next time, I made a run for it.

Epilogue: That fall, after three months of riding this thrill machine, the man who owned the cable showed up with the sherriff and made us take it down and return the cable. He said if we had cut it, he would have pressed charges. We apologized and promised to never do anything like this again, but we had a good laugh listening to the two of them grunt and groan their way through the cornfield to return it to the top of the hill.

Doc