14 trips to the gas station

This is the truth about what happened to that poor woman.

I am the most successful businessman in the world. I control 96 percent of the world’s money supply. No one would live if my company didn’t produce all of the things that we produce. I am constantly being called into the job to solve all the world’s problems.

The call last night was about a new device being produced in my Singapore plant that can suck thoughts out of any human brain and display them on any surface in any medium. My assistant called and asked me if I was ready for new long distance?

I hung up the phone, grabbed my keys and ran downstairs to the street. I needed to gas my truck and get on the road.

But my truck was gone.

And whoever stole it left the 20-gallon gas tank.

It was 230 in the morning and the street was dark. The light at the west end of the block was busted out. The light at the east end of the block never worked.

The third floor window across the street was lit up.

My neighbors the Kelly’s were still awake. I ran across the street and knocked on their door until Tom Kelly answered. He opened the door on the chain.

“What the fuck do you want?”

“Someone stole my truck and left my gas tank. Did you see anyone or hear anything?”

“Get away from my door before I call the police.”

“Yes, please, call the police, will you? Tell them its a red truck with tinted windows.”

“Look, Greg, right? Did you take a second to think that maybe if they left your gas tank, they didn’t get very far?”

“What do you mean?”

“I don’t give a shit anymore.”

He slammed the door in my face, which I totally understood. It was early and a high-pressure emergency situation. So I ran back to the street and dragged my gas tank to the east end of the block. My thought process was concise and purely logical. Once I found my truck I would put the gas tank back in and get gas. The scrape of the aluminum against the concrete was loud. It kicked up a shower of sparks, like they were being shot out of a water hose.

People screamed at me to be quiet.

I found an old blanket and used it to drag the tank north until I saw my truck on the sidewalk in front of a shoe store that also sold ice cream and sub-machine guns.

The tires were gone. The windows were gone. The frame was gone. The only thing left was the bench seat.

And that was when I saw the poor woman. She was sitting on the bench seat. Barely 7 inches tall, her legs were fused to a base of concrete. She was wearing a grass skirt and her grossly deformed head was bobbing in the strong winds.

I was polite.

You have to be when you run in mega-wealthy social circles.

I dragged my gas tank across the street, sat on the bench next to her and very kindly said, please, can I have my truck back?

She refused to talk.

“I have to go somewhere very important, to do something very important, so please, be kind…”

She still refused to talk. So I asked a passerby to help me. She was a young woman in a red raincoat.

“Will you help me, please? I need this very nice woman to get out of my truck.”

“Are you serious?”

She walked over to the bench and stared the mute woman in the face. She had enormous legs perched on two spiked gold heels.

“I don’t want to call the police, but I will. Please explain that to her so I can get on with my business.”

“Why don’t you just break her, you fucking psycho?”

“Break her? I don’t understand.”

The young woman in the red raincoat shook her head, laughed and took out her keys. Then she swung them at the poor woman and shattered her head.

There were pieces of her head everywhere.

There was nothing I could do.

Please don’t tell the police. It wasn’t my fault…

2.

So you talked to Elon Jesus, did you?

How did you take it? Why aren’t you a drooling idiot?

He hates it when I call him that. He also hates when I call him Bill Satan. And George Zuckerbird. And Jeff Beelzebub.

You can’t trust anything he says.

I can tell you what really happened to that poor woman.

I was there when the terrible tragedy took place.

It was 11 o clock at night when I pulled off the I-10 to get gas in my Porsche Carrera. I was on my way to Palm Springs to visit an uncle who lost his mind, burned all of his clothes and locked himself in a trailer with 500 open cans of tuna fish.

His neighbors complained about the smell.

I drove out from Long Beach. The low light started to flash around Rialto, so I pulled into the Chevron station. I had to wait for the homeless man to finish wiping his shitty ass by the window cleaning bucket. He pulled up his pants, walked away and I took pump 14.

The parking lot was empty. A feral cat watched me from the car wash entrance. I got out of my car, locked the door and put my card in the pump.

Tried it several times. It rejected me. Didn’t make sense. My credit was stellar. The card was clean.

I had to go inside to pay. Saw the poor woman you asked about standing at the counter. She kept looking around.

The space behind the counter was empty.

What did she look like? She had stringy blonde hair. She was wearing a flower-print shirt. When she turned for a moment, she saw me walking up and shrugged. I smiled at her. She looked like a crack whore, if I’m being honest, but I’m also polite.

When I tried the door, it wouldn’t open.

“The door is locked. Did someone lock you in?”

She tried to open the doors from the inside, but they wouldn’t move. I got a closer look at her and saw she had a string of open sores down the left side of her thin, pinched neck.

“Is the attendant in the toilet or something?”

“I don’t know. I just came in to buy cigarettes. Can you call the police? I don’t have a phone.”

“Look around first. Someone has to be in there somewhere.”

She disappeared and I watched the feral cat move from the car wash to pump number 1. It was black and had a dead bird in its mouth.

I tried to call but my phone was dead.

The woman came back to the door in a panic. She banged on the glass with her pale, scabby fists.

“No one’s here. I tried the other doors and they’re all locked. Help me! Please! Help me!”

“You have to calm down first. Calm down. Take a deep breath. Good. Get a beer if you have to...”

She centered herself and stepped back from the doors.

“Find something to break the glass.”

She went behind the counter and came back dragging a metal folding chair.

“Good. that should do it. Now grab it by the legs and swing it at the glass.”

I stepped back from the doors. She picked up the chair and swung it behind her. I called out to the feral cat.

“Cover your eyes, rat catcher, the glass is gonna fly…”

On her forward swing there was a deafening, cracking sound and the building rose up on one side to an almost 90 degree angle. She flew toward the register and smashed her head against the glass case where they kept the scratchers. It looked like a balloon full of blood popped on the windows.

“Holy mother of Moses…”

I choked on the concrete dust as I stumbled back to my car. The building rose up on its other side until it was towering over me. It’s legs were metallic and they whined like someone was tearing metal. Pumps and pipes hung from beneath it like intestines.

It took a quick step forward with its right leg and crushed the homeless man, who was sleeping by the air pump. I jumped in my Porsche and backed up just before the left leg crushed the middle island.

The feral cat just walked away like this was a normal Rialto night.

The right leg swung toward me. I cut the wheel to the right and spun out toward the Mexican restaurant on the other side of the lot. Then I watched the Chevron station run west down Valley.

The poor woman was trapped inside.

I had to save her.

I followed the station as far as i could, until I ran out of gas…