SINCE RUNNING AWAY FROM HOME, AFTER MARK'S FUNERAL ON SATURDAY MORNING, KYLE HAD SPENT THE LAST THREE DAYS THUMBING, AND WALKING, AND WAITING, AND WAITING...AND WAITING...AND WAITING SOME MORE. His destination was parts unknown, or the Canadian Wilderness. Whichever came first.

Neither place mattered much to him, but, it was better than Seattle. His father's angry comments about him being the reason his brother was dead were more than Kyle could handle. How was he to know Rex Archibald would run Mark and Dorothy down?

Did his father think he was a mind reader? Or, had a crystal ball he could foretell the future with? Right now Kyle would settle for anything leaving Washington as far behind him as he could get.

The only thing Kyle cared about was paddling his own canoe in life. How he would perform such a herculean feat he had no idea, but, he was industrious enough to do so. Or, so the boy thought.

A dark blue, four-door, sedan eased to the shoulder of the road ahead of where Kyle stood. His thumb in the air. Briskly, he walked up to the vehicle. He glanced at the driver. The man seemed friendly enough. Kyle opened the passenger side front door, climbed in, and closed the door behind him. The driver slowly pulled off, then climbed to a cruising speed of 75 miles an hour.

"I'm Jake Williams," the driver told Kyle. He appeared to be a rather jovial sort.

Kyle guessed he was about six foot-two. And, probably weighed a plump three hundred pounds, judging by the belly roll he possessed.

"I'm K-," Kyle started to tell him, then decided maybe he better not give his real name, and instead said, "I'm Paul. Paul Malone."

"Well, Paul Malone," the driver asked him in a pleasant tone of voice, "where are you going on such a fine day? I bet you've got some big plans waiting for you somewhere."

Kyle pondered for a moment before answering, then said, "Nowhere special. I'm just going,"

"Well, that tells me you're running from something, then," the driver casually mentioned. He pressed a button on his side door that locked all the other doors on the car as well.

Kyle immediately knew he was in for a ride. Wrong car. He also grasped the concept this fat man was not someone he wanted to be around. Now, what was he to do? He decided it might be a real good thing he had absconded with that flat tip screwdriver he had found a ways back on the road before Jake Williams came along.

Slowly, Kyle reached into the right rear pocket of the jeans he was wearing. Carefully, he extracted the screwdriver he had concealed there. He had heard about never accepting rides from strangers. Too bad he did not listen to what he had been told.

Kyle knew his best chances would require him to remain calm as the cold side of the pillow he slept on. He tried to breath normally as he watched the man stop the car in a secluded Scenic Overlook area.

Turning in his seat to face Kyle, Jake Williams simply said, "We're here!" He reached up with one big, hairy arm and forced it around Kyle's shoulders. He leaned into the boy's face until their noses were almost touching.

"Give Daddy a little kissy-poo!" he told Kyle.

With the rubber handle of the screwdriver gripped tightly in his right hand, Kyle thrust the flat tip end of the implement as hard as he possibly could below Jake Williams belt. And quickly twisted it.

The big man wrenched in excruciating pain. That was the very last thing he expected Kyle to do. His bellow could be heard ten miles away and ricocheting down the valley below where he had parked the car. It sounded like a bull moose roaring in heat.

Williams grabbed himself. Torture racked his body. He did not have to look. He knew they were blue, swollen twice their normal size, and throbbing hard enough to make tears stream down his rotund face.

Kyle glanced a Dillinger on the backseat of the car. Hurriedly, he grabbed for it. Just managing to reach it from where he was positioned in the car.

He pointed the Dillinger at Williams, knowing that although he had never fired a gun before in his life, he had no qualms about pulling the trigger to protect himself.

Williams placed his meaty hands out in front of his belly. He considered reaching for the Dellinger, and overpowering Kyle, for control of the firearm.

Kyle raised the gun's barrel, pointed it right between William's beady eyes, and sternly warned him, "Make a move and you're a dead man! Bet!" Then he told him, "Don't ever touch me again, you pervert!"

"I was just having some fun," Williams responded, still in agony from being stabbed in the tenderest part of his body.

"Don't breath another word," Kyle warned him with a tone that immediately persuaded Williams he had picked on the wrong quarry this time.

"Now, unlock the car door, and get out of it very slowly," Kyle instructed the big man to do, saying, "then, back away until I tell you to stop."

Williams reached down. He pressed the button on his door that unlocked all four doors on the vehicle. Cautiously, because he couldn't move much faster than that, he turned in his seat, opened the door widely, and tumbled out of the vehicle. He turned around backwards, and took five painful, small steps. Every move flashed pain throughout his body. Kyle did not care.

"Stop where you're at," Kyle told Williams, saying, "keep your paws where I can see them and don't move!"

Slowly, Kyle opened the door on the passenger side of the vehicle. Keeping his eyes glued on Williams, he exited the car. He closed the door behind him tightly, and hurried around the front of the vehicle.

Then he told Williams, "Back up!"

Williams started moving. Ten yards away, Kyle noticed a dirt path that led to a river he did not know the name of. He reached into the car, and grabbed the keys out of the ignition.

With the fob in his hand, Kyle locked all the doors on the car. He then slowly followed the backwards walking Williams to the path he told him to take.

"Where are we going?" a suddenly terrified Williams demanded.

"Through that clump of trees to your left, and down to the river," Kyle answered him, saying, "keep moving. Slowly!"

Kyle had never shot anyone before, but had no doubt if Williams did not do exactly what he told him to do there would be a first time for everything.

Cautiously making his way over tree roots, leaves, and small twigs scattered along the path, Kyle told Williams to stop at the water. By now, Williams was a shaking bowl of jello.

He had not expected this unknown, boy, he had mistaken for an easy target, to be so self-reliant. None of his dozen, or so, other victims had ever been.

Keeping the Dellinger trained on the middle of Williams bulky chest, Kyle ordered him, "Strip! Get everything off. Right down to your tighty whities!"

Williams looked at Kyle as if he refused to remove his clothing. Kyle fired a warning shot, that sailed over Williams half-bald head, and strongly recommended to him he had better do what the boy told him to do.

Removing his shirt, pants, socks, and shoes Williams complied with Kyle's instructions. His fat body definitely was not a pretty sight to behold.

As Williams clothes floated away down river, Kyle pointed to a large ponderosa pine tree in the clearing. He told Williams to hug it tightly, facing the tree.

Williams sauntered over to the massive tree. He wrapped both of his arms around the rough bark. He interlocked the fingers of both hands together. And, almost in tears, he begged for his life, crying, "Please don't shoot me! I was just funning. I didn't mean anything by what I done."

Kyle heard an eighteen wheeler off in the distance on the highway. With any luck that truck would be his ticket out of town. Somehow, he just had to flag it down. He reached out with both hands and yanked the back of Williams oversized underwear down around his bulging knees, exposing his humongous butt for all the world to see.

Kyle threw Williams car keys into the river. He sprinted for the highway. He was glad to hear the airbrakes on the fuel tanker come on. Greatly relieved, he stuffed the Dillinger inside the waistband of his jeans. He climbed into the cab of the truck and slammed the door shut behind him.

"Seattle," was all he told the Suicide Jockey, an elderly man who had to be at least sixty years old, and had observed the scene between the boy and Williams at the tree.

Collecting his breath, Kyle pulled out his cellphone. He dialed a number. He would have liked to be a fly on the wall when the Washington State Police found Jake Williams parading around the middle of nowhere with nothing but his tent-sized Fruit-of-the-Looms on.

Kyle would have also loved to hear Williams try to explain his way out of that predicament.

Hearing the conversation, but asking no questions whatsoever, the driver of the semi looked over at Kyle in wide-eyed amusement, and simply said, "Breaker 1-9. We'll be in Seattle Town in four hours, good buddy. Come back?"

Kyle smiled. He had enjoyed his little adventure. However, running away from home no longer suited his fancy.

He had a much more pressing Plan B to attend to. The Dellinger in his waistband would fit that bill to a Tee. He could not wait.

Kyle spent the duration of the trip back to Seattle chatting away with the Suicide Jockey. The driver was feeling no pain when they arrived in Seattle. Four empty beer cans saw to that.

As they pulled up to the truckstop Kyle snatched the empty cans.

"Hey," he thought to himself, "the recycling plant still pays you by the pound."

Kyle was proud of himself. It felt good to be the silent, but deadly, kind.




@Copyrighted October 27, 2015 by Brett Matthew West
All Rights Reserved
No portion of this story, or its storyline, may be reproduced without the written approval of the copyright holder