Free Ticket to Nowhere: Chapter 7
A Stark Mystery
So there I was, sitting in the back of a Chevy that had seen better days, looking out at the endless rolling hills and wondering what had happened to my life.
What had happened? My ma always thought I would have made a great accountant, while my pa— the human equivalent of a pile of wet socks — disagreed, saying that I would only have been average at best. Once upon a time, I was considered a “boy most likely” type. I was planning on college — partially for the women and partially to prove my drunk of a high school math teacher wrong — until one thing led to another and here I was. Answering random letters, embarking on wild goose chases and drinking enough to make answering random letters and embarking on wild goose chases seem like good ideas.
Where were we going? It seemed like we’d been driving for hours, though my sense of the passage of time when in a car was, according to one girlfriend, “laughably inaccurate.”
Fred, in the seat next to me, was looking at me like I had a hole in the head — I’d know that look anywhere.
“What?” I whispered, not wanting to disturb the strange man dressed as a lion in the front seat.
I had a long history of being driven places by strange men. Strange women preferred to walk.
