This is a work of fiction. While the places are factual, all names, characters and incidents are products of the author's imagination or are used fictitiously. Any resemblance to actual events or persons, living or dead, is entirely coincidental.
*Disclaimer -- this story depicts violence.*
Traveling through the dark on a back country road somewhere in the middle of Kansas, Erika Jennings was as lost as she had ever been in life.
It wasn't just that she didn't know which way she was heading. That could almost be understood. Kansas was nothing but one road to nowhere meeting up with another one in endless stretches of nothingness.
Yet, the fact that Erika didn't know where the hell she was, or how she came to be out on this lonely stretch of highway, was par for the course for her lately.
Erika had lost her way in life. This little drive -- something she had decided on the spur of the moment just to get out and clear her head -- had become emblematic of her entire life of late. Like the drive she was on, Erika had no idea how she had ended up where she was in life and certainly had no idea where she was going next. Not anymore.
What she did know -- what was clear as fucking glass for Erika -- was that her husband of nearly sixteen years, Jerry, had up and left her without any warning or notice. He abandoned her and their two kids to run off with some chick he had recently met in an online dating site.
How could someone she had known since elementary school, and had dated in high school -- the person she lost her virginity to and popped out a couple kids with -- simply move out one night for someone he had never met in person. How the fuck does that happen? And how the fuck did it happen to her?
Erika was hurting. Hurting big time and her head was throbbing in pain. And to add insult to injury, she had taken off on this little excursion of hers only to end up out in the middle of farm country somewhere. A fact that seemed to piss her off even more.
The only pleasure for Erika was that she had been free to scream out loud and hurl vulgar epithets in the comfort of her own car without worrying about upsetting her kids. And she had called that big son of a bitch, who up until the other day had been her husband, every name in the book.
In the end, however, she was still alone in a car traveling along a deserted stretch of road. She would have to, at some point, find her way home. The home with an outsized mortgage, leaky plumbing and shitty tile in the bathroom. It was all hers now -- the grand prize winner of desertion. And it was up to her to figure everything out while raising two teenage girls.
"Fuck him!" she said for the hundredth time that night.
Honestly, her marriage hadn't been a great one. Hell, it hadn't been much of anything but a lot of hard work, but at least it had seemed equally miserable for both of them and something they each struggled to get through every day. It was a long-running joke between them that "at least they had each other." Apparently that had all been bullshit too. Everything Erika had ever known up to this point in her life fell into that category now.
If she hadn't had two mouths to feed and care for, Erika might have opened the glove box and taken out the 9mm Springfield handgun, always loaded and ready for use, and ended things right then and there. What the fuck did she care anymore? About anything.
But, she didn't do that. Apparently she did care -- how about that? Cared about leaving her girls alone in this shit-infested world. So she kept on driving into the night.
Erika's mood changed from angry to sad to despondent and back to angry again all in the space of a few minutes, then repeated again and again.
She was angry at Jerry for leaving, of course. Especially for someone he had met online. She was angry he could just give up everything and walk out on her and the kids for some chick at the other end of a computer.
She was sad that not only did she lose a husband, she also lost her best friend, her confidante, someone she had believed was her soul mate. She was sad for her kids and not being able to tell them the truth -- their daddy wasn't coming back.
As she drove on through the night, Erika tried to sort out the jumbled mess that her life had become, like putting together a jigsaw puzzle with a bunch of pieces all jumbled together from different boxes. She couldn't make it right -- couldn't find the answers -- didn't seem to know what to do next.
That's when her hand would slowly move toward the glove box.
But then she would think about her girls. She would yell and scream and call Jerry horrible names while tears streamed down her cheeks. Erika was just so fucking mad and blamed him for everything. At least that made sense. It made her feel better too.
Having turned 34 a few weeks earlier, Erika had been under the false impression that things were starting to get a little better for them -- at least economically. She had just received a promotion at work, rising to the level of manager out at the Walmart Supercenter in Garden City.
In addition, her husband was getting more hours as a feed truck driver. While that kept him away a lot at least he was bringing home more money. Together, they were finally reaching a level of comfort and security they had never known.
At least if they weren't in love anymore, and only had sex maybe once every other month -- and only then because the need was too great to ignore -- at least they could eek out a meager existence to raise their girls. Then, once that was over...well, who knew?
Back in the day Erika had been quite a looker -- tall, lean, soft brown hair and deep blue eyes, and a body that was shapely and curved in all the right places. She remembered well the way Jerry -- and every other guy -- used to look at her. They were always undressing her with their eyes.
Of course, at the time Jerry was undressing her everywhere he could -- her folk's home, his folk's home, behind the bleachers in the gymnasium, out on the football field at night, the backseat of his car, and even in the bathroom at the local café in Copeland -- the little knock-about town where they grew up.
Back then they had fucked like rabbits. It was never enough. She wanted him as much as he wanted her. Erika especially loved to suck on Jerry's cock. It seemed perfectly made for her mouth, and she would swallow a load of his thick, white goo before they screwed each other into oblivion. It seemed that they fucked away the years having the time of their lives and never worrying about a goddamn thing.
Then, as happens -- especially when you're riding someone's dick multiple times a day - Erika got pregnant her first year out of high school. Neither of them had any plans of going to college anyway, but having a baby was definitely not how they expected to start their lives together.
She gave birth to a girl, Emily, and then almost overnight Erika was pregnant again. It was another girl, who they named Ashley. Erika and Jerry had to grow up real fast and make decisions about how and where they were going to raise a family.
They both got jobs where they could, but nothing ever seemed to last. They probably ended up moving half a dozen times before landing in Quinby a few years back. It was another nothing of town that time forgot located just to the north of Garden City.
