The Great Eviction Event Unfolds Chapter 5 free porn video

Charlie/Charlotte-2 Friday, December 12, 2014, 10:22 pm

Charlie left the U-Haul to lie on its side and burn gas until it ran dry. He’d hook a tow cable to the rear bumper in a few days and drag it clear of the intersection, allowing access to Old Airport Road, but that action lay in the future. Right now, he had to get home. Withdrawing his cell phone again, he thumbed mom’s preset and put the phone to his ear. He needed to hear his mother’s voice. He needed to know this insane idea that he was alone in White Pine wasn’t true. Mostly, he needed comfort from mom. He wouldn’t get it.

“Mom,” he complained to her voice mail. “I’m in trouble here. Can you come get me, please? I know it’s late, and you don’t like leaving Maddie alone—” With a jolt, he halted on the shoulder of Main Street just before Golden Way. His voice! Mom would hear this message and think some kid had called the wrong number, or was pranking her.

“Um...” he croaked. “Something happened to me tonight. I don’t know what yet, but it affected my voice somehow—” And few other internal and external body parts, he thought miserably. “—but this really is Charlie. I’m walking home up Main Street in the dark...” He got moving again, crossing Golden Way, and the Trinity Pines Apartments where Dennis Maddox lived, hurrying on toward Jackson Street, straight ahead. Mom’s voice mail beeped and he cursed.

Directly ahead lay the bulk of White Pine. He detected no lights other than what he suspected were the headlights and tail lights of additional wrecked vehicles (there were a lot of those, he realized, counting unconsciously); not the beam of searching flashlights, or the erratic flickering of candles in windows, nor moving cars. Nothing moved at all that he could discern, though he did spot lights from high flying aircraft. He didn’t suspect that everything in flight would eventually come down, whether from fuel exhaustion, or the preprogrammed loss of auto-pilot. He only knew he was scared and freezing cold.

“Mom! It really is me! Other things happened tonight, and are still happening from what I can see—” He again stopped in his tracks, halfway across the driveway of his friend Devon Reynolds’s house. The household was dark, just like every abode he’d passed tonight trying to get home, but a friend and his family lived here. Maybe he should consider the fact an invitation.

“Mom...” He vacillated, looking up and down Main Street, and back at the dark house. “Never mind,” he advised, moving again. He quickly explained his indecisive stop in the driveway, and then repeated his plea for rescue. “If you can’t, I understand. Just call me back and let me know you got this message.” He checked the time on the iPhone. It was 10:31 pm. Too late to call Maddie? Not a chance. He rang her line, though with the same result as with mom.

“Fuck! Fuck-fuck-fuck!” he cursed. Where was his mom? Why didn’t she answer? Maddie would answer just from the shock of his calling her phone. They didn’t get along at all. He texted both phones, leaving the same curt message: Call me immediately! Don’t text! I’m in trouble!

He tried Rob next, plagued with intense guilt at what happened tonight. Rob would beat his ass for being so stupid; he’d warned Charlie off any dealings with Howard and his redneck crowd. Ignoring the warnings only proved how irresponsible he was. He deserved to be raped. Fucking faggot.

Charlie stopped and buried his face in his hands. He hurt, was raw and burning from the multiple violations. Both Juniors had taken him anally twice, Howard ejaculating into him bareback, laughing as he did so. “Queer-boy’s always want the bare meat!” he exclaimed as he came, taking a hi-five from Dennis. At least Maddox put on a condom his 2 times. You never put meat in a faggot’s ass unprotected, he taunted. He’d ejaculated inside Charlie also.

“Fuck! Fuck-fuck-fuck!” he sobbed. “I wish I had killed you too! I wish I had castrated you both! I’d have cut off you’re your fucking cocks and jammed them down your fucking redneck throats!”

He screamed incoherently again and started to run.

At 10:50 pm, Charlie banged on the front door in a frenzy. “Mom! Mom, let me in!” He kicked the door and then rang the dead doorbell and then started pounding again.

“Mom! Are you home? Let me in the fucking door!” he cried. “Come to the door and let me in, Maddie! God dammit, where are you?”

His keys were in his coat pocket back in the shed. Enraged, he kicked the door again, and then, holding the screen door for support, planted a kick just to the left of the doorknob with everything he had. He should have known better.

“Fuck! Fuck-fuck-fuck!” he cried, hopping about one-footed on the stoop. He’d done what anyone stupid enough to kick a sturdy door in sneakers would do: he sprained his knee.

He tried to walk it off, hobbling down the steps and out to the sidewalk and back to the stoop. His right knee ached and throbbed, threatening to give way with every step. Was it hyperextended? Had he torn a fucking ligament or tendon? The pain was so debilitating that he dropped to a step with a loud sob. The frustration at being so stupid only compounded his anger. “You stupid cock-sucker!” he brayed. “You stupid fucking fuck!”

Panting, he lay back on the hard steps and cried.

At 11:24 pm, he checked his iPhone. Two hours exactly had elapsed since the event, but Charlie had no true gauge of elapsed time. It seemed like 3 hours or more since the lights went out; psychological time-dilation at work. He also had no inkling that only he and 4 other humans on Earth had survived The Great Eviction Event, or TGEE as his fellow survivors would come to know it. Charlie only knew that he was alone on his front stoop in the darkness, and freezing cold. He called his mom’s number again.

“It’s me,” he told her voice mail in a subdued tone. “Would you mind letting me in? Or wake Maddie up and send her to get me. I’m not even sure I can stand, godammit.” He cautiously flexed his knee, grimacing in pain. “Please come let me in, mom!”

Hanging up, he chanced calling Rob again. This late, Mrs. McCallan would give him shit if she heard the phone ring, but Charlie didn’t care. Fuck etiquette.

“Hey, Rob. I got raped tonight like you told me I would if I hooked up with Howard and Dennis Maddox. I got mouth-fucked, too, which shouldn’t surprise you at all. I probably asked for it, right? Anyway, call when you get this message. I don’t think I’ll be getting to sleep anytime soon, so fuck whatever time it is. Oh, and I busted my knee. And I’m a girl now, too, which explains why I sound like my sister, right?” He laughed, hanging up.

“So, dude,” he muttered. “Please explain these, and this to me.” He moved his hand from his left breast to the absence of anything between his legs. “This is something I need to come to grips with if I plan to remain sane.” He shook his head plaintively. “I’m a girl, and something titanically strange happened to White Pine, tonight. Am I dead? Did this only happen to me? Am I in Purgatory, or Hell?” He laughed disconsolately, rubbing his knee. He had to pee so bad his eyeballs floated.

“I gotta get in the house. Help me here, will ya?”

He struggled erect and hobbled around the corner of the house to the side door. This led into the basement; he descended the three concrete steps with difficulty and tried the door. Of course it was locked. Reaching through the metal railing, he pried loose a fist-size rock from his mom’s rose garden border, and tapped it experimentally against the glass pane above the doorknob. The house was vintage 1940’s; nine individual panes comprised the built-in window. Breaking one, left the others intact. “Mom’s gonna kill me,” he muttered, tapping harder.

Afraid to be cut, Charlie stripped off the flannel shirt and wrapped it around his hand and wrist, then gripped the rock tightly through the layered material. You already fucked up your knee, he thought angrily, don’t you dare fucking cut yourself, asshole!

Intent on striking the glass only hard enough to shatter it not penetrate through, he braced against the door with his left shoulder and banged the pane at the bottom right hand corner. He’d seen on TV where glass always breaks easiest at the edge. It proved to be correct and the glass broke easily. Rather than being tempered, however, the old glass was merely annealed, breaking into deadly shards.

Charlie carefully used the rock to empty the pane of jagged glass. Only then did he reach through and release the deadbolt and unlock the door. He stepped inside, clearing the glass on the floor and listening intently. He detected nothing but his own labored breathing in the darkness. His iPhone possessed a 40% charge.

“Fuck!” he croaked. “I gotta go pee!” Struggling back into the flannel shirt, he dashed toward the downstairs bathroom fast as his sprained knee would allow, following the flashlight beam. Cognizant of being a girl, he unzipped on the way, unbelted his jeans, and started them down his hips. He automatically hit the light switch inside the door, cursed furiously when it failed to deliver light, then banged down on the toilet seat. Either Mom or Maddie had used it last, thank God, because the seat was girl-positioned for him. Pushing his jeans down past his knees and letting them drop around his ankles, he relaxed his muscles, and began to go pee. “Oh, my God!” he rasped in relief.

Startled, he stared between his thighs, open-mouthed. Urinating had never felt anything like this. Gone was the life-long sensation of urine flowing down his penis to exit out the tip. The trip was much shorter now from bladder to relocated urethra, and he had only one sphincter controlling flow, rather than two. He seemed to empty faster, with a corresponding dissimilarity in the sound his stream made impacting the water. The biggest shock of all was how little urine he held.

“Are you serious?” he croaked. “That’s it?” He laughed, remembering the times he’d taunted Maddie over her miniscule bladder. His bladder now held roughly half what it had when it belonged to Charlie. It would be a coin-toss who begged for a rest stop first on a drive now: he, Maddie, or Mom. That sobered him instantly.

“I’m a girl,” he whispered. “I really am.” He examined his left hand under the flashlight beam and then his right hand. Slimmer, with longer fingers and sculpted nails, they looked nothing like Charlie’s hands at all. Neither did his new thighs and calves, which he noted with a touch of irony were covered with blonde hair. Wispy curls also covered his pubic area, more of it than he’d grown accustomed to seeing in pictures. That would draw a frown from most boys nowadays, he thought; the idea made him laugh.

“A girl ... fuck! What do I call myself?” Charlie was generally a nickname given to girls named Charlotte, Charlene, Charity, or other givens of the sort. His mom and dad had chosen the name Charles, for his Grandfathers Charles Castle, and Charles Beaumont, with the alternate of Charlotte if he turned out a girl. “Charlotte,” he muttered. “Charlotte Castle?” Voicing the name made him flinch.

He self-consciously pulled tissue paper off the roll and wiped between his legs. God, that felt so strange, psychologically and physically both. Uncomfortable with the action, he brought the phone close to his crotch and illuminated his replacement parts. Everything expected of female physiology appeared to be in place. He hesitantly touched his labia, moving it aside experimentally to secure a better look inside. Shivering unconsciously, he snatched his hand away and unbuttoned the flannel shirt halfway down, pulled out his t-shirt, and examined his small breasts. “This is insane,” he muttered. “This is so fucking Pop Goes The Weasel crazy, man. I gotta be insane!”

Rising with difficulty (he had to do something about this damned knee, before it rendered him immobile), Charlie flushed the toilet and listened to water swirl in the bowl and go down. He shown the flashlight into the bowl. No running water back-filled the toilet or the white tank; the bathroom remained eerily quiet. Anxious, he flipped the handles on the hot and cold water spigots on the sink beside him, but nothing came out, not even the bothersome cranking sounds you heard on TV. Add running water to the list of the missing, he thought morosely.

Catching his reflection peripherally, he faced the mirror and yanked up his shirts, baring a girl’s body. He stared at his reflection in the glass, looking exactly as his sister might in 4 years. Maddie was pretty, and unexpectedly, so was he, even without makeup. The thought made him laugh, not too stably, if truth be told. “What am I gonna do?” he complained.

First thing, absolutely tantamount, was to get upstairs and find out if Mom and Maddie were actually missing. Second most important was to immediately arm himself, even if that required breaking into the Baxter’s next door and raiding Mr. Baxter’s gun cabinet. The fact he’d discovered no townspeople on the way home meant nothing with respect to the big picture. He had no clue what happened at 9:24 pm tonight, or what might be yet occur in the township of White Pine, Tennessee. What he did know was that a defenseless young girl became instant prey for any potential rapist or murderer. Charlie had no intention of getting raped twice in one night, and possibly murdered or kidnapped. Fuck that! No way!

He zipped and belted his jeans, then re-buttoned his flannel shirt. He suffered PTSD from the rape and sodomy, his physical transformation, and the effects of TGEE. It infuriated him to carry the seed of his rapist; he understood full well how women felt after a rape. The psychological toll it took on the victim, compounded by physical injury. Violation notwithstanding, Charlie’s knees, elbows, and the heels of both hands all bore abrasions from the rough plywood flooring; he’d picked up multiple painful splinters in the ordeal. His right knee hurt worst of all, though having nothing to do with the rape. It needed rest, and more importantly an ice pack. He’d spotted the swelling sitting on the toilet a moment ago. How long before it swelled to the size of a melon? How long before power returned, he wondered.

Mom kept the basement door locked against break-ins just like this. He and Maddie knew where she hid the key; he retrieved it from behind the washing machine and checked the charge level on his iPhone: down to 35%, now. That was bad. He needed the flashlight in the kitchen cupboard, because God knew when he’d get to recharge the phone. He couldn’t allow it to die; it was his only means of contact with the outside world. He also had a pathological fear of the dark, and the basement was pitch dark without the phone. Get moving, he told himself. Grabbing the post at the bottom of the stairs, he wondered if the landline upstairs worked.

He banged on the basement door. “Mom? It’s me! I’m unlocking the door. Don’t brain me with a pan, okay? And don’t be freaked out when you see me: I’m still Charlie.” Short for Charlotte now, he thought, disjointedly. The daughter you didn’t have 16 years ago.

He unlocked the deadbolt and carefully swung open the basement door. “Mom, Maddie?” He expected no answer, and got none. Shining the flashlight beam all around the kitchen, he headed for the cupboard containing emergency lighting supplies. Inside stood a pair of black plastic D-cell powered Duracell brand flashlight, and 4 assorted AA powered penlights. He grabbed the left-hand D-cell flashlight and turned it on. Bright light stabbed out from the lens. “Hallelujah!” he cried. “Now that’s what I’m fuckin’ talkin’ about, Clyde!”

He swung the beam all around the kitchen and then tested the 2nd D-cell flashlight. It worked, also. On the shelf behind the penlights sat 4 unopened packs of Duracell D-Cell batteries, and a 12-pack of AA’s. Mom also had a stock of white emergency candles, multiple books of matches, and 4 butane lighters. Plus, Mom had populated the house with so many candles that practically every flat surface in the house supported two or three. Charlie could turn the house into a beacon, spottable from orbit, if need be.

What to do about his phone? The charge level had dropped to 27%, dangerously low. How would he charge it with no power? His power bank? Maddie had one too, and Mom, also, he thought; problem was, he couldn’t remember if he’d recharged his last time, or just tossed it onto his desk to do later. He and Maddie both got them as stocking stuffers for Christmas a year ago. Maddie’s was pink, his was blue. Remembering this brought unexpected tears to his eyes.

“God damn it,” he sobbed. “Maddie, where are you? Where is Mom? What the fuck Is going on?”

Breaking down completely, Charlie slid down the refrigerator door and buried his face in his hands.

Jesse-4 Friday, December 12, 2014, 9:45 pm

Jesse discovered that three voicemails had recorded after 6:20 pm. He quickly checked the four earlier messages, left by various telemarketers during the day, and erased each in turn. The three most recent calls were place by the same intoxicated young woman.

“Hi. I’m looking for Jesse Duran,” the first message began. “You don’t know me, and I’m nowhere near you, and I don’t actually know why he asked me to call you—” The women laughed delightedly. “—I don’t even know where I am right now!” She broke off again. “Where are we, anyway, Sean?”

Jesse heard a male voice in the background, indistinguishable against the thump of a pounding baseline, and strident vocals.

“Never mind,” she continued. “He said to tell you to head for Rochester as fast as you can. Like tonight, if you can, right?”

Jesse heard the same voice advise, “not until ‘something’” in the background. The inebriated woman confirmed his hypothesis that the word was ‘Sunday’ a moment later.

“He says not to leave until Sunday morning. You need to be there by—Oh, fuck!” The curse was accompanied by the thud of the phone hitting the floorboard. A moment later, the woman cursed again, laughed sharply, giggled, and terminated the call.

Frustrated, Jesse banged the phone table with his right fist and cursed the brain-dead girl. He punched Play to advance to the next recording.

“Sorry about that!” she trilled gaily. “Fumble-fingered me! Anyway, Sean said to be in Rochester by Thursday, December 18th by 3:00 pm. No—what? On, December 18th at 3:00 pm, he says, though he doesn’t know why.” She laughed and then giggled again. Jesse ground his teeth and wanted to reach through the phone line and strangle the girl. He didn’t know any Sean’s, except maybe from high school in Albuquerque.

“Sean... ?” The girl sounded suddenly alarmed. “What is that? Is that a—?”

The girl screamed as the guy at the wheel cried, “Holy Fuck!” and tromped the brake pedal. Jesse listened to the screech of tires and multiple blaring horns, including the one from the couple’s car. “Jesus!” he shouted at the sound of impact with another vehicle. The girl screamed again, a horrified, ear-splitting banshee wail that triggered a massive eruption of goose flesh across his upper body.

“No!” the driver protested. “No-no-no-no-no-no!” Another, louder impact occurred, and the girl’s shriek abruptly ended. The line died, also.

“Jesus!” Jesse choked again, shaken. He punched the play button, and discovered the woman had significantly sobered in the intervening 3 hours. She sounded haunted and frightened.

“It’s me again. I didn’t know who else to call, Jesse. I don’t know what’s going on, here. I’m all alone. I’ve tried calling everyone I know, but no one answers, not even 911. I’m not hurt—the air bags protected me, thank God, but...” She sobbed, making Jesse wince.

“I don’t know what to do!” she bawled. “There was a wall, and it hit us on Monument Avenue, and then Sean was gone, and all the cars around us were wrecking, and ... and ... the craziest thing is, I think time’s reseting itself somehow! I’m in Sean’s apartment right now, and I don’t know how I got here! We were drunk and carrying on with his roommates one moment, and then suddenly we were in the elevator on the way up to his 3rd floor apartment again, and he didn’t remember even being there before! I don’t remember every going there in the first place! It’s like the wall business never happened, and we didn’t wreck in the car! Sean didn’t even remember having me call you! If I hadn’t remembered the number, I couldn’t have placed this call, because it isn’t in my outgoing phone calls. I just don’t get it!” She drew a deep, ragged breath and slowly exhaled.

“Anyway, what I didn’t get to tell you before was that she’s supposed to be in Rochester--whoever she is--on December 18th. Look for her on East Avenue at Alexander Street, Sean said. He said you’d know where that is. He said to look for her at exactly 3:20 pm.

“Do you know who he’s talking about?” she asked. “Do you know what’s going on? I wish you’d pick you the damned phone! I wish somebody--anybody would pick up!” she cried hysterically. She inhaled sharply as voices ignited in the background. They came from nowhere, starting mid-sentence, accompanied by loud music. “Sean--?” she cried in relief, and then she was gone.

“Fuck!” Jesse shouted. He angrily checked the time-stamps. The first call occurred at 6:21 pm, with duration of 50 seconds. The second call lasted a slightly shorter 40 seconds long, and had begun recording at 6:23 pm. The recorder normally provided a caller ID along with the time-stamp, but the woman had blocked the phone number and name from her end; all three calls registered as anonymous.

Jesse cursed again and yanked up the phone-set. His attempt to call her cell phone via *69 failed.

As a police officer, he still had the option of a routed trace-back. He’d normally provide Verizon his name and badge number, and a supervisor would trace the call back to its origin. Sometimes it worked, sometimes it didn’t. Cell phones were always tricky. However, given that he’d reached no one alive in over three hours, use of this option looked doubtful.

“Fuck!” he repeated, banging the receiver down again. He nearly swept the phone and voicemail recorder off the small table.

He returned to the front door and swung it closed. What weight should he give the girl’s disjointed account? She knew his name, and his connection to Rochester, NY, but the whole business smacked of prank calls. Anyone could feign fear and anxiety on the telephone. He’d done the same with his friends at parties in high school—rather, one of the girls placed the call, a girl more likely to be believed, they’d discovered, regardless how blatantly ridiculous the story she told. The wreck played out during the 2nd phone call could also be convincingly faked, given enough ingenuity by the pranksters. The question was, why? Los Angeles over the last 3 hours was certainly no prank.

“Where the fuck is everyone?” he muttered.

Reopening the front door, Jesse angled across the lawn into his neighbor’s front yard and approached the Forerunner. “Hank, you around? Hank Gerard? Ginny?” He listened with his hand on the open door, and heard nothing but the sound of his, Hank’s, and other neighbor’s AC units running in the background. No overhead wires or transformers existed in the cul-de-sac to electronically hum. Then it hit him that Friar Street was too quiet, even with humans and the noises they made extracted. He turned his head one way, and then the other, changing the pitch of his ears, listening for any sound at all. The soft sigh of a northwest wind through the trees was the only natural sound he heard. No dogs barking, no coyotes in the hills, no chirping birds; the always present background insect chatter was glaringly absent. The only time he’d ever experienced a profound natural quiet like this was at sea, adrift on glass smooth water. You always had the sound of the ocean itself, the boat, and the wind blowing steadily against it. He’d never heard quiet like this.

“What the fuck happened?” he whispered. “Are you telling me the wall took out all living creatures, right down to the tiniest insects?” Were the oceans affected, he wondered; marine life? What about microbes, viruses and the like? Life on Earth depended upon the microbial flora present in the air, water and soil; it thrived in his gut and processed the food he ate; without microbes, he’d cease to function as a human being, and very quickly, he suspected.

“Fuck...” he whispered hoarsely. A vicious shudder ran down his spine, and his knees came unhinged. Only the open rear door kept him upright. Shaking uncontrollably, he moved on jellied legs to the rear seat, twisted and sat down. Again, only his weak grip on the open rear door kept him from sliding off onto the door sill, or possibly all the way to the ground. He coughed raggedly and fought to remain conscious. Somehow, he managed.

At 10:16 pm, Jesse carried the remainder of Hank and Ginny’s groceries into the house and placed the items requiring refrigeration into the cold compartment or freezer section of the big white Amana upright. He imagined that everything, with the possible exception of the half-gallon of milk in the plastic container, would make it through the expiration date stamped on the packaging. Fruits and veggies, meats and cheese were resilient enough. The frozen items Hank bought at Albertson’s, however, he wasn’t so sure of. Those items: microwave pizzas, frozen dinners, Good Humor Strawberry Shortcake bars, could most likely be considered write-offs. That was Hank and Ginny’s problem to deal with when they got back from wherever they were, though. Jesse clung fiercely to the belief that Hank and Ginny would return, along with Carolyn and everyone else in Los Angeles--and shortly. Only that belief checked outright panic, and the threat to the anchor bolts holding his sanity in place. They threatened to shear away at the slightest further provocation.

“I’ll lock up,” he promised the empty kitchen, “and lock up your Forerunner too, Hank. I hope you got your keys with you, dude.” He hadn’t spotted a key ring in any obvious location on the way from the front door to the kitchen; most likely, Hank had the keys in his pocket when he’d disappeared. He wondered if Ginny was with him at the time, or if he’d dropped by Albertson’s on the way home from work. Ginny’s parked her red convertible in the garage; he didn’t know if she’d been home, or not. He didn’t really care.

“How far does this go?” he wondered aloud. Reopening the refrigerator door, he grabbed a cold Sam Adam’s off the inside shelf and twisted off the lid. “I have no proof it went any farther than the San Gabriel Mountains, actually.” The only person out of state he’d called so far was his iMom in Albuquerque, New Mexico. His calls locally all went to Carolyn, friends and acquaintances, and the police, fire and rescue services. LA had two dozen or more TV stations, and hundreds of local radio stations. Logic demanded calling every local precinct house, the FBI field office, the Federal Office of Emergency Preparedness, the City of Los Angeles Emergency Management Department, that of the county, and state, and all other appropriate locations. The list was endless. Someone would tell him what had happened, where all the people had gone (along with their pets, birds, coyotes, insects, and microbial life), and when they might return.

Yet some deeply-rooted, and not to be understood sixth-sense told Jesse that he alone, of all the former residents west of Longitude 83.2854°, currently wondered the extent of The Wall’s impact on California, the United States in general, and the rest of the civilized world. No one outside the continental United States had survived. But he was not alone in the world. He knew that, as well.

Saturday, December 13, 2014, 4:07 am. Jesse pitched the empty beer bottle away. He perched on a ledge above the Mulholland Scenic Overlook, feet dangling into space. A half-empty six pack of Heineken sat on the rock beside him. A full bottle awaited opening in his left hand. It took a 3-count for the empty bottle to strike the rocks below, and explosively shatter amongst them. “Another dead soldier!” he saluted. Nine beers into his binge, Jesse was dangerously drunk.

He and Carolyn had frequented the overlook their first year in LA. But the crowds every weekend—no matter the season—made the effort involved in taking the drive, finding a spot to view the city below, and trying to ignore the flaming assholes who thought a view could only be enjoyed at the accompaniment of loud music, finally soured their infatuation with the site. This morning he had the view all to himself.

“Fuckin’ A, Jim Kirk! Beam me up, Scotty!” He put the mouth to his lips and chugged down half the beer. “Urrrp!” He tossed the bottle one hand to the other, and then back again; no beer spilled out the top; hence, he was not to sloshed to drive. He set the bottle down beside him on the rock.

“I never should have quit these,” he muttered, lighting up a fresh Marlboro. “Fucking political do-gooder, commie-pinko-fag ... rainforest rabbits.” He unthinkingly flicked the newly-lit cigarette out into space ... then watched anxiously as it flipped end to end through the darkness to explode in a shower of sparks below. He prepared to climb down from his perch if an unextinguished spark suddenly ignited the dry sage. Even during the wet season, you didn’t chance igniting a wildfire. Which brought up a talking-point. Blinking slowly, he withdrew the box of Marlboro’s from his shirt pocket, flipped back the top, and withdrew a cigarette.