True story?  You decide.

I was out with Aaron yesterday after school looking for prom stuff.  For him, not me.  You couldn't get me to go to prom if you paid me large sums of money and offered to do my chemistry homework for the rest of the semester.  It's partly because I hate dressing up, and partly because my dad's a teacher, and he'd insist on chaperoning.  Bleah.  But I digress...  For some reason, Aaron decided he needed to get a top hat and cane to go with his tuxedo, so we ended up driving all the hell over trying to find a damn top hat at all these antique and second-hand stores.  Around 3:30 we found ourselves wandering about on the dirt roads up around McDonald Pass on a hot tip from the lady at Quigley's Antiques who said there was a great antique clothing place run by some old hermit guy on the road to Rimini.  Unfortunately, we couldn't find the damn place.  Equally unfortunately, we couldn't seem to find Helena either.  (How do you lose an entire town?  I don't know, but it seems pretty darn easy.)  Lost beyond comprehension, almost out of gas, and unable to get anything better than a fuzzy country station on the radio, we decided to ask the first person we saw how to get back to the highway.  The first person we saw was a scruffy-looking guy with a shotgun slung across his shoulders walking along the side of the road.  I told Aaron that maybe we should wait and ask someone less, well, weird, but he insisted that we ask this guy.  He WAS the first person we'd seen in nearly an hour.  So I rolled my window down and politely asked the guy if this was the road back to town.  He stared at me with one unnerving blood shot eye.  His voice came in a low rasp.

"Back to town?"  He laughed, a grating, crackly sound.  "There ain't no town on down this way.  Not for YOU!"  With that, he raised his shotgun and pointed it at my head.

"Shit!  Drive!"  I screamed at Aaron.  Luckily, he knows how to take a hint.  With a jerk, the station wagon lurched forward, and the deafening blast took out the backseat windows instead of my brain. I turned to make sure the crazy old coot wasn't trying to shoot at us again and saw him drop another shell into the breech.  We were still close enough that another shot would probably take out something vital, either on the car or on one of us.  We had to do something.  Quickly.

"Back up!" I shouted.

"What?"  Aaron obviously thought I'd lost it.

"Back up!" I repeated.  "Run the bastard over!"

That message got through loud and clear.  Aaron threw the car into reverse, and we sailed backwards, BAM, right into the old guy, throwing him to the ground.  As soon as he felt the impact, Aaron stopped the car.  We sat for a moment in shock with only the staticky strains of Hank Williams cutting through the silence.

"...Is he dead?"

I shook my head.  "I don't know."

"Should we go out and look?"

"Um..  Yeah, I guess."

Neither of us moved.  I finally got fed up with the indecision and stepped out of the car.  The gun toting weirdo was half under the rear bumper, blood covering half his greasy face.  I poked at his head with the end of my shoe.  "Dude," I called back.  "I'm pretty sure he's dead."  Aaron got out of the car and stood beside me.  The guy still hadn't moved.

"Maybe we should check for a pulse," Aaron suggested.  I knelt beside the dead guy, repulsed by the smell of old cigarettes and unwashed clothes.  I really didn't want to touch his grimy neck, but it wasn't like I had a whole lot of choice.  There was no pulse that I could find.

"He's dead.  Wonderful."

"Now what?"

I stood, wiping my fingers off on my jeans.  Man, where's a disinfectant wipe when you need one?  "Should we take him back with us?"

"Are you nuts?!  I don't want him in my car!"

"Dude, you left a dead cat in there for a WEEK."

"That's different," he said with a huff.

"Not really."

"Okay, fine.  But remember, if he stinks up the car, don't complain.  It was YOUR idea."

So we stuffed him unceremoniously into the back end of Aaron's grocery go-getter and headed out again.  The problem was, we were still lost.  Lost, shaken, and driving around in the woods with a dead body.  Wonderful.

In fact, things were downright peachy until the dead guy woke up.  He groggily sat up, half crawling over the back seat, and muttered, "Damn kids.."  Reacting on instinct and reflexes more than conscious thought, I grabbed the shotgun and fired.  The sound was beyond ear shattering in the enclosed car.  When the smoke cleared, Aaron sat frozen, staring at the road, I hung over the seat, breathing hard, and the dead guy...well, at least this time he was going to stay dead.

It took us another half hour to find the highway, and we were finally on our way home.  Neither of us said a word.  We probably would have gotten back to Aaron's house without a hitch if the highway patrolman hadn't noticed something odd and pulled us over.  He stalked over to the driver's side window and calmly said, "What seems to be the matter?"

Oh, nothing much, just a dead guy splattered across the rear end of the car...  "Um, well, it's a funny story, officer..." I began.  He didn't seem to be amused.  The next thing I knew, we were down at the county jail, being questioned.  Fortunately, the D.A. saw that it was a clear-cut case of self defense and let us go on our own accord.  By that time, it was 8 o' clock and neither of us wanted to go much of anywhere but home.  That's why I didn't make it to to the coffee house.

How's THAT for an excuse?