Choose Your
Own Nuthouse
Section 88
"Oh, yeah," you reply.
"Nothing like the Bible to tell you how to live your life. Yes,
indeedy...
I sure love me some Bible. Yessir."
Walt and his family look at you
oddly. You realize you may have gone a bit overboard with the whole "I
love the Bible" thing you just said. But, there's no taking it back, so
you figure you may as well keep it up.
"Yep," you continue,
"I'm just looking for a nice quiet place to hunker down and seriously
study the Good Book. That's why I was headed to Lake Doomhole."
"Really?" asks the boy in
the backseat. "I heard Lake Doomhole was where young adults and
teenagers
went to do drugs, drink alcohol, and commit the sin of premarital
relations. I
heard they also smoke... cigarettes."
You attempt to keep from blushing an
incredibly deep shade of red and wonder how badly you reek of Camels.
"That may be," you say.
"However, I was going to go deep into the woods and sit in silent
contemplation of God's word. None of that stuff is attractive to me at
all. I
like to live in accordance with God’s laws as much as a human being
can. Yep…
clean living."
The family looks at you in what you
take to be unmitigated awe. You think that you might have laid it on a
tad
thick. The family then looks at one another- an act that makes you
nervous, as
this means Walt is turned around in his seat, and paying no attention
to the
road whatsoever. Walt notices this, and pulls over to the shoulder of
the road.
“Family,” he says, “Do you hear what
this young man says? He’s going into the woods to study God’s word, and
he says
that he likes living clean. This is just the sort of young man we’ve
been
looking for.”
They’ve been looking for someone
like that? Are you their messiah or something?
“Yes, family… this is the sort of
man who just makes me sick.”
Um. Uh-oh.
“Such a self-righteous little prick.
So convinced he’s going to heaven, while a family that picks up
drifters and
videotapes their torture and eventual murder for profit is going to
Hell.”
Ohshit. You grab frantically for the
door handle, but come up short when a heavy object bangs into your
skull from
behind. That wife has way more upper body strength than you would have
given
her credit for.
When you awaken hours later, you’re
strapped to a chair, which itself seems to be bolted to the floor in a
basement
somewhere. That “somewhere” that you assume is Walt and family’s house.
There
are suspicious stains all over the floor, and- more frighteningly- the
walls. A
table with an impressive array of tools, including a linoleum knife,
meat-turning fork, ball-peen hammer, and tennis racquet sits nearby.
When the door to the top of the
stairs open, you hear Walt’s voice shout out “Well, I hope you’re a
strong
one…”