Tantrum Traffic Accident

Tantrum③ · Traffic Accident

[Part ① · Just a Joke]

You drove aimlessly along SR-9.

You couldn't have cared less about the fire growing smaller behind you. An indescribable euphoria had taken over your mind.

Ben Rickert, this fire was like a ritual, a sacrificial rite of the kind practiced in the predominantly Mormon faith.

You had been reborn. It was as if nothing mattered anymore.

The scenery flew past your window. Before you knew it, you had reached Green Palm, in Orlando.

The sun sank behind the city's high-rises. Still riding that wave of euphoria, you slowly pulled up beside another motel and squeezed into the bunk in the back of the truck. You decided to get some sleep first—

—and soon you were asleep.

When you woke again, the world seemed utterly surreal. Every time you drifted off, it felt as though you'd left reality behind. It was as if you hadn't woken up at all, and were still trapped in a chain of dreams, a dream within a dream.

Your ankles were bound tight. So were your hands.

On the converted bunk in the truck, it seemed you'd been robbed and kidnapped.

Two strangers had appeared in the front seats, both young men in their early twenties—

—they were laughing and waving around cash. You recognized it. It was your money.

In an instant, you pieced together what had happened.

The two Black brothers had carefully pried open the truck door, tied you up, and searched you for the money you'd earned at the studio.

"Only eleven hundred bucks?" the mixed-race brother with the slightly lighter skin said excitedly. "That's more than you'd get from a supermarket cash register! Not bad!"

"There's a whole truckload of cosmetics, too. We can find some old warehouse and get the