Watching the insane world go by at such slow speed was maddening. She did not mind the feeling of bumping along in the little red wagon towed by the mime janitor, as if Peter Pan had come to rescue her from hell without his voice. It was just, that at this pace, it would take hours to lose sight of people, and people were the problem. Then her scrap-built fairytale carriage eased to a halt, the scooter driven by the little janitor man who thought he was a trash cleaning superhero no longer whined like some put open mechanical employee.
She had difficulty discerning sounds with her tinnitus going off inside her head like someone stuck an alarm clock in each ear and she could not turn them off. She was, however, able to hear well enough to appreciate the noise level and pick out some individual sounds and words.
Donna Herford had never been a patient person, and with her ass on the line she was not about to sit still now. It took her some doing to climb from the little covered wagon. As she stood, the yellow city works slicker covering her head and those still perky nuisances who had almost gotten her killed, she looked to all sides to see that chaos yet reined. Men were beating men, strangling women, raping women, lurching from car to car chanting their terrible mantras. One woman was backing up her SUV over and over again, over some poor bastard’s legs—as he gurgled his mantra in a wide eyed rage.
So this is where York Road descends into hell, and we are stuck. A trash truck was stopping up traffic ahead of them, as two men stood on one rear running board screaming football game results at each other like two apes while they held onto the same bar.
But the most horrid aspect of her day was her fairytale retard prince’s predicament—That was mean you evil bitch. He’s not a retard. He’s something special, Yeah, and his retarded ass is about to die!
Dona Herford would have done nothing other than scream for the terrible act to end. But today—seemingly the last day on earth—after the zombie assholes who she had tried to effectively managed, had risen up to kill her, chanting that she was a ‘hipster bitch,’ she had decided that she would henceforth and forever be ‘The Hipster Bitch from Hell,’ taking no shit, from no man!
Look at this asshole, strangling poor little Archie. The Bitch is back!
A tall, lean, scruffy man was holding Archie by his neck, chanting something about twerps, as he lifted him off his little feet and choked the darling little janitor who had heroically rescued her from that dumpster diving hulk back down in Towson.
She caught sight of Archie’s trash bins arrayed on the scooter platforms that connected his red rescue wagon with his motor scooter, and saw the tools; handle upon handle of potential vagina justice awaiting dispensation at her liberated hands!
Donna walked forward, feeling all of a sudden lethally sexy in her yellow vinyl hoodie, grabbed a handle as Archie fought for his life, and pulled out a broom.
No, I am not some old biddy in a 1950s western.
She then pulled out another handle and it was attached to a heavy shovel.
No, I will have to swing it and its heavy.
She then spotted the tool for her. She did not know what it was called, but it was all metal, hooked on one end and like an ice scraper on the other end. It was too heavy in a way, but not long. And most of all it was cold—and she recalled her granddaddy having said something about vengeance best being served that way. Whatever this heavy thing was, that looked like burglars would use it to break into secured buildings, it felt right in her hand, so right that she announced her intentions.
“Hey asshole, put him down,” she said, with venom, as she strutted up to the creep.
The man dropped Archie, who fell gasping to the pavement, and turned on her with crazy eyes. His eyes then went to her swaying breasts brushing under the half open vinyl slicker and he said, “I ought to rip your tits off bitch!”
As he reached out zombie like with his hands, seemingly intent on suiting words to action, she kept walking towards him and could not help but run her mouth. “Great idea asshole—but you are unqualified!”
With those words she swung the hooked bar of a tool like an axe. It arched over his extended hands and arms, and the hook, sunk, with a crunch she could feel vibrating up through the man-slaughtering metal tool, into the side of his head above the ear.
He immediately stopped chanting his bullshit and fell to the side with one eye rolling from its socket and a mess of red white and gray ripping away from his head when she refused to let go of the sacred tool and the side of the head tore apart as the body beneath it hit the asphalt.
Archie bounced up before her, clapped his hands like parents did for little children at school plays, and then bowed as if before the Queen of some deranged fairytale realm. Archie then began to gather marbles and a sling shot from the ground and his scooter pack—a baby cried.
Donna turned to see a baby sitting in the drunk of a car in a car seat next to the body of a woman.
I need to rescue the baby.
I hate babies.
Somebody needs to save the baby!
To hell with that! Babies are puke-spewing shit-squirting monstrosities that were only invented to sell birth control!
You are not that much of a bitch. Someone has to save the baby!
Yes, someone.
“Hey Archie, can you understand me?”
The Mime, standing with a sling shot and marbles in hand, at attention, as if expecting orders, nodded “Yes.”
“Then grab the baby and follow me!”
As her ears rang Donna stalked across an insane world, four lanes wide, packed with cars akimbo and struggling people, toward the stranded trash truck. Just before they broke from behind the cover of a minivan to make a dash for the empty cab of the hulking green steel trash truck, that would squash anything on this road, it occurred to her that the trash truck would not be an automatic, and she might not be able to drive it. She turned with some trepidation and asked, “Archie, can you drive a trash truck—you’re a janitor, right?”
You are such a stupid bitch.
Archie stood at attention, reached within his vest, and drew out an envelope, opened the envelop methodically, and presented a CDL license for a much older man, Archibald Jorald Jones, then placed it back in his pocket with some care, and stood to attention with a prideful smile.
“Was that your father’s license Archie?”
“Yes,” he nodded.
“Did he teach you how to drive one of these things Archie?”
“Yes!” he grinned.
“Then let’s go buddy!”
Archie then picked the baby back up by the handle of its car seat, from where it no longer cried, but rather sat wide eyed and curious like some alien spectator come to view the chaos of earth.
She turned to lead off and a woman was blocking their path between the minivan and a Saab. The woman was a stunning blonde beauty, of about 25, in her man-eating prime; every brush stroke of her face flawless, her fake lashes so well done that you couldn’t tell they were fake. She looked at Donna leeringly, factoring the years that separated them; observing the damage wind, sun, gravity, and the rat race had done to Donna’s 40 year old form.
The woman then snarled, her perfect gracile face somehow still pretty, as she said, “I’m prettier than you bitch. I ought to make you walk around!”
Where once there would have been the sulking and tearful turning away of hurt and unappreciated Donna Herford, having failed yet another one of cruel Society’s endless dehumanizing litmus tests, there was instead, the defiant answer of The Hipster Bitch from Hell, “I don’t think so, princess!”
As the gracile face folded in upon itself in a squishing wave of bloody ruin, Donna marched over the falling body feeling unalterably powerful for the first time in her put upon life—and life was now good, even if it was the last day on earth.
She marched right up to the passenger side, and pulled open the door for Archie, who scampered in very athletically, with the baby quietly in its seat. She hauled herself up behind even as the fools on the rear running board continued screaming football game results at each other. She looked left to where Archie perched—indeed bounced with joy—upon the seat, and felt like the queen of some road warring tribe of two—damn, three. She then recalled his card, as he seemed to wait for orders, that he had had a nick name. She pulled out the card and read it:
Janitor X
Have Litterbugs?
Never Fear, Archie Jones is Here!
Now counting herself a leader of this three-person clan, she sought to buck him up as Dad would have said, and spoke with as much calm as she could manage through the constant ringing of her ears, and extended her hand for a fist bump, over the baby, who sat bemused in his cradle.
“Janitor X, sorry about you cleanup cart. I’m the Hipster Bitch from Hell, this is my bitchmobile and you are its driver—squash the world!”
After they bumped hands he raised his fist and she screamed, “whew-whew!”
Then came a rumbling of a diesel engine, the mournful grinding of gears, a lurching air brake, which made the baby hiccup—and they were off, in the direction of her pointed figure, North toward the Pennsylvania State line, to the tune of some poor soul screaming to God about his legs, trapped in the Mercedes that was being flattened under their rumbling wheels—“Whew-whew, whew-whew!”
And the baby cooed as they rumbled up the road; grinding gears, honking the air horn, smashing cars, flattening people, and turning the occasional luxury sedan into a tin can.
