What The Hell, Man, Since When Can I Not Form A Somewhat Relevant Title From The Comic Text

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(Seriously, "crude awakening" does not contain anywhere within it the seeds of a title for this'un.)


"Hey, you gotta dollar?" the man asked as Evan got out of his car. "Change for a dollar?"

Evan closed the door to the Suburban, after carefully making sure it was locked. "No, I don't got no money," he answered a bit too loudly. Then he mentally cursed himself as he entered the gas station convenience store. Don't got no? What kind of language was that, anyway? The guy was going to think Evan was trying to talk street to seem tough, except he really hadn't been, it had just been a slip of the grammatical tongue...

He forced himself to smile as he approached the register. "Hi," he said, setting a bottle of Fanta down on the counter. Then he held out his Visa. "And pump three." The clerk grunted and hit a couple of buttons on the register.

Evan took a swig of his Fanta as he walked back out to the pump. "This is gonna hurt," he muttered, grabbing the gas nozzle and starting it pumping black gold into his Suburban. He winced at how fast the "THIS SALE" number was going up.

Suddenly something hard pressed against his right side. "You got that right," a voice said quietly. "Wallet. Keys. Now." Evan opened his mouth, and the pressure against his side increased. "Bullets move faster'n yells. Gimme the money."

"Bu -- but I don't have any money," Evan managed to choke out. His eyes felt about ready to pop out of his head. "I told you. No cash."

"Whaddaya mean, you told me?" Evan risked a glance to his right, and realized his mistake. The man asking for change had been black. The one with a gun jammed into his ribcage was white.

The gas pump clicked off with a loud THUNK noise that drew a terrified whimper from Evan. The man with the gun didn't flinch. "Give me the money or you die," he snarled.

Evan squeezed his eyes shut. Please let this be a nightmare please let this be a nightmare please -- "My bank card is in with the store clerk. Go in, tell him Evan sent you to get his card. My PIN is 8510 and I've got a $200-a-day ATM limit. It also works as a Visa." He drew in a sobbing gasp. "Take it, it's yours."

The gunman made an irritated noise. The pressure against his side miraculously disappeared, and Evan fell thankfully to the ground and listened to the sound of rapidly receding footsteps. Then common sense returned to its post inside his skull, and he fumbled for his keys, unlocked the car and all but threw himself inside, and cranked the engine.

As he squealed out onto the street and fled towards home, he spotted the man who'd asked him for change, waiting to cross the street three blocks south of the gas station. Evan roared past him without so much as a second glance.

Low-Mileage

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Oh, well. I see you got a new car, huh? Oh, a Toyota. A foreign car. Huh. Funny, good ol' Chevrolet always did fine by me. But I guess everyone's priorities are different.

And I see it's a Prius. Kind of expensive, I hear, not the kind of thing a blue-collar workin' man is likely to be drivin' around. But you've got that job workin' with computers, so it's probably no problem, you bein' able to afford to pay extra.

Sure, sure, the mileage, I hear ya. Seems all them foreign cars have the fancy engines these days... how much does it get? Forty-eight miles per gallon? Very nice. That'll almost make up for the cost of the car. Plus I suppose you're doin' your part, savin' the environment by drivin' this thing. Guess you feel pretty good about yourself, huh? Guess I'm not quite the hero you are. Not when my old Chevy gets eighteen, twenty miles a gallon, tops.

You'll fit right in when you go drivin' to Whole Foods to buy your arugula, now. Heck, you might even have trouble figuring out which car is yours next time you go off to your little voter-registration rallies. Meanwhile I'll keep drivin' my old Chevy to Wal-Mart, an' try to not think too much about how much a better person you are'n me.

Damn kids these days.



I recently [as I type this up in September 2008] moved to Unnamed City in Unnamed State; the car population here has to be at least 5% Priuses. Then I drove 400 miles (in a 20-year-old van that gets a little over 20 miles to the gallon, if anyone's keeping track) back down to Other Unnamed State, which I had moved from, and saw one Prius over the course of an entire weekend there.

There are a lot of farmers and rustic types in Other Unnamed State What I Moved From, who maybe aren't so much into the whole elitist leftist arugula-eating hybrid-car thing, and while I know they are not all cantankerous old bastards, I'm still allowed to make up what I think they might say if they were to see the shiny new Prius coming to me in Local Toyota Dealer's October shipment. Whee!

Back In My Neighborhood

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"Of course, that was assuming you didn’t ask where the car’d come from," he added offhandedly, pulling the Porsche back onto the highway. "You could be particular about that if you wanted, but then you’d have to pay a bit more."

"Oh?"

"Local guy ran the biggest stolen-car operation in the state," he replied. "Small-time mobster, name of Magliore. Half the teenagers on my block were working for him – running errands, or… ‘supplying’ him with stock. All under the table, of course."

His passenger frowned. "How dreadful. I assume you weren’t involved in all this."

"Are you kidding?" he asked, eyebrow raised. "I was one of Magliore’s boys before I’d even learned how to ride a bike. How did you think I learned how to hotwire cars?"

"Well," his passenger sniffed, her frown deepening. "At least you’re old enough to know better than to mess around with any stolen cars."

There was expectant silence for a moment; finally, he coughed. "Sure. Of course I am."

Ran

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"Spare some money for gas?" Elly called, as a smartly-dressed man approached her on the sidewalk, head tucked down into his collar against the cold. The smartly-dressed man gave no indication that he had heard her, and she sighed inwardly and pulled her jacket a bit tighter. It was starting to snow, and she wished yet again that she had on something warmer.

For about the millionth time in the last couple hours she glanced back over her shoulder, checking that her car was still parked by the curb. Not that anyone could steal it with the tank dry as it was, of course. She'd run it till the very fumes were used up. Run it as far and as fast away from home as possible. "Or what was home, anyway," she muttered to herself, and then made a sound something like a laugh. Not that the situation was particularly funny.

"Spare some money for gas?" she repeated yet again, as two women passed by. One of them gave her an odd look, then quickly turned away; they both sped up slightly, as though wishing nothing more than to escape from Elly's request. One of them tittered brief laughter as they disappeared into the thickening snowfall.

Elly shivered, then uttered a series of deep coughs. Stupid to have left without coat or hat or even a pair of gloves; stupid to have left with a dollar sixty-three in her wallet. Stupid to have even done this in the first place, but she'd had to do it, she just couldn't take any more...

Making that not-quite-a-laugh sound again, Elly felt gingerly at the latest bruise on her face, the one that had been the reason for her sudden flight. "Never again, you bastard," she said through a humorless grin. "I don't even care if I freeze out here, as long as you never get to hit me again."

High Gas Prices

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The Pilot was a few exits up the highway, but Jake figured he'd make it. Even though the needle was pointing to E, he should still have at least a dozen miles before the car stalled; even then, he wouldn't have to worry much. Markson Consulting had the ol' triple-A for all their company vehicles. Let them do the towing. It was a fine spring day, perfect for sitting on the hood of the car and smoking a cigarette. You'd have to be some kind of moron to be stuck driving two hundred miles on a day like this, though not as much of a moron as the "professionals" on site who couldn't figure out a simple database installation. Idiots.

Jake caught himself reaching for his smokes, and returned his hand to the steering wheel. Not in the company car; not after his buddy Harry had gotten chewed out for lighting up while on the road. Apparently the smell was hell to get out of the upholstery. Oh, well. He could get out at the Pilot, stretch his legs, take care of a few personal needs. There was the sign on the right. Gas, food, and a handful of crummy stores, next exit.

He followed the route to the gas station almost subconsciously; this was at least the sixth time this client had needed a tech to come out and help them, and he had been the one tapped to go five of those times. It would have been infuriating if it were his own car going through all this wear and tear, but as things stood it was mainly boring. Two hundred miles of midwest terrain got old after a half-dozen repetitions. By this point he was more or less making the trip without thinking about it, right down to the refueling at the Pilot.

He couldn't help smirking as he pulled up to the pump. He always made sure to get premium gas on these trips, and he usually made sure to avoid the cheaper gas stations, too. Oh, sure, it added up to rather a lot more that way. And, of course, all his travel costs were always reimbursed by the client, as per company policy. But then, that was why he'd started doing it this way, along about the third time he had to come out there.

Jake figured they deserved the extra touch.

The Price of Gas

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"Gas is at two-thirteen at the Speedway," she commented as they drove past.

"Huh. Not bad. We'll have to fill up on the way back." He grinned a bit. "I remember when two bucks was a bad price for gas."

"I remember when one dollar a gallon was too much. At least for my mom. There was this one place in town where it was like 89 cents, and she'd only fill up there." She nodded mock-gravely. "It was an Arco."

"Good to know."

"Yep, very important fact there." Idly she rolled her window down a bit. "Of course, then at some point the price started going up -- I don't remember when, sometime in the middleish 90s -- and I think the one cheap Arco went out of business or something, and then mom just basically gassed up wherever looked cheap at the moment. Dad freaked out about the raised prices, though."

He glanced at her. "Your dad was kind of prone to freakouts, wasn't he."

"You could say that. I remember about when it was at $2.75ish -- the first time, if you will, since it isn't like that's such an extraordinary price anymore -- he started going around saying that it would hit five bucks a gallon soon." Her mood dimmed slightly. "He got really angry at mom when she disagreed. They wound up having another one of their fights." Then she shook her head. "I don't even know why I still remember that. It isn't like it matters anymore."

"Well, yeah. You won't have to worry about dealing with him anymore; you're halfway across the country from him now."

"True." She grinned crookedly. "And it wasn't even a bad fight, really. He didn't throw his gun through the window that time, or anything!"