The Dating Scene

Hope you all are enjoying your weekend!

Well here's a little manuscript I wrote for my Fiction Workshop. It's a little rough around the edges now, but we'll see how it turns out after some extensive revisions. Let me know what you think!

Nate fiddles with his phone, checking the time once more, in the backseat of the run-down sedan his best friend Ryan drives. He looks up at the barely dressed and bloody girl they had met only a few short hours ago in the front seat.
“I think this is really fun,” she says, “three wayward criminals on the lamb, ditching a body in the countryside. It’s like that Christian Slater movie!”
“Yeah! Except we sort of meant to kill the asshole.” Ryan says. “Isn’t it poetic, Nate? A killer gets killed by the girlfriend he’s trying to kill? Maybe you could pitch THAT to the other editors!”
Nate hears what they are saying, but his eyes are still glued to the pastoral landscape outside. He looks at corn fields, and fields of those little blue flowers whose name eludes him. He turns back to see Ryan sticking his head into the backseat. “Naa-ate!”
“Sorry Ryan.” He says. The girl, whose name they had learned was Melissa, is picking flecks of skin and dried blood from under her fingernails. Ryan swerves a bit when he turns back around. “You know what I hate? Changing guitar strings.” Nate rubs his eyebrows. “It’s just one of those things you have to do, but winding the little chromed up knobs over and over only to pluck the string and find out you were turning it the wrong way all along…”
“Yeah, um, that sucks man. You listening to me?”
“I think guitar players are sexy.” Melissa rolls with the subject change, grinning and smoothing out her skirt.
“Ha! Good luck with that one!” Ryan says. “I know you may be thrilled to join the population of the singles, albeit violently, but ol’ Nate here has been hitched right out of college! Idiot.”
Nate covers his mouth and raises his eyebrows, a signal that usually indicated that he was tired.
“Really?” Melissa asks. “Well is she trying to kill you over some drug money and some two-bit hooker? We could kill her too!” She holds the back of her seat and briefly looks back at Nate.
“No…” Nate says as he moves his hand from his mouth back to his eyes and rubs them some more. “No. And I think it’s a little scary that you two are so friggin’ into this. I mean, aren’t you worried about jail? Or worse, hell? Murder is right up there with false idols and turning without signaling. Super sins.”
“Riiight. Well,” Ryan says, picking up speed, “to question one, we don’t get caught. To question two, what are you worried about? You got your free ticket to heaven already!”
“What do you mean?” Melissa looks at Ryan, then looks back at Nate, quizically. “What does he mean?”
“Shut up, Ryan.”
“No, no! This is good!” Ryan scratched his beard, a trick of the yarn-spinning trade. “Back when we were kids, Nate here was an altar boy. But get this, one morning before mass, he ate some bean and cheese burrito,”
“I hate it when you tell this story.” Nate fishes around in his bag.
“so then he crapped his pants right in the middle of the ‘peace-be-with-you’s!” Ryan slaps the steering wheel, obviously pleased with himself, while Melissa stifles a laugh with her hand on her mouth and turns back to sit forward in her seat. “If that doesn’t get you into heaven, I’m not sure what will!”
“I hate it when you tell this story.” Nate repeats while he pulls out the manuscript he was supposed to have been editing.


It’s only about and hour and a half later when Ryan pulls the car into an isolated gas station.
“What the hell is the matter with you?” Nate says. “Did you forget the little problem of the body in the trunk?”
“Yeah, but we need gas and I want some coffee, man.”
“Ooh!” Melissa pops up in her seat. “Can I come in?”
“Are you serious? What do you want? I’ll get it.” Nate points his finger up and down her slender frame, carefully drawing her attention to the large spatters of now brown, dried up blood.
“Oh, right. Well get me a Butterfinger then.” She slumps.
“Oooookay.” Ryan says and he opens the door and makes for the pump. Nate gets out of the car and russles his hair as he walks toward the Quik Shop.
Nate pushes his way in and is halfway to the candy section when he hears someone come in after him. He glances back to see a flirty couple, guy with his arm around the girl, girl with her hands to her face, giggling. Her wedding ring glints in the flourescent light.
“Just a sec hon, I’ve gotta tinkle.” She says, removing his arm from her shoulder. The guy walks past Nate, who realizes he’s been standing and staring at the couple.
Nate rubs his eyes. He walks toward the beer section and examines the particularly slim selection. The guy reaches across, left hand in Nate’s eyeline, and grabs a 40-ounce Steel Reserve. “’Scuse me, bro.”
Nate’s eyes follow the guy’s hand back to his chest, then his face. Nate’s eyes go wide as the guy passes behind him toward the checkout counter.
“Homewrecking son of a bitch!” Nate punches the guy in the back of the head.
“What the--” The guy drops his 40 and stumbles forward clutching his head. He turns around to meet Nate’s fist a second time. Nate pushes the poor guy to the ground and starts punching and slapping the hell out of him.
Melissa, who had been looking in the little mirror in the sun flap, sees Ryan turn toward the Quik Shop in response to the commotion. “What the fuck!?” Ryan bolts for the shop and Melissa shrugs, gets out of the car, replaces the gas pump, closes the cap, and starts the car.
“Stop hitting my boyfriend, you psycho!” the girl inside screams, peeking out from the ladies restroom.
“Please! Please stop this in my store, sir! Please!”
“Dude! Nate, get the fuck off that guy!” Ryan runs and pulls Nate off of the guy, Nate still swings at the air and kicks violently until Ryan sets him down and slaps the back of his head. “What is the matter with you?”
“Stupid asshole!” the assaulted man stands up and punches Nate in the groin. Nate doubles over. Thinking quickly, or more accurately not thinking at all, Ryan pulls the Glock from his belt loop that had so recently been used by Melissa in the brutal murder of her boyfriend. Ex-boyfriend. Ryan points the gun at the man, now rubbing his jaw in pain and before he can say anything, Ryan guns him down with four shots to the chest. The last two being somewhat unnecessary.
The girl screams. The shop owner screams. Ryan turns his aim quickly to the girl and then the shop owner. “Call the police and I swear I will drop your ass!” Ryan taps Nate on the shoulder. “You okay, bud?”
Nate struggles to stand up straight but continues clutching his groin in pain. He stumbles toward the candy aisle and with his free hand, grabs a handful of Butterfingers. He does his best impression of a run toward the door. Ryan keeps his aim on the shop owner, whose hands are in the air like he most certainly cares, while he walks out the door. He pauses a moment, and then makes a break for the car.


It’s sunrise when the car runs out of gas.
“Two murders in one night? You know, for some clean-cut boys, you two are like the Thelma and Louise of…well, Thelma-and-Louising.” Melissa leans against the side of the car, daintily breaking off tiny pieces of Butterfinger and munching on them. “But here’s as good a place as any to dump the loser.”
“You know… this might be easier… if you helped with the digging.” Ryan moves heaps of dirt and sand one arm at a time.
“Plus… can I point out… that I have yet to actually murder anybody.” Nate drags the body of Melissa’s ex-boyfriend toward the little excavation project Ryan is working on.
“Don’t worry, we’ll get you one.” Melissa yawns and stretches her arms into the air. “Hey, tell me about your wife.”
“Ha! This’ll be good.” Ryan wiped his forehead with his arm.
“I love the way her hair curls up around her cool, steel blue eyes.” Nate sits on the corpse and looks up wistfully at the spinning colors in the early morning sky. “And I used to love watching her breathe, when her satin skin inflated and deflated and all I could smell was peanut butter on her breath. She loved peanut butter & jelly sandwiches even though she knows I’m allergic. I loved that smell. It was nice when she…” Nate looks down at the body beneath him. “You know what? Forget it.”

Thanks all. Keep doing what you do.

-Steve