11. On the Creepy Way

Background color
Font
Font size
Line height

Dedicating this chapter to sim_xx as she is a very fun person to talk to & she ALWAYS makes me sooo happy with her lovely comments. :) Do check out her story 'The Bradford Exchange', it's really good! :)

---------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------

CHAPTER - 11

ON THE CREEPY WAY

"I see the one, because she be that lady! Hey! I feel you creeping; I can see it from my shadow..."

"Drew looks at me; I fake a smile so he won't see..."

"Smack that all on the floor; Smack that, give me some more, smack that till you get sore..."

"I bet she's beautiful..."

"Upfront style ready to attack now..."

"Will you stop it now?" I yelled at Kim as she kept on changing the radio station from the amazing song I wanted to listen - 'Smack that' to the pathetic song she wanted to listen - 'Teardrops on my guitar' which resulted in the creation of a weird medley of a rap and a romantic song.

"No! I want Drew!" she exclaimed emphasizing on 'Drew'. "Have you even looked at him?"

"And I want the convict. Have you even looked at her? Smokin' hot!" This was my smart comeback teamed with a dreamy look.

She ignored me and started singing her song while Akon's voice was blasting through the radio. I pinched the bridge of my nose and let out a very audible sigh. Ignoring Kim and her terrible singing, I decided to focus on the road and drive towards my family's home in Hendersonville, but I couldn't ignore her for long, especially when she yelled, "Drew" in my ears making me flinch automatically.

"Will you let me drive?" I asked through gritted teeth.

"Am I holding your hands? Am I being a barrier between your hands and the steering wheel? Or between your feet and the controls near your feet? Am I? Am I? If you can't drive properly in such little pressure, then I'm sorry to say that you have failed my driving test," she finished her rant and clicked her tongue at the end.

"What have I gotten myself into?" I muttered to myself in distress.

"Hell hole." She grinned at me. Rolling my eyes at her, I focused back on the road in front of us. "Why do you live so near?" I shot her a questioning look and she continued, "You could live somewhere far from Nashville, so we had to drive for four to five hours or more. I love travelling. Road trips are my favorite. But, no! You had to live just an hour away." Disappointment laced her words.

One thing that I had learned in just these few days of knowing Kim was, 'ignorance is a bliss'. I went with my learnt lesson, and like many other times, this time too, I ignored her.

"So, who all are in your family?" she asked after a moment. This girl really couldn't keep quiet.

I could hear a hint of nervousness in her voice and decided to tease her. "My mom and dad, and my elder sister, Hailey. My parents... um... they used to hit me," I told her in a meek voice and made a choking sound in between. "They... ahem." I took a deep breath in to add a little effect. Pausing in between, I side glanced at her and saw that she was looking at me with her mouth and eyes wide open. Shock was written all over her face.

"Are you serious?" she asked with concern as she bent a bit towards me.

I let out a sarcastic laugh and said, "No, I love joking about such things." I faced her and said in a tight voice, "Do you think so little of me? Do you think I would lie about such a thing?" Looking at her face, I had the urge to laugh out really loud, so, to keep my façade, I faced the road again and concentrated on the road ahead.

"I... I am so sorry," she said in a low voice. I glanced at her and in that glance, I noticed that her expressions were softened as she looked at me.

Not paying any heed to the little guilt that took birth inside me for making a joke about my family and fooling Kim, I continued my act. I let out a bitter laugh and said, "What are you sorry for? It was not you who assaulted me during my childhood." I side-glanced at her and saw that she was still looking at me the same way. "They wanted me to be a doctor just like my dad, but I-" time for a choking sound "-wanted to be a football player ever since I was a kid. They-" Time to take a deep, ragged breath. "-never supported me. They used to beat me."

"What about your sister? Did they hit her too?"

I couldn't bring Hailey into this joke. It would have taken it to an altogether different level. "No." I played safe. "She tried helping me, but what could she do, she's just a girl."

"But, Adam said that they abandoned you," she recalled, leaving me speechless. I opened my mouth to say something, but before I could say anything, she answered her own query, "That must have been a cover up, a cover to hide how cruel and selfish your parents are." Now, she sounded angry and I concluded that I needed to stop this joke right away.

"Let's not talk about it anymore. Bad memories," I said and shrugged my shoulders a bit. "I can face them now. I'm not a teenager anymore."

"Are you sure that your parents didn't hit you for being a jerk-ish player that you are?" I shot her a glare and she continued, "I mean, if my kid was like you, well, you wouldn't want to know what I would have done to him."

"Hahaha. So funny," I said sarcastically.

"On a serious note," she said, straightening up in her seat. "Are you fine with meeting them?"

"Yup. Don't fear when Keith is near," I answered cockily and just as these words left my lips, the car came to a halt after a few bumps, making us jerk forward forcefully. Thankfully, we both were abiding by the traffic rules by wearing the seat belts.

"Ow!" Kim groaned as she balanced herself on the passenger seat.

A groan escaped my lips too, and I looked at the front. My eyes landed on the bonnet which had black smoke coming out of it. I hopped out of the car to check what was the new problem we were facing now.

"This will take a few hours to get fixed," I told her after about twenty minutes of trying to fix my car's engine problem.

"Great, just great," she muttered and leaned back on my car and hugged herself due to the cold.

"It's not my fault. Okay?" I shut the bonnet with force.

She scoffed and mimicked me, "Don't fear when Keith is near."

"We can take a cab or lift from someone," I suggested and took out our bags from the backseat of the car. "And now, you should be glad that I don't live four to five hours drive away. It's hardly forty minutes drive from here." I smirked and she nodded her head a bit.

I tried everything we could, to get a lift from someone, but I failed. Well, apparently, none of the cars that had passed us in the last twenty minutes had a lady driver, so it was not my fault that we couldn't make even a single car stop and ask them to drop us to Hendersonville.

"You suck," Kim told me, grinning from ear to ear at my failed attempts.

I turned back to look at her as she was sitting like a queen on my car's bonnet. "Why doesn't Her Highness try then?" I asked mockingly.

"Sure." She slid down from the bonnet and fixed her non-existent collar. Rubbing her hands together, she snapped her fingers in my direction and said, "Watch me!"

And so I did, for the next fifteen minutes. At the end of which, I laughed at her, while she huffed and glared at me. "Watch me!" I mimicked her while snapping my fingers at her and laughing my ass off. "We can never get a lift like this," I told her once I calmed down.

"What do you mean?" she asked grudgingly. She had her arms folded around her waist and she was leaning against my car's bonnet on which I was sitting during the fifteen minutes of her failed attempts.

Ignoring her question, I told her, "There is only one way to get a lift from here."

"What?" she asked, narrowing her eyes.

I smirked at the idea in my head and said, "You've to get pregnant."

"What?" she shrieked, moving away from the bonnet and taking long strides towards me. "Firstly, I'm not going to have sex with you just to get a lift. Second, why the hell do we need to wait for nine months to get a lift?"

For a moment, I looked at her with shock and confusion, and then, I started laughing. What the hell is she thinking? "Okay, let me rephrase that," I offered, chuckling a bit. "You have to fake a pregnant belly."

"Oh!" She nodded and grinned sheepishly at her assumption.

A few minutes later, we were standing on the side of the road. Kim had stuffed her clothes to form a fake belly, which were now bulging out of her white pullover. She was holding her belly; and I was holding her, acting like a caring father-to-be.

Bullsh*t!

From a distance, I saw a red car coming our way and I nudged Kim in the side. We both stepped towards the road and I waved my hands in the air like a maniac. "Stop. I've to take my girlfriend to the hospital," I shouted as the car approached us.

"Either you call me your wife or I throw these clothes away," she warned me, pointing towards her belly. I really couldn't understand her point in wanting to be called my wife rather than my girlfriend, it was all the same. Fake! But, she insisted on not looking like a teenager who got knocked up at a party. Kim and her logics!

"Yeah, yeah!" I dismissed my hand in her direction and again started waving for the red car to notice us.

Kim started shouting and touching her fake belly in pain. "Ahhhhh. Help me! I need to go to the hospital. I'm dying from pain." I shot her a disgusting look and she replied, "It's called acting."

"No, this is called creating a scene with your over-acting," I retorted. "Just calm it down a bit."

"Ahhhh! Please stop!" she screamed, still holding her belly when the red car passed us.

"Great! That was your acting? You couldn't even stop that car?" I yelled at her and that was when we heard sounds of tires screeching. I turned back to look at the road and grinned when I spotted the red car that had stopped a few feet in front of us.

"See, that happened because of me and my awesome acting skills." Kim grinned. I watched as she was about to jump with joy and my eyes widened in shock. So much for the awesome acting skills.

"No, don't," I warned her looking at her belly. "Stay in the character." She grinned sheepishly and nodded. We went towards the car and bent down a bit to talk to the driver. I jerked back a bit when four extremely happy faces looked back at me.

"Hello, young man," the man at the driving seat greeted me.

"Um... um" I smiled after regaining my composure. Kim pinched my arm, bringing me back from the smiley world in front of me. "Yeah, hi! My gi-" She pinched me again, quite hard this time. "Wife... yeah... my wife and I have to go to Hendersonville, quite urgently and as you can see my wife's condition, we can't walk or anything, so, do you mind driving us anywhere near Hendersonville?"

"Aww! They are so cute, Bill," the lady in the passenger seat cooed. Kim and I let a light laugh and I kept my hand around her shoulder, which earned me a painful nudge from her.

"Character, Kim, character," I muttered under my breath, loud enough for her to hear and tightened my hold on her shoulder. She just smiled tightly facing the 'oh-so-happy' family who was looking at us with judgment in their eyes.

"So?" I asked.

"Oh, sure!" the man said, still smiling. "Hop on. Not you, young lady," he joked and his family laughed at his lame joke.

"Yeah, thanks." Kim smiled.

I opened the door of the backseat of the car and spotted a fat kid, holding potato chips packet in his hand and an old lady sitting there. "Um... there is not enough room for us," Kim mumbled and I looked back at her. She was eyeing the little space warily.

"Oh, sit on your husband's lap. We don't mind," the old lady suggested and the happy family again laughed.

I watched as Kim's cheeks turned red. "We can wait for a while, Keith. We can get a drive from someone else," she suggested, looking at me pointedly.

'No can do, Kim, no can do.'

"Or," I started stressing on 'or'. "We can take a lift from these nice people and reach our destination as early as possible. You were dying of pain sometime back. Remember, darling?" She shot me a look that screamed 'I'll kill you' and I just smirked.

"Don't be so shy," the lady in the passenger seat piped in. "Sitting on his lap must have been the first step to reach where you are now." Sudden laughter erupted from my lips at what the lady was implying and Kim just turned redder.

"Let's make a move to go now," I told her between my laughs and she just nodded grudgingly.

The space inside the car was congested. The little boy and the old lady were covering most of the seat, leaving very little space for both of us, but, still we managed. Kim was grumbling as she sat on my lap, side facing me and keeping her hands on her belly. I kept my one arm behind her and the other on my side, between the kid and me. She was, surprisingly, not at all heavy despite of the clothes she had stuffed in her white pullover. The man, whose name was Bill, had started driving and the family was talking amongst themselves.

"Are you comfortable?" I found myself asking Kim.

Her head snapped in my direction and she looked at me with her mouth slightly open like she couldn't believe what I had just asked. "Ye... yeah. I'm fine," she mumbled and that's when I noticed the distance between our faces.

Our bodies were completely touching, but my concentration was on the brown pool that her eyes were. Her eyes were the warmest eyes that I had ever seen in my life. She was looking at me just the way I was looking at her. Our noses were almost touching and slowly, I snaked my arms around her waist. My eyes left her warm brown ones and travelled down to her lips. She had those cute bow shaped lips and I watched as she bit her bottom lip, the way she does whenever she is nervous or thinking about something. I looked back into her eyes and saw her looking at my lips. A little smile made its way on my face and slowly, I leaned towards her.

"So cute these two are," an overly happy voice made both of us jerk and come back to reality. I removed my arms from her waist and ran my hand through my hair. Kim turned scarlet red and avoided my gaze as she looked at the front, towards the road.

'What the hell was I going to do? Was I thinking about kissing her? Seriously, get your sh*t together, Keith.' I ordered myself.

Closing my eyes, I took a few deep breaths. When I opened them, I was freaked out by the huge four smiley faces that were looking straight at me. They were smiling like someone has put a hanger in their mouths and they just couldn't take it out. They were creepy.

I warily eyed Bill as he looked at me, when he should be looking at the road in the front. His wife noticed this and cleared her throat. "Bill, pay attention on the road." Bill, thankfully, did what his wife asked him to do and I sighed in relief. "So," the lady started, again looking at me with that scary smiley face of hers. Her red lipstick was extra red and her short red hair were just a tone lighter than her lipstick. I smiled tightly and she continued, "Which month is it?"

"Twelfth," I answered in an instant.

My answer made all of them shout in unison, "What?" The three of them, other than Bill, looked at me wide-eyed and I looked at them with complete confusion.

'What have I said now?' I asked myself.

"But... how is it possible? It's just a nine-month cycle," the old lady said in horror.

"No. It's a twelve month cycle." I was confused. 'Doesn't this family knows that a year has twelve months? What is so shocking about this? Is it a new discovery for them?' Then they looked at Kim in shock and then her fake belly.

I noticed Kim was looking at me like I was stupid or something and she said, smiling a bit, "It's eighth."

"It's December, which is the twelfth month of the year," I argued. 'I mean, seriously, what is wrong with the people I'm travelling with?' This was all I could think of.

The moment I said 'December', the creepy smiley family started laughing and after a moment of Kim's pointed look at me, I realized what their question actually meant. Feeling dumb, I scratched the back of my head, but the family didn't stop laughing. Between the sounds of their loud laughter, I heard a much louder sound of a blast. My head snapped in the direction of the sound and I looked at the fat kid sitting beside me.

My tongue took control and I said the next thing, smiling just like the family, "Ah, kid, I didn't know you could laugh from both the ends at the same time."

The family's laughter died down and Kim started laughing. Realizing that laughing was not a good thing to do if we wanted to reach our destination, she hid her face in the crook of my neck and I could feel her body vibrating because of laughter against my body. Automatically, my hands went around her waist and I held her close.

Thankfully, the family didn't say anything about my little tongue slip. The kid was back to munching on his potato chips and again, that horrid sound could be heard. Slowly, a poisonous smell reached my nose and I cringed.

"Oh, the fatty just farted," Kim mumbled against my collar, using it as a protection from the poisonous odor.

"I've the nose of a dog," I answered back, trying my best to not breathe. I felt her chuckle at my response. I really couldn't understand how none of the family members could sense that something was terribly wrong in the air, especially when all the windows were closed. They just looked normal, and by normal, I mean, they were smiling. I, on the other hand, couldn't bear it anymore and I asked Bill, "Will you please roll down the windows?"

"No. We like it like this. My wife catches cold easily." He smiled apologetically through the mirror. Just on cue, his wife sneezed. "See, just talk about opening windows and she sneezes. That's how sensitive she is." He held her hand lovingly and caressed it.

"But..." I tried to reason.

"It's just twenty minutes ride more, then you can have all the fresh air you want," the old lady said, smiling.

"They'll kill my child even before he sees this world," Kim whispered in my ear, making me laugh. I could not help but notice that how I liked holding Kim in my arms. Nothing was weird about it.

Suddenly, my nostrils were hit by the poisonous smell again and this time, I could not bear it. I pressed the button for rolling down the window where I was seated, but Bill controlled it from the controls near the driving seat. I rolled it down again and Bill rolled it up. This went on for quite a few times and Kim was enjoying me getting pissed off, while Bill was still smiling creepily. 'Seriously, what the hell is wrong with this family?' I again rolled it down and Bill pressed the button to roll it up, but the window on my side was still rolled down. A scream made all of us look at the passenger seat where Bill's wife was sitting and a loud gasp escaped both my and Kim's mouth when we saw the person now sitting there.

Bill's wife was bald and Bill had accidentally pressed the button of her window, making the wind take away her wig.

For once, none of them was smiling.

Slowly, three heads moved to glare at me. Bill was glaring at me through the rear-view mirror, and

You are reading the story above: TeenFic.Net