the torturing will continue until morale improves

I don’t mind the Cubs. I’m not really a big sports guy, so I don’t know if they’re like, problematic or anything. They kinda just seem like any other baseball kinda team to me? (Please let me know if I’m ever swerving out of my lane by saying something like that, by the way; I’m really trying my hardest to learn and do better.)

But when you're so cold from having just got kicked out of the hostel where all your stuff is still up in the room, and they don't believe that you had ever checked in and that you were ever supposed to be in there in the first place, and when you start to choke up in confusion they say they’re going to call the cops if you don’t immediately leave the property so you have no choice but to run out into the cold city night without even a jacket, snow swirling around catching the taillights but in a shitty bleary unromantic gray way and you try to take a hit off your $10 disposable weed pen ($13 after tax) for a bit of warmth, that little disposable oil battery that you were so brave sneaking through the TSA all the way from Cali (where the weed is so much cheaper AND it’s better for you), but the light blinks because its out of juice and you don’t know where you can go to recharge it and suddenly you realize you're standing on the curb and a kind stranger has found you and is offering to give you a real taste of Chicago if you just get in the back of his big warm car and, hey, the whole reason I came here was cause I want that authentic experience and also to not freeze to death, and who better to make all my dreams come true than a local, he's even wearing a Cubs hoodie, you kinda can’t say no, right?

So I climb into the back seat of his nice toasty American-made SUV and he punches Portillo's into the GPS and I buckle up and suddenly it’s just like I’m a kid again, going out to eat with my parents. Well, just one of them, but that’s accurate to my childhood experience too.

He asks if I have anywhere to be or if anyone’s expecting me and I whine a bit when I say nooooo but he just chuckles and tells me he’s gonna show me someplace really cool and I say that sounds nice. My legs dangle around as I begin to warm up and I turn to look out the window and the snow is a cute little screensaver again, instead of a bitter cold reality I can’t shelter myself against. I reflexively try to take another hit off the weed pen but I forgot that it’s still empty.

It’s all kind of hard to say no to in the moment.

We pull into the drive-thru and I squint through the snowy window and I can’t read the menu but he says don’t worry I’ll order for you, I settle back into the seat and listen to faint Christmas music playing from inside the restaurant, or maybe from another car, but also enjoying the otherwise mostly silence in this one.

A few minutes later he gets three bags from the window and hands one back to me as he pulls back onto the road. I gleefully tear into mine and there’s a big thing of fries and an Italian beef with gravy and both types of peppers (I should look up these actual terms, I don't wanna be appropriative of the local foodie culture) and he hands me a big milkshake too and I’m so happy, I have warm food and warm feelings and feel safe and happy again and the next several minutes are spent laser focused on ravenously devouring my meal, and it’s only when all the food is gone, greasy wrappers and fry boxes and the empty milkshake cup all carefully crumpled up and placed back into the bag for easy disposal, that I sit back rubbing my stuffed belly and glance out the window again, all I see is a gray snowy dead expanse and I realize we’re no longer in the city, or any place I actually recognize.

I ask where we’re going and he doesn’t answer. I theorize he just didn’t hear me and continue not testing that theory.

It’s getting kind of cold; I’m realizing his window has been cracked open this whole time, the heater isn’t on so all the warmth has slowly leached out of the car into the vast snowy expanse. I scrounge around and realize the dark floor of the car isn’t plush limousine carpet, just old clothes strewn around. With the italian beef aromas all safely contained within me and my sinuses warming up, I realize it smells kinda bad in here.

I awkwardly pull at the door handle; not because I want to hurl myself out onto the road or anything, just to see if it would open, for future reference. But it doesn’t.

I think about asking where he’s taking me again, but I realize there really can’t be a good answer to that question at this point. My stomach grumbles. I wish I was somewhere warm and safe again.

---

It’s dark out when I come to again. I must’ve dozed off to conserve energy. Luckily we’re still driving.

From back here it’s hard to get a good angle on the guy’s face, dimly lit up by the navigation app on his phone that’s showing we’re only a few minutes away from somewhere. His brow tightens and I think he noticed me waking up. I think I ask him where we’re going again, and maybe he still just didn’t hear but he definitely doesn’t answer.

He still hasn't closed his window, but I realize that he’s wrapped himself in a crusty old green and yellow blanket that was on the floor earlier. If I’d woken up with really miraculous timing, maybe I could’ve gotten away while he was parked for that, but if I had that kind of luck, I probably wouldn’t be locked in a stranger’s car on a dark snowy night to begin with.

He pulls off the side of the road onto a dark shoulder overlooking a sad little ditch, just a couple of feet down, but it’s flat enough all around that it would still hide me from the road for long enough that he could get away with something bad.

He kills the lights. I hear him unbuckling his seatbelt, his form silhouettes against a distant light back on the freeway, flurries of white piling up on the glass and all around us as he tugs his GO CUBS GO hoodie off.

I unbuckle my seatbelt, shivering and whimpering as I scoot back to the third row of seats, but he doesn’t miss a beat, just keeps approaching me with that silent unknowable menace. By the time I hear his switchblade click open, I barely even have to react. I knew it would be coming any second now. I’ve read movies, I’ve seen books.

"Didn't your parents ever tell you not to get in a car with a stranger?"

The light behind him crescendos as his blade catches to reflect it just so, horns swelling on the soundtrack as the sight burns into my wide terrified pupils, the dark space illuminated momentarily, then for another moment, and then another…

And those horns kinda sound a lot like a truck’s-

The entire world slams apart around me as the out-of-control semi rams through all those feet of steel designed to deform and crush, deflecting the impact away from my vulnerable little body. We tumble around in the washingmachinelike sleetstorm of twisted metal and cold glass and shards of ice and ragged shirts and stale fries and a big heavy bleeding body as we all tumble along into the dark night. As the SUV comes to a rest on its ceiling I somehow find the coordination to scramble my way through, using a thick piece of cloth that catches under my hand to wriggle out through a jagged windowpane towards the fire illuminating the flurries and the darkest indigo sky, a beacon in the darkness blazing like the cherry on the end of a cigarette of a trailer brandishing the BUCK-A-POP'S DOLLARSTYLE MERCHWORLD logo in chic saturated colors, peeling off from the heat of the flames roaring all around.

I put something to my lips. It’s my vape and it still doesn’t work.

In the numb cold, I tug the tattered cum-stained Cubs hoodie on. It smells like menace and onion ring grease, but it provides me with enough warmth that I’m able to stay conscious until paramedics arrive and get me to stop sitting cross-legged on the snow, breathing in the toxic merchandise fumes, suckling on the dead Ice Cream Cake cart.