The Dangers of Road Rage

Others Stories | Feb 17, 2012 | 16 min read
44 Votes, average: 4 out of 5
Others Stories

The Dangers of Road Rage

Todd Martin
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"That was without a doubt the worst meal I have ever had in my life." Greg grumbled as he sped up to go around the slow-moving Ford Focus in front of him.

"It wasn't that bad." Cindi replied, wishing immediately that she'd just kept her mouth shut because she knew it would cause him to go off on one of his annoying rants.

Greg loved to complain about pretty much everyone and everything. He was one of those people who was never happy about anything and one of his very few joys in life was bitching and moaning about everything humanly possible (that, and making sure that everyone around him was as miserable as he was). Cindi had been married to him for over ten years and she'd been extremely unhappy since the very beginning due to the things that he did and said on pretty much a daily basis. She'd considered leaving him more times than she could remember but she never actually went through with it because she was terrified by the thought of how he would respond. He'd told her on more than one occasion that if she ever left him that he would find her and kill her, and she knew him well enough to know that he was serious and not just running his mouth to scare her.

It was no big secret that he had major anger management issues and that he was prone to flying off the handle at the smallest annoyance or inconvenience without a moment's hesitation. As one would expect, due to his inability to control his anger he had a great deal of difficulty in keeping any kind of steady job. Just in the last decade alone he'd been fired countless times for cussing out the customers, the people he worked with, and even his boss. He got let go once (and almost got arrested for assault) because he slammed his shift manager up against the wall and threatened to kick his ass because he had the nerve to tell Greg that if he came in late one more time that he would be written up.    If he somehow managed to not get fired he would usually end up eventually getting pissed off about something and just up and quit his job (which he had done a lot in recent years). On average he usually worked somewhere about two months or so before he was shit canned or walked off the job himself in the middle of his shift because someone or something made him mad, and as a result it was uncommon for there to be more than a hundred dollars or so in their bank account on a regular basis.

In short Greg was just an asshole. He was rude, loud, possessive, abusive, angry, and just a bad person in general. He didn't have a single friend in the world and most of the people who knew him stayed as far away from him as possible. He was the type of person who had no redeeming qualities whatsoever and he added absolutely nothing positive to society. The majority of the people who had to deal with him thought that he was a waste of human life, and they were right.

As Cindi had predicted he started in on how much he hated the restaurant where they'd just dined. It was too small and too crowded. There wasn't enough dressing on his salad. Their waiter was a smarmy prick. His steak wasn't prepared the way that he wanted (he'd sent it back twice and Cindi hoped and prayed that the cook and the other people in the back spit on it or blew snot on it as much as possible for him). It was too hot in there when they got there and before they left it was too cold. His baked potato was pretty much raw (as well as too big) and there wasn't enough sour cream on it. The people sitting next to their table were too loud and had annoying voices. It took forever for them to get their check and it was way too high for such a shitty meal. Of course all of these things were Cindi's fault because she had been the one who had picked where they ate.

He was in the middle of rambling on about how he wanted to punt kick the crying baby at one of the other tables when a car pulled out of a parking lot right in front of them, making him finally shut up. He slammed on the brakes to keep from ass ending the car while Cindi closed her eyes and stomped her foot down on the imaginary brake pedal on the floor board at the same time.

Greg managed to keep from hitting the other car and she sighed loudly in relief before thanking God silently that they weren't in an accident. Her relief was short-lived though, as he started cursing at the driver who'd pulled out in front of them and sped up so that they were right on the car's bumper, blowing the horn like a crazy person the entire time.

"What the fuck is wrong with you, you stupid son-of-a-bitch?" he spat as he slammed his foot down on the gas pedal and gripped the steering wheel so hard that his knuckles turned white.

"Don't Greg, just let it go." Cindi said, knowing full well that she was wasting her time and breath.

"You shut the fuck up, bitch! If I want your opinion I'll beat it out of you!"

She did as she was told and closed her eyes as tightly as she could as he sped up even more and started to pass the car. She mouthed a prayer to herself that his actions didn't cause them to die in a fiery crash or cause the person in the other car to pull out a gun and blow both of their heads off. She'd read in the paper and seen countless stories on the news at six about someone being killed in a road rage-fueled altercation and she really didn't want to end up as another statistic because her husband couldn't control his temper.

Greg pulled up alongside the car and slowed down. He continued blowing the horn and rolled down the passenger side window so he could scream obscenities at the other driver. Cindi slid down in her seat a little bit just in case the person in the other car did have a gun and took a shot at them so that the bullet would hit Greg instead of her.

"Stupid asshole motherfucker!" he yelled out the window, where the fuck did you learn to drive, you dumb asshole?"

He continued to scream insults but the other driver never bothered to respond, much to Cindi's relief. The car was a beat-up blue Dodge Omni with horrible window tinting (that looked like the driver had done it himself or had a blind person who knew nothing about window tinting do it for him) that was way too dark, which made it impossible to actually see who was behind the wheel. As far as Cindi knew Greg could be ranting and raving at a teenager, a middle-aged man or woman, or even an elderly person.

He finally ended his verbal barrage by telling the other driver how his or her mother liked to suck dog dicks. He took a second to flash the bird before he stomped down on the gas pedal again and sped past the car, nearly running it off the road in the process.

The rest of the ride home consisted of him bitching about how no one in their town knew how to drive and how he should have forced the other guy off the road and beaten the shit out of him. Cindi didn't say a single word and just sat there nodding in agreement as she tried her best to just tone him out.

When they got back home it was business as usual. Greg spent a little over an hour flipping through the channels on the television and complaining about how there was never anything good on while Cindi sat on the couch reading a book and trying her best not to think about killing herself.

After he had a few beers he took a shower and went to bed. She climbed into bed beside him and drifted off to sleep as he rambled on about all of the things that he was going to do (but in reality would never happen such as looking for a new job, fixing up what needed to be repaired around the house, and looking into going to school online. It wasn't long before she was sound asleep and was having wonderful dreams where she was married to someone else who treated her like a queen or ones where Greg was dead and could no longer torment her.

XXX

The sound of Greg snoring loudly work Cindi up a few hours later and she lay in bed staring up at the ceiling. She knew better than to try to wake him up to get him to stop as the last time she'd done it he'd slapped her hard across the face and threatened to smother her to death with her pillow.

She got out of bed slowly, trying her best not to disturb him, and made her way to the living room. She really didn't mind sleeping on the couch since it meant that she didn't have to share the bed with him, and if she had her way she would sleep on it every night. It wasn't the most comfortable couch in the world and the cheap material that it was made out of made her skin feel itchy after a little while but they were small prices to pay to be able to sleep alone.

She walked into the living room and was about to plop down on the couch when she saw that the front door was ajar. Automatically she got a bad feeling in the pit of her stomach (like her "Spider Sense" was tingling as her nephew would say) and she knew that something bad was about to happen.

Before she could run back to the bedroom and take her chances with waking Greg to tell him that someone had broken into their home someone grabbed her from behind. She heard the person whisper how sorry he was for what he was about to do a split second before he slit her throat wide open with a very sharp straight razor. It really didn't hurt and she honestly didn't know what had happened until she saw that she was bleeding and realized that she was having trouble breathing.

The person behind her let her go and she fell to the ground gurgling and gasping for air as she grabbed her throat in a futile effort to stop the bleeding. She crawled across the floor toward the bedroom leaving a trail of blood on the new carpet that they had just had installed (and worried absently that Greg would be pissed off when he saw that she had bled on it and probably ruined it permanently because she knew how hard it was to get blood stains out) before she slumped down face-first in a heap and closed her eyes for the last time.

The intruder stood looking at her body for a bit (and felt more than a little remorseful for having to kill her since she had nothing to do with the reason that he was there) before he turned around and started to head toward the bedroom when Greg came lumbering into the room still half asleep. He had been snoring so loud that he ended up waking himself up and once he was awake he realized that he was thirsty so he decided go to the kitchen to get a drink.

He yawned loudly and rubbed his eyes as he walked across the living room floor, not noticing Cindi until he tripped over her dead body. As he let loose with a string of his favorite obscenities and struggled to get back up the man who had paid them an uninvited visit smashed him in the back of the head several times with the lead pipe he'd brought with him, rendering Greg unconscious. He then grabbed him by the legs and started dragging him toward the door, smiling as he thought about what he had in store for Greg.

XXX

When Greg finally came to several hours later he didn't have any idea what was happening. The only things that he knew were that his head was killing him and that for some unknown reason he was sitting in his car and his hands were handcuffed to the steering wheel.

"What the fuck is going on? Is this supposed to be some sort of God Damn joke?" he roared as he struggled to free himself from the handcuffs to no avail.

He looked around and tried to figure out where he was but since it was pitch dark and he could barely see anything at all it made things difficult for him. It was very quiet outside and since he only heard the sounds of crickets chirping and the occasional hoot of an owl he figured that he must have been out in the middle of the woods somewhere outside of town. Judging by the fact that he couldn't hear the sound of any passing cars nearby he had to assume that he was somewhere deep in the woods and he didn't like that thought at all. After all, if someone had gone to all the trouble to drag him out to the wilderness miles away from town then they surely didn't have anything good planned for him. Not anything they wanted anyone else to see or hear anyway.

As he thought about all the horrible things that could possibly happen to him out there (such as being left there to slowly starve to death, being attacked by wild animals, etc) he couldn't help but feel scared, something that he hadn't felt in a very long time. He dropped the tough guy act and started screaming for help and blowing the horn, knowing full well that there wasn't anyone around who could hear him. He tugged frantically at his handcuffs in a desperate bid to get away and even though it was obvious that he was wasting his time the fear that he was feeling forced him to continue. He carried on with it for nearly five full minutes and even though he wasn't making any progress and was starting to feel exhausted he didn't stop trying until the man reached through the driver side window and put his hand on Greg's shoulder, startling him.

"I hate to break it to you, but you aren't going anywhere. Those are the good handcuffs like the cops use, not the cheap ones you buy at the sex shop that break twenty minutes after you get them home." The man said softly with a smile on his face that made Greg feel very uncomfortable.

He was a short, stick-thin guy with short black hair and terrible acne scars on his face. He had on a pair of thick black-rimmed glasses and was wearing a white dress shirt that was buttoned all the way up to the top. Greg's first thought was that he looked like Robert Carradine's character from Revenge of the Nerds. It was obvious that he was one of those egghead types who spent all of his time playing Dungeons and Dragons with his fellow dorks when he wasn't online arguing with other losers about how Star Wars was better than Star Trek for hours on end. Greg used to beat people like him up all the time in high school and he actually didn't feel scared anymore since he knew that such a wimp of a guy was responsible for his current predicament. Once he figured out how to get out of the handcuffs he looked forward to kicking the living shit out of him for a bit as it had been a while since he'd smacked anybody other than Cindi around and he was starting to get bored with that. He couldn't help but smile despite of everything once he thought about nice it would be to have a different punching bag to wail on for a change.

"Who the fuck are you, asshole?" Greg spat.

"Of course, you always have the option of gnawing your hands off like a rat in a trap!"The man said, ignoring Greg's question.

"I asked who you were, motherfucker!"

"My name's not important, Mr. Watson. Let's just say that I'm someone that you offended and now you get to pay for it."

"What the fuck are you talking about you stupid bastard?"

"Such language. I read somewhere that people who use an abundance of foul language while communicating with others suffer from a lack of intelligence. Is that true, Mr. Watson? Are you just an uneducated cretin who expresses himself mainly through the use of obscenities and curse words simply because you are stupid?"

"Fuck you, motherfucker!"

"Shall I assume that to mean yes then?"

"I'll tell you what, asshole. I don't know what your problem is or why you brought me out here, but if you let me go right now I promise I'll only break half of your bones instead of all of them." Greg snarled.

"That's a tempting offer but I think I'll pass. By the way, you really need to work on your negotiating skills. Threatening me with bodily harm probably isn't the best tactic to use if you really want me to let you go, you know?"

"Look man, I'm really not in the mood for this bullshit anymore. Just tell me what you want from me so we can get this over with and we can both just go home."

"I'm afraid it isn't that simple. There's nothing that you can do to make me let you go and there certainly isn't anything that you have that I want." The man replied, "Though I suppose an apology from you would certainly be nice."

"An apology? For what? I owe you dick. What did I do to you that makes you think I should apologize?"

"Think back to just mere hours ago, Mr. Watson. You cursed at me. You blew your horn at me and gave me the finger."

"What the fuck are you talking about? I've never seen you before in my life and I sure as fuck didn't do anything to you!" Greg snarled, feeling his blood pressure rising to the point that he was beginning to feel dizzy.

"You really are dense, aren't you?" the man sighed, rolling his eyes, "So I guess I'll have to spell it out for you. I was driving the car that you passed last night. The one that you hurled insults at and nearly ran off the road just because I made the mistake of not seeing you as I pulled out of the supermarket parking lot. Do you remember me now?"

Greg heard Cindi warning him about the dangers of road rage over and over again in his head as he tried to figure out if the man was serious or not. Surely to God no one would go to the trouble that he had just because another driver had cursed at him, but if that was the case he'd never hear the end of it from Cindi. He hated it when the bitch was right about something (which was very rare) and he hated it even more when she told him in a smug tone that suggested that she was a lot smarter than him that she'd told him so when he'd fucked something up. On the bright side though, at least when she did he always got to use her as a human punching bag as a result, so apparently she wasn't too bright if she kept doing it since she knew what the end result was going to be.

"You've got to be kidding me! You broke into my house, brought me out here and handcuffed me to my car's steering wheel just because I cussed at you a little bit? What the fuck is wrong with you?"

"My doctors have been trying to figure that out all of my life." the man replied with a shrug. "Oh, and on top of breaking into your house, bringing you out here and handcuffing you to your steering wheel I also killed your wife. Just because you cussed at me a little bit."

"You did what?" Greg asked feeling his heart beat faster and faster as he realized that he was dealing with a real nut job that was capable of anything.

"I killed your wife, or girlfriend or whoever she was. Slit her throat wide open. I can't believe that any woman in her right mind would want to be in a relationship with you but in all honesty I am sure you treated her like shit and she would probably thank me if she could for freeing her."

It took a few moments for it to totally sink in, but once he realized that the man was telling the truth and that Cindi really was dead he couldn't help but to cry (something he hadn't done since he was in first grade and had shit his pants on the merry-go-round during recess and was terrified by the thought of what his father would do to him once he found out about it). He was honestly surprised by how upset he was that Cindi was dead, but he didn't know if he was so sad because he would actually miss her or that she wouldn't be around for him to beat on anymore when he needed to relieve some tension (part of him also hated the fact that someone robbed him of the joy of murdering her himself one day).

"She was quite beautiful for a woman her age. I have no idea what she saw in a guy like you. She was a little out of your league if you want my opinion." the man said.

Greg felt his grief being replaced with white-hot anger and was about to reply to the man's insulting remark with a few choice words of his own when he heard the sound of a train whistle in the distance. Just a few seconds later he caught a glimpse of the flashing lights on the front of the train is as it got closer and closer. When he realized that the his car was sitting right on the track and the train was speeding toward him head-on he soiled his pants for a second time in his entire life, but this time he wouldn't have to worry about his dad yelling at him and kicking his ass all over the back yard while the neighbors looked on and whispered to each other about calling child services (which no one ever did).

"I'd love to stay and chat but I've got places to be and things to do. Besides, you've got a train to catch." The man grinned.

"Wait! You can't do this! Please! Just let me go!" Greg wailed as he tried with all of his might to free himself without success.

"You brought this all on yourself, Greg. You were a horrible person and you can't honestly sit there and tell me otherwise. You deserve what is about to happen to you and you know it."

"Please! I'm sorry!"

"It's too late to be sorry now, you should have thought before you acted. Every action has a consequence."

"Wait! Stop! You can't do this!"

"Goodbye Greg."

The man walked away, ignoring Greg as he begged for mercy and screamed for someone to help him to no avail. He heard the sound of the train growing louder and louder as it got closer and smiled when he heard the train whistle blast a shrill, ear-splitting warning that it was coming through and that everyone should clear the tracks. The smile on his face grew even larger as he heard the squeal of the train's brakes as the conductor tried in vain to stop once he spotted Greg's car on the track, but it was a futile effort. Unless some sort of miracle took place there was no way that it was going to be able to stop in time without taking Greg and his car out in the process.  In his mind's eye he saw Greg inside his car screaming at the top of his lungs as the sound of the train became deafening as it got closer and he couldn't help but chuckle.

He didn't even turn to watch when the train made impact with the car. He heard what sounded like a small explosion and the scream of metal meeting metal and continued walking away feeling very satisfied that his work was done. While he was sure that it was just his imagination he still could have swore that he heard Greg crying out in agony at the exact second that the train had plowed into his car. He knew that it was pretty much impossible since the sound of the collision was so loud and that he had already walked too far away to be able to hear Greg, but still the possibility that he'd actually heard the last sound that would ever come out of his mouth ever again gave him a thrill that he couldn't quite explain and made a strange tingle pass through his body.

Even though he was pretty much in the middle of nowhere the man knew that it wouldn't be long before the police, the fire department, paramedics, and just nosy people in general would  be showing up to investigate the accident so he started walking faster. It wasn't that he was worried that someone would be able to figure out that he was responsible for Greg's death (the sheriff and his deputies were all morons who couldn't find their butts in a snow storm in his opinion), but the last thing he wanted to was be around a bunch of ignorant people taking pictures of the wreckage with their cell phones and carrying on like it was the most exciting event they had ever witnessed.

He walked for over an hour and was about a half a mile from the apartment that he shared with three hamsters and a parakeet named Rodan when the beat up pickup truck blaring country music came speeding down the road out of nowhere and nearly mowed him over as he was crossing the street at the crosswalk. It was an extremely loud Chevrolet truck of some sort (he knew nothing about vehicles) that made a noise that resembled a jet engine due to the fact that it obviously didn't have a muffler. There was a rebel flag license plate on the front of it and way too many of those yellow ribbon magnets urging others to support the troops stuck in random places as well as some bumper stickers that made other drivers aware of the ignorant and backward ass opinion that the owner of the truck had regarding abortion and gay marriage.

"Get out of the road, faggot ass!" the driver yelled in a slurred voice as he swerved to keep from hitting the man.

A half-empty bottle of Miller Lite flew out of the passenger side window and hit him right in the chest, covering him with beer. He saw whoever it was on the passenger side hang his arm out of the window and give him the finger before the driver blew the horn a couple of times and sped away, leaving behind a cloud of dark smoke that made the man cough and wheeze.

My work is never done. He thought as he took the notepad out of his pocket and jotted down information about the truck (such as make, model, and part of the license plate number that he was able to catch before it took off), looking forward to paying the owner a visit in a few hours while he was most likely sleeping off his hangover.

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Diana Feb 18, 2012

Awesome write up! Sadly, I know someone pretty similar to Greg...maybe I should make him read this ;)

Amit Feb 17, 2012

nice story. good job Todd.

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