What would you give to be loved like she loves her?
The music surrounded her; it lived in her, desperate and heartbroken.
Ada sang of her love; she sang of every trial, every bad night, every good morning.
And before her eyes, the demons of Hades bowed their heads with emotion.
Satan was seen shedding tears; Anubis sobbed into his hands. Hel herself hid her face in her chest.
And so the gods gave Ada a choice; they fashioned a cruel deal, a losing bet.
Escape the realms of Hell with Laurel behind you and you are free. Free to live out the life they had always wanted.
But if you look back, if your eyes stray to Laurel as you brave the path through the realms of the underworld, Laurel will be lost to you, lost to Hell and Hades and Mictlan and Niflheim and Duat. Lost to all the realms of Death itself.
Ada remembered the way it felt to watch the world fall out from under her, the way it felt to feel the light leave her life as Laurel grimaced in pain, as the venom coursed through her veins and took hold of her heart. They had to pull Ada away, had to drag her, kicking and screaming, from Laurel’s lifeless body.
But Ada wouldn’t let that happen this time. Her gaze was steely, angry but determined. She would not look back. She would fulfill her end of the bargain.
What else was there to do? Ada agreed.
They traveled through the murky tunnels; she kept her head down so as not to look behind her, even though every instinct told her to do so.
The gates of Hell seemed so far away. How was Ada supposed to make it all the way there? How was she supposed to ignore the pulsing thoughts that begged her to turn around, to look at Laurel’s face and run as fast as she could out of this wretched place?
The realms of death passed slowly. Heads turned; demons marveled at them; sinners and tortured souls halted their screams. The unquenched fires burned a little lower; the crushing darkness felt a little less crushing, distracted in its shadows. The gnashing of teeth turned to grimacing, and the world seemed to shift, a mirror image turned on its side.
Sisiphus halted his trek, and the realm of Hades seemed to hold its breath. Cerberus stood unnaturally still; Tantalus abandoned his pursuits. The Furies watched with their leathery wings for signs of Ada’s weakness. Persephone observed, her head tilted in interest as the world shifted, the mirror turning on its side again.
The shores were littered with the dead, the walls seemed to slither and writhe, mist and shadows, and relentless cold bore down on her as poison dripped from the walls. Ada held her head firm, putting one foot in front of the other, her heart calling for Laurel, a deep relentless ache. A dragon’s footfalls echoed in her head, the blood of the guilty warm on its mouth. The rivers of the world seemed to flow through her fingers, the mirror twisting again, flitting through her hands like water.
An empty chasm opened up before her, the darkness thick and unrelenting; light is nonexistent here. The fleshless, the bones of the dead taunt her, they whisper of their trials, their challenges. The soul-crushing mountains, the winds with knives for gusts. They whisper to Ada of their world, of their journey, the valley of snakes, the bloodthirsty beasts that crave the taste of the heart. But Ada would not give them her heart, it already belonged to Laurel. She forced her way out, forced herself not to look back, to check that Laurel stood behind her.
Ada stifled a sob, she was weak and broken and there was nothing to be done for it, nothing to stop the way she needed Laurel like she needed her own heartbeat.
There must be an end to this; there must be an end to this suffering and horror, but the mirror twisted again; it twisted again. And then there was burning, burning burning burning, as the lake of fire spread out in front of her, as the caverns burned with darkness, as the serpents hissed their warnings and the evil spirits whipped the world to dust. Ada watched as a scale weighed the hearts of the dead, as the sun god made his way through the realm of death, on his way to rising in the East. She watched the enemies of the sun wait for him, she saw the gates open for him, one by one.
And just as Ada thought she might fall apart, the mirror twisted again, it folded in on itself and it seemed as if the world was opening up in front of her. It was so close.
She looked back. She looked back she looked back she looked back.
Just to see the awe on Laurel’s face, just to see the way her eyes would be shining, to see the way her mouth would be blooming into a smile.
And it was, for one stunning moment, Ada glimpsed Laurel again, like the shining sun, like the way it feels to find your way home.
And then Laurel disappeared into the dark, snatched away by the realms of death, by the cruel hand of the gods.
So, what would you give to be loved like she loves her?
[dropcap]A[/dropcap]s always, I’m screaming when I wake up. Above, my husband offers Ginger her breakfast, a glass of pink Moscato. She sips it, then chugs it, and I feel the syrupy sweetness coat my insides and push me further down. The bitch is enjoying it. Almost as much as I would enjoy getting out of here and ending all of this.
“Damn you!” I shout, but no one can hear me. Ginger’s lips don’t even move.
Not until my shithead husband leans in and kisses them. I feel the pressure from deep within, feel her tingle down below where he penetrated us last night, and I want to scream again, but I’m even further from the surface now.
“So,” says my husband while he gets dressed for work, “what do you have planned today? Should we put on Mildred to take care of Sean while I’m gone?”
“No,” says Ginger, using my lips. “We have lunch with David today.”
“Really? Fuck,” says my husband. “We’ll have to use Blair, then. Do you agree?”
Ginger nods my head.
“Can Blair handle Sean for that long out on the town?”
I groan deep within.
Ginger hears me and says, “With enough wine, yes.”
“Good,” says my husband, “then she’ll be using an Uber.”
Once dressed, he and Ginger sneak by Sean’s nursery and into the wig room. There are the others on their stands. Mildred’s putrid gray. Blair’s buoyant blonde. Ginger places our ass in the iron chair which is bolted to the floor.
“Can I have one more sip?” she asks, and my husband feeds her more pink Moscato before kissing her goodbye. The wine pushes me further down while my husband straps my arms and legs into the chair. It’s almost time. Last time I got close to escaping, but I feel that last sip of Moscato coating my insides. Then my husband does it, he slides Ginger’s blinding red wig off my head, and I’m free.
“Let me out of this chair, you bastard! I’m going to fucking kill you!”
His hands fumble to grab the blonde wig that is Blair. My screams wake Sean, and his screams join mine.
My husband holds my writhing neck and places Blair on my head while saying, “It’s for your own good, for Sean’s own good.”
“More like for your own good!”
But Blair is in place now, and she smiles into the mirror at my husband and says, “Hello, darling, may I have some chardonnay? The witch is rather loud today.”
“Of course, dear.” He offers her a glass of Kendall Jackson. “I hear you’re having lunch with David today. . .”
“Yes,” says Blair with a tone of excitement. Then it shifts and I feel her scowl before saying, “you’ll be watching Sean?”
“No,” says my husband with a worried frown, “you’ll have to bring him with you.”
Blair sighs dramatically and shakes her head. My husband unstraps her from the chair. Rubbing my wrists, she stands and almost spits before falling into compliance. “If I must.”
About ten minutes later my husband is putting Blair and Sean into an Uber. He looks at her before closing the door and heading to his car. “Call me at work if you need me.”
“Of course, darling.” She uses my disgusted lips to kiss his cheek.
At the restaurant, my brother David, the only person in my family who did not disown me when I got pregnant out of wedlock, waves Blair over to his table. Blair, looking and acting exactly like my old self, saunters over, Sean bubbling spit on her shoulder.
“Helloooo,” she says, exasperation in our vocal chords.
“Hey,” says David, “how’s the little guy today?”
“Annoying, as always,” she says, and I must agree.
Blair puts Sean in a highchair then looks at David exactly how I used to. “Trust me, he is, I’ve got the stretch marks to prove it.”
David gags, I giggle, and Sean beats his ugly baby fists on the table. Blair sits down and orders herself a glass of chardonnay.
“Listen,” says David, “Mom and I were talking last night and she thinks she might be ready to reconcile.”
I surge upwards, feeling Blair’s wig tremble on my head. She grabs it and shakily sips more wine. Sean stares at us and I’m almost convinced he can see me.
Blair clears her throat and spits out the words my husband planted inside her when she first wore the wig. “No thanks, we’re good.”
It sounds just as fake and I feel just as dissonant as I did when he first taught her. I can’t help it, like always, I have to scream where I exist, on the inside. We’re not good, you bitch!
Blair, hearing me, chugs the rest of her chardonnay. Sean sits peacefully beside her.
“What do you mean you’re good?” asks David. “All you talked about during your pregnancy was earning Mom’s forgiveness.”
Blair doesn’t remember that. She wasn’t around yet because I wasn’t married yet.
And maybe that’s why, struggling to handle her wine, Blair stands from the table and pulls Sean out of his highchair. “I think we should get going.”
David steps towards Blair, holding his hands out in a pacifying gesture. “Are you sure? I don’t think you should drive. . .”
“Don’t worry,” Blair burps, “Uber.” She clumsily orders one. “Two minutes,” she slurs.
Meanwhile, Sean gazes into Blair’s eyes. He sees me. He knows I’m in here. “Come on, little guy, you can do it. I’m sorry for calling you a brat. I’m sorry that I didn’t want you once you came. Don’t you remember when you were in my belly? How I loved you? How I cared for you? If you let me out, I’ll care for you again. I’ll love you again. I promise.”
The little bugger, my little pipsqueak, he blesses my heart by reaching up and pulling Blair’s wig right off my head.
And I’m free! I feel Sean in my arms. Now that he’s freed me I don’t need him anymore. I can’t believe he actually believes that I would care for him again. I throw him from my arms.
David dives to catch him, and I don’t care because I’m running out of the restaurant. Outside where the sun is bright, oh so bright, and I’m running away, down the street. I can’t help it. I’m dreaming of that place, somewhere far away, where none of this is real, none of this was real, where I can drink the wine I want and be the woman I want, away from him, away from both of them, and away from all the rest. I see it in the sunshine and feel it on my scalp.
But Blair’s heels, they are too tall, and I haven’t run in heels in forever. They catch an edge and my ankles crumble. The sidewalk smacks my elbow and my chin grazes brick and I’m down, I can’t move, not fast enough.
Because David is standing over me. He holds Sean, who giggles like a little fucking maniac. And I don’t want him. I don’t want any of this. But David puts a steady hand on my shoulder and Sean, that little bastard, places Blair’s wig sideways on my head while saliva slides across his grinning, toothless gums.
David straightens it. “Wow,” he says, “I like this one, but you might want to secure it a little better next time.”
“Thanks,” says Blair, “will you help me find my Uber?”
David obliges and asks, “Did you start drinking early today?”
“Why?” Blair asks.
“Usually you don’t freak out until a little later in the day, you know, after the fifth or sixth glass of wine.” He is smiling. Blair is smirking and fixing the back of her wig, fluffing the bob into place. I am scowling inside, hating David’s fucking guts.
Then he locates the car and for the second time today, I’m funneled into an Uber by a man that is supposed to love me.
Once home, Blair calls my husband. “The fucking bitch escaped in broad daylight. Your little brat ripped me right off her head.”
He comes home with something new: wig adhesive strips. Blair gets one last glass of chardonnay before he straps her into the chair and switches over to Mildred for the evening. I remain still, I don’t even try to fight him this time; there’s no point. I had my chance when the brat took Blair off my head and I blew it. Mildred’s gray wig sticks to my skull and I see the infinite future stretch out in front of me: Mildred will do the dishes, change the brat’s diapers, make my fuckhead husband dinner. Then, once Sean is asleep, Mildred will sip aged merlot until my husband switches her back to Ginger. Because my husband is hungry for more than just food. And Ginger will give it to him, and I’ll feel it, yes, I’ll feel it. And then she’ll sleep. And then she’ll wake up, and I’ll be screaming again, forever screaming, while my husband offers Ginger her daily breakfast: a tall, sparkling glass of pink Moscato.
Ian Cumings is a writer and artist who enjoys exposing the dark side of internal life. When he’s not writing, he’s either crying or looking longingly out a window. This story, like all his art, is definitely absolutely not a cry for help. He can be reached at iancumings5@gmail.com.
[dropcap]D[/dropcap]uring the summer between third and fourth grade, my buddies and I spent hours exploring the ravines along the creek and the back lots of all the new houses at the outskirts of town, amidst the mounds of freshly bulldozed dirt and discarded construction debris. We played War and Hide-and-Go-Seek and Tag until the streetlights came on.
Richie P., the type of kid who no one liked, followed us wherever we went, though we never invited him. When splitting a Twinkie with him, he’d inspect both halves to make sure he was getting the larger one. If some change fell out of your pocket while you were rolling down a hill, he’d scramble to scoop up the coins and wouldn’t give them back, even if you needed them to catch the bus home. At the bank of the creek, where we all stood to pee, he’d make fun of everyone’s dick, even though I think we all saw that his was the smallest.
I hated Richie P. I remember watching him one day, throwing dirt clods at Pete and David and José who were busy trying to catch minnows in the creek with paper cups. It crossed my mind that Richie P. was never going to be a good person. We may’ve been kids, but the rest of us innately knew we were supposed to help our friends, not hurt them. It seemed likely that Richie P. would grow up to be the same type of person he was as a kid.
I guess I was daydreaming, but it felt more like a vision. I saw a world where Richie P. was the leader. He blathered on television, telling lie after lie. I saw him sending troops into neighborhoods to round up kids who didn’t look like him and haul them off to cages. I saw him tearing up the Constitution, refusing to accept the results of the election that voted him out. Smoldering cities, vacant suburbs, dying forests. Then Richie P. wearing a grand marshal’s jacket, pinning medals to his own chest as troops marched past saluting him.
I looked around at Pete and David and José. We were standing in a trance, like we’d all just seen the same vision. Richie P., meanwhile, was on top of a small ravine, throwing rocks at a frog. One rock, two rocks, then a direct hit. The frog flopped over and went limp. Richie P. laughed.
José was closest to him. His face tightened, as though having an internal debate with himself. He walked over and gave Richie P. a good hard shove, and he went tumbling down the loose dirt slope with a cry of “Hey!”
He rolled to a stop at my feet, and I didn’t hesitate. I gave him a solid kick in the gut.
“Oof!” went Richie P.
Pete and David ran over, and José slid down the dirt slope so we were all standing around him where he squirmed on the ground. I kicked him again, and the others joined, kicking him in the gut, kicking him in the back, kicking him in the head.
He struggled for a while, but we weren’t messing around. We didn’t go crazy, but we did kick and beat him like it was our job, or like it was a game we really wanted to win.
He may’ve still been alive when we rolled him with our feet into the creek. He splashed into the water face down, and we kicked rocks and two-by-fours on top of him to keep him down. Within a few minutes, the bubbles stopped rising up around his head.
None of us said anything for a while. I felt a rush of adrenaline, but nothing much different from a good soccer match or a race on Field Day. We looked at each other. “Hide-and-Go-Seek?” someone said, and everyone fanned out to find their hiding places while I covered my eyes and started counting down from thirty.
We never talked about it. None of us had liked Richie P., he wasn’t anyone’s friend. Our parents didn’t know about him and his parents didn’t know about us. We never even bothered to get our stories straight. No one ever asked us what happened to him. The only effect the murder of Richie P. had on our lives was we couldn’t play outside after dinner for a couple of weeks. There were neighborhood search parties and a couple of news stories, and then we didn’t hear or think about Richie P. for a long time.
Years later, the four of us saw each other again at our high school reunion. We hadn’t all been together since that summer, and it was surreal to hang out on the rooftop patio of a downtown hotel with the developed city glittering. Our wives and husbands and other classmates had melted away and it was just the four of us at the table, each with a bottle of beer.
We shared a look and a smile.
“We did the right thing,” José said. It wasn’t a question.
“And I’d do it all over again,” I said.
A hover-tram glided by as I said it, a river of light that slid between the mirrored faces of the skyscrapers with a soft whooshing sound. Far above, space-freighters traced calligraphies of light against the clouds as they criss-crossed in their sub-orbital paths up to the Aerostat that hung like a Christmas ornament among the stars. All this, every shimmering detail, had been bought with the life of one troublesome boy. Everyone smiled and we all raised our bottles and clinked.
The part of the story I never knew about went like this: a construction worker stumbled across Richie P.’s corpse as he was clearing debris for some bulldozer work, back in that long-ago summer. He knelt down and looked at the boy’s lifeless face matted in mud and washed up in a mess of branches. Another worker came over to join him. They went silent for a minute or two as they both retreated into their thoughts, almost like a trance.
When they came out of it, they exchanged a few words.
“You know that thing about traveling back in time and killing Baby Hitler?” “Yeah.”
They looked at the body for another minute or so, nodding their heads, and then clapped each other on the shoulder. They went back to their bulldozers, fired up the engines, and started moving earth like nothing had happened.
A.C. Koch’s work has been published in Mississippi Review, Exquisite Corpse, and the Columbia Journal. His stories have won the Raymond Carver Short Story Award twice (2003, 2007), and another story was just named runner-up in the Tennessee Williams Short Fiction Contest. He lives in Denver where he teaches linguistics and plays guitar in Firstimers, a powerpop ensemble. Instagram: @henry_iblis and @firstimersband_denver
[dropcap]A[/dropcap]fter the bar owner paid me less than he promised for doing 45 minutes of jokes, I tipped my head back and spilled my last shot of tequila down my throat. I stuffed the cash in my pocket and dug through my jacket to make sure I had my phone and wallet. On the surface I tried to look calm, but inside I was frantic to find my keys so I could make a quick exit.
As I turned to leave, the bar owner smacked my ass.
“You’re lucky my wife is here or you’d be coming home with me tonight,” he said, gesturing to the woman behind the bar serving drinks. After witnessing her husband’s display of unwelcome affection she leaned over the bar with an angry frown on her face.
“Helen,” she said gruffly, reaching her hand over the bar to introduce herself. “You’re gonna have to pay for those drinks. We didn’t make enough money to comp them for you tonight,” she informed me.
I was on the last night of a run of comedy shows in Rawlins, Wyoming. It was as bad as I expected, and worse than I had hoped. Folks at my last show in Laramie had warned me that it would be easier to find meth in Rawlins than it would be to find fresh water. They weren’t wrong. Most of the audience members were missing teeth, and a table of young white men kept calling each other the N-word in the most confusing display of ignorance I’ve ever seen.
I needed to get out of this shit hole.
I paid Helen and felt a rush of relief as soon as I heard the jingle of my keys in my left jacket pocket. I immediately made a fast break for the door. As I passed the bigot-rednecks playing darts, one of them drunkenly caught me by the wrist. “Where you going, baby?” he slurred. I felt my hand tighten around my keys, edges cutting into the soft of my fingers, preparing to use them as a weapon. He was too drunk to hang on and I freed myself with a quick twist of my arm. “Don’t leave, funny lady!” he called.
The man lumbered after me. I began running to my car, my key pressed between my thumb and index finger, because I’d been trained early that women should keep their keys readied before walking outside. My hands shook violently and I scratched the car’s gray paint as I tried to fit the key in the lock. The man’s footsteps were getting heavier and louder. I pulled open my car door and threw myself into the front seat, slamming the door behind me and hitting the lock just as he approached.
His eyes were glassy and vacant as he violently tugged at the door handle. My keys fell to the floor as he hit the window so hard I thought it would break. I desperately felt around in the dark for my keys, shoving them into the ignition, and throwing the car into drive. The tires spun over the dirt parking lot before gaining traction and lurching the car forward, its tires screeching as the man’s beer bottle smashed against my trunk. I blew through the only stop light in town, and turned down the main road out of Rawlins, Wyoming.
I was ten miles out of town before I loosened my grip on the wheel, my breath finally returning to a relatively normal rhythm. Feeling safe, I turned on the radio hoping music would calm my nerves. I felt an ache behind my eyes and resentment in my chest as I remembered the many times male comedians had told me that being afraid was silly. “Bad things only happen if you seem scared…Act brave and no one will fuck with you,” they’d say. Men didn’t understand that women were taught to be afraid every waking moment. It’s a defense mechanism. We must be afraid so that we can spot danger.
To my dismay the only radio stations were country, and after the third Toby Keith song I turned off the radio. How did I even know it was Toby Keith? I’d been on the road in these shit towns for too long. My fear of not paying rent overpowered my fear of dangerous men in Trump Country. There are plenty of scary men on every corner of the Earth, and there’s no reprieve if you’re living on the street.
No one told me that comedy wasn’t made for women when I started almost ten years ago. And now I lack the skills and resumé to retreat back into a corporate day job where I would go home every night to a dog and a boring fiancé with a salary job. I was stuck with living as a comedian, the kind of life I didn’t understand when I chose it.
I settled into silence and felt relieved that I’d be back in Denver before the sun came up. Just as I went to look for my phone to plug in directions, I felt the car choke and spit, slowly losing momentum. I pulled over, confused as terror filled my chest. In the panic of a quick exit I’d forgotten I needed gas. I let out a strained exhale and remembered I could call AAA.
Headlights popped up over the horizon, traveling towards me in the rearview mirror. Fuck. Those men had followed me. My hands shook as I realized my phone was no longer in my jacket. “Shit!” I whispered to myself, confronted with the fact that it had fallen out during my sloppy escape. I didn’t want to be in the car when the truck reached me. There’d be nothing but a window between me and him and I knew he’d happily break the glass to get to me.
I grabbed a napkin out of a fast food bag, and with a pen in my glove box scribbled “Went for gas. Be back soon.” I clicked the dome light off so it wouldn’t light up when I opened the door. I pinned the note under my wiper and headed into the darkness of the brush along the road.
I ran about a hundred feet when I tripped and fell, scraping my face on a rock as I hit the ground. I heard the truck approach as I crawled to a fallen tree big enough to hide behind. I tried to keep my breath quiet. I could hear the truck come to a stop on the road near my car. The engine cut, the door swung open and slammed shut. I took in what information I could with my ears. After about a minute I heard the door open and close again, feeling a wave of relief, hoping the man had decided to head back to Rawlins.
I lay there waiting for the truck to leave when a flashlight tore through the darkness in my direction. My heart slammed into my throat and I began to cry. He was headed towards me. I froze as I heard footsteps getting louder. In a panic, I clenched my keys tight enough to draw blood, and then suddenly felt what seemed to be a garter snake glide across my neck. Unable to sit quiet any longer I jumped up, throwing the snake towards the light and yelling “Leave me alone! Please just leave me alone!” The tone of my voice resembled a bullied child rather than an adult woman. As the tears blurred my vision, I watched as the light stopped about fifteen feet from where I stood.
“What the hell are you doing out here?” I heard a woman’s voice say. A woman—not the scary heckler man. I slowly opened my clenched eyes to find the bar owner’s wife staring at me in complete confusion.
“Uh—um—I’m sorry, I thought you were someone else,” I said as I wiped the tears from my eyes and the blood from my cheek.
“Those boys are too drunk to come after you,” said Helen. “I hid their keys from them hours ago. You dropped your phone on your way out the door, and I thought I’d be able to catch you. I didn’t think I’d find you out here trying to get eaten by coyotes.”
“I ran out of gas,” I explained, trying to regain my composure.
“Well let’s go,” said Helen.
I felt foolish as we headed back to town in her old pickup truck. Toby Keith played on the radio and a red Make America Great Again hat rested on the dash. I guess those kind of white women did exist. I stole a few glances of Helen as we drove back to town. I realized then that she wasn’t scowling earlier. She wasn’t angry—she was tired.
We didn’t exchange any words on the way back to Rawlins. When we arrived I filled a gas can and went into the tiny station to pay. It wasn’t until we turned back out onto the main road that Helen began to talk.
“I’m sorry those boys scared you. They don’t mean any harm. Boys are just being boys,” she said.
That’s exactly the kind of thing I’d expect a Trump supporter to say, and I replied, “That’s not really acceptable behavior. I was really afraid.” I said it quietly, but sternly, wanting to express my disapproval but not wanting to alienate my unlikely knight in shining armor.
“I know,” Helen conceded, “but there isn’t much that women can do to change the behavior of men. God wired them that way—it’s biblical. Best to just keep your head down,” she said, as if this was fact and not opinion.
I didn’t respond, knowing that I wouldn’t be able to convert this Trump supporter into a feminist in the seven miles between here and my abandoned car. When we reached the car, Helen and I both got out of the truck, she carrying her flashlight in order to aid the process. I thanked her for her help.
“I never heard a woman talk like you did tonight,” Helen cut in unexpectedly. “That was really cool.”
“Oh thank you,” I said, surprised, not expecting this Trump supporter to like my jokes and ideas.
“Yeah, I never tried to be funny or talk like that in all my life. You’re really brave. I could never do that,” she said with a faint smile.
“I’m not brave,” I said. “I ran into the bushes like a scared cat.” We both laughed.
“Thank you for helping me tonight,” I added. “I might’ve died out there if you didn’t find me with your flashlight. I really appreciate it,” I said sincerely.
“No problem,” she replied. “I’m glad I caught you. Those iPhones are expensive. I’d have to drive all the way to the Walmart in Laramie to get me one of those.”
We both sat there awkwardly for a moment as my car idled on the dark road.
“Well you better get back to town for more gas. I’ll follow you until you reach the station,” she said reassuringly.
As Helen started to head back to the car I yelled out to her, “Hey Helen! You can share your thoughts and ideas too. You don’t have to be a comedian, and you most certainly do not need to be brave.” I tried not to sound too preachy.
She looked at me for a moment with her signature scowl, and then a smile spread across her face. “You’re right. If a scared little girl like you can talk to all those men like that, I certainly can too.”
As I headed back into town I considered the evening. The show was shit, the pay was shit. Those men had terrified me and now I was definitely too tired to make it back to Denver by morning. But in the end I realized that between me and Trump, at least one of us was actually making America great again.
Stand-up comic Christie Buchele made a name for herself by the heart-wrenching and hilarious realities of being a woman with a disability. Christie has been featured on Viceland’s “Flophouse,” and “Hidden America with Jonah Ray.” Christie co-hosts a witty relationship advice podcast, “Empty Girlfriend,” and is one-third of the all-female Denver comedy powerhouse, “The Pussy Bros.”
