Escape From Kentucky

Matt Ramirez and Alice Logan joined hands and let the soothing sounds of “Oh” by Stone Mecca wash over their exhausted bodies. Just a few more miles on the road and they’d be free at last. Matt took especial care not to drive over the speed limit lest he be pulled over by “Kentucky’s finest”. They’d take one look at his dark skin and wouldn’t think twice about pulling the trigger. Such thoughts caused Matt to accidentally squeeze too hard on Alice’s hand, to which she yelped and he promptly apologized.

“It’s my father, isn’t it, Matt?” asked Alice.

“It’s not just him,” said Matt. “It’s that whole group of assholes and whack jobs he sides with. I can’t go anywhere in Kentucky without seeing a burning cross or a burning swastika. Even when I close my eyes to sleep at night…” That last sentence was punctuated with a sigh as he was lost for further words.

Alice saw the pain etched in Matt’s otherwise handsome face and hers suddenly became visible too. That black eye he received healed quite nicely, though it was noticeable from miles away. All of this hatred over something as stupid as the color of someone’s skin. How senseless and cruel, she thought. She reached into the glove box and pulled out two items: a bowie knife and a manila envelope.

“I’m not going to lie to you, Matt,” said Alice in her sweet southern belle voice. “It’ll only be a matter of time before daddy finds us. If he does, I want you to have this knife. I’ll keep the envelope in case things get too heated.”

“What’s in the envelope?” asked Matt.

“Something my father won’t like. There’s no telling what the hell he might do if he sees what’s inside.”

“Like we need him to be angrier than he already is,” sighed Matt.

“He would have been angry regardless. Racist assholes like him always are. That’s why I’ve got a lifetime of lashes on my ass. Every little thing. Every stupid little thing!” Alice punched the dashboard and almost inflated the airbags.

“Hey, hey, hey, take it easy!” said Matt as he barricaded his girlfriend with his thick arm. “Everything’s going to be alright, Alice. I’m not going to let anything bad happen to you. Let’s just get the fuck out of this god-awful state and we’ll see what happens from here….Alice?...What’s wrong now?”

Alice’s icy blue eyes widened as she gazed into the rear-view mirror. Matt took a peek as well and said, “Uh-oh” when the source of his girlfriend’s horror came in the form of a massive pick up trick with a confederate flag paint job. He squinted into the mirror and saw the scraggly bearded face of an older man in overalls chewing on slimy tobacco. “That’s him, isn’t it?”

“Who else would it be?” sobbed Alice while wiping away her tears with her bare arm. The couple held hands even tighter and said their I-love-yous before Matt pressed down on the accelerator, giving zero fucks about the police potentially pulling him over. But the faster his SUV went, the further the pickup truck chugged along, spewing smog into the sky like a factory smokestack.

The pickup speeded close enough to tap Matt’s bumper, to which Alice squeaked and hugged her boyfriend’s whole arm. Matt never took his eyes off the road and pressed even harder on the accelerator. But the more he pressed, the harder the pickup truck tapped his bumper. “Son of a fucking bitch!” Matt roared. He didn’t know where the hell to go since there were ditches on both sides of the otherwise empty freeway.

Matt’s sniper sight turned to distracted rage when he saw another flaming cross off in the distance, complete with bigots in hoods dancing around and chanting. Alice tried to keep him focused with squeaks of his name, but all Matt heard was the many racial slurs he’d been subjected to all of his life. Nigger. Spick. Spigger. Porch monkey. Wetback. Being half-black and half-Mexican really brought out the creativity and imagination of his prejudiced tormentors….said no biracial man ever.

Matt’s grip on Alice’s hand tightened as the truck rammed hard into his bumper, causing the SUV to spin out of control and crash into the ditch. The couple screamed and cursed throughout the whole collision, shattered glass flying into them like a hailstorm of bullets, airbags and seatbelts being their only saving grace…or so it seemed.

The red in Matt’s vision wasn’t just hotheaded rage. It was the warm, copper-scented blood trickling down from his eyebrows and forehead. Any vision he still had was obstructed with blurriness. Looking at his own cut up arm felt like he was on acid…and drunk…and stoned. He reached across to the passenger’s seat and felt around for Alice’s arm. He shook it in an attempt to wake her up, but she barely moved an inch. “Come on, baby girl, wake up! Don’t die like this!” begged Matt with glass in his gums.

The excruciating feeling of having his puffy hair yanked on cancelled out the slashes tormenting Matt Ramirez’s body. At least lying dormant in a ditch lent itself to a somewhat peaceful slumber. This was war. And as such, he reached around for the bowie knife and kept a death grip on the handle before being jerked out of the vehicle by none other than Jesse fucking Logan, Alice’s father.

Matt wanted nothing more than to slash Jesse’s throat open like a slaughterhouse cow, but his normally muscular body felt weaker than a grandma who slipped and fell in the bathtub. Every time he went for the slash, the slashes in his arm set the rest of his body ablaze with agony.

Jesse wrestled the knife out of Matt’s hand and held the blade to the “nigger’s” throat. The old man’s body odor along with the tobacco sloshing around in his mouth made Matt want to puke himself inside out. “You ain’t going nowhere with my daughter, you little coon. In fact, you’d been sticking that ugly black thing in her for far too long. I think it’s time we do something about that.” Jesse went to work in pulling off Matt’s jeans and underwear, to which the sluggish victim put up a minimal struggle due to the burning pain he was in. Holding the blade up to Matt’s genitals, Jesse asked, “Any last words before I cut you from asshole to appetite?”

Matt spit out the glass in his mouth and allowed the nickel-flavored goodness to descend upon his throat and tongue. He took a few deep breaths before resorting to his final act of defiance, the one act he could actually perform without torturing the shit out of his own body. “You call yourself a father?” The brown-toothed smile on Jesse’s face made Matt shiver like a naked Eskimo. “I know Alice better than you ever will. Underneath all of that hatred you tried to teach her, there’s a beautiful and intelligent woman. I don’t look at her and see the lashes you gave her. I look at her and see someone I want to spend the rest of my life with. Looks like I’ll get my wish one way or another.”

“That’s some sweethearted poetry you’ve got there, nigger,” said Jesse while mockingly wiping away a fake tear with his free finger. “But there ain’t no such thing as magic here in our great nation. You’ll get plenty of that when you’re burning in hell with the rest of the sinners, boy. Later, tater!”

Matt could feel the blade opening a fresh wound on the base of his penis. Slowly. Painfully. Torturously. Jesse had all the opportunities in the world to finish him off straight away, but instead chose to pick the wings off of the proverbial butterfly. If Matt got any sicker to his stomach, his vomit would result in more violence than his torture and car crash combined.

And then out of the corner of his blurred vision, he saw an angel descend upon Jesse Logan. A blood-soaked angel who nonetheless looked beautiful and radiant in her teal dress, glass shards aside. In that small moment of temporary salvation, Matt smiled his handsome smile. And then Jesse shoved his own daughter to the ground and trained the blade on her. The smile was dead, just like the couple would be in a few seconds.

“I didn’t raise you to be no nigger-lover, Alice,” sneered Jesse while spitting tobacco in his own daughter’s face. “You’re a disgrace to this family. You’re a disgrace to my people. You’re a disgrace to God himself! You see that cross burning out there? That’s going to be you and your lover once I send both your asses to hell.”

“Be….before you kill us…” stuttered Alice. “Open this…” She lifted her battered arm just high enough to hand Jesse the manila envelope.

Jesse shrugged and said, “Why not? It’s the least I could do for my baby girl before she spends eternity getting butt fucked by the devil.” He took the envelope and slashed it open with the bowie knife. He read the contents inside at first with an arrogant grin. That grin slowly faded into wide-eyed shock. He lost control of his jaw and allowed the rest of his tobacco to splatter all over his daughter’s leg. “This is bullshit! This ain’t real!”

“Oh, it’s very real, daddy. Looks like you’ll be going to hell with me!” said Alice with a bloody grin.

“No way…no way in fucking hell…” Jesse dropped the paperwork and held the blade to his own throat. “I’m sorry, Jesus! I’m sorry for everything!” In one swift motion, Jesse D. Logan slashed his own throat and plopped to the ground dead as a doornail, covering both his daughter and her lover with his viscous life juices.

Although Matt felt a weight the heaviness of Jesse’s truck being lifted off of him, he couldn’t help but give his girlfriend a confused frown. Alice smiled her beautiful smile at him and said, “That was a DNA test, my love. My daddy has a little good in him after all.”

“He’s black?” asked Matt, to which Alice nodded. “That’s some sick ass irony.”

“It is. And when those Klan bastards come running over here to see what’s up, they’ll find that paper work and know their whole bullshit is just that: pure cow manure. They can kill us both, but love itself never dies. Hold my hand, just like we did in the car.”

As soon as Alice reached out, Matt found the strength in his left arm to squirm over and hold hands with his girlfriend. In this moment of beauty, he didn’t care about the Klansmen rushing over with their hateful rhetoric. He didn’t even care about the burning crosses that haunted his mind like schizophrenic ghosts. All he felt was love. His heart beat faster, the wounds stopped hurting, and even his blood-soaked penis couldn’t help but stand up for what felt right. Alice gave him a little giggle and said, “If only we could do that in front of these racist assholes.”

“I love you, Alice.”

“I love you too, Matt.”