I’ll get around to posting more pictures I suppose.
Thom Sullivan is Almost Killed in an Act of Gang Violence
I’m not a proud man. If I share a few more of these stories, I will have well-illustrated that point, but regardless, as it stands now I am asserting that I am not a proud man.
Let’s back up. Several years back, I was a regular Livejournal user, and filled the blog with my teeny angst about how people are church were duplicitous and how I “OMG JUST LOVED THIS BAND SO MUCH”.
(and I wonder why people read my writing and believe I’m actually a woman…)
Anyway, I was a regular contributor to a particular band’s livejournal community, which gives me about as much credibility as say, Barrack Obama on the topic of pap smears; no one doubts that the man is articulate, if a bit under-prepared for tackling the material. But if there is one thing that the internet has taught me, it is that credibility is for suckers. There I was, or at least the eighteen year old version of me, being propositioned by a sixteen year old in Florida to go down and visit her, presumably to consumate on some animal lust, but also because I was “OMG SO TOTALLY AWESOME”.
Eighteen year-old me was too smart (read: cowardly) to go through with that, so he just went on about his life, going to college, making money, and generally making increasingly poor decisions. After two years of constant nagging to come down and visit this harpy, I checked the fundage and realized I had enough money lying around for a Spring Break trip to Florida to visit this girl I had never met, personally chatted with, or even knew in any other sense than the vague bit of history one gets from reading a Livejournal written on the effects of one barbituate or another.
Like I said, increasingly bad decisions.
I sat in my hotel room and called the phone number she had provided. Disconnected. Awesome. I left her a Myspace message which was promptly returned with the promise that she and her friends were on her way to pick me up and that we would go to the beach, or do whatever it is that teenagers did.
It was midnight, and I was still waiting, catching up on old episodes of NCIS. I’d been stood up in Florida. I wasn’t some creepy guy. This was, in no way, shape, or form, my idea. I’d been stoically resisting for two years. Serves me right, I suppose. How dare I keep that bitch waiting.
Oh well, fuck it. I’m in Florida. I’d start the next day with vim and vigor, I thought as I turned off the T.V.
Fifteen minutes later, while I still silently fumed in my head about being stood up, I hear the roar of a large diesel engine pull up in the parking lot. Several hard soled feet ran up the stairs and pounded on the door next to mine. There were sounds of a door getting kicked open, shouting, followed by a loud Thump! and the sounds of dragging.
I froze. Sure, I could do a lot of things, though only shitting my pants came to mind. I had no weapon. Surely the assailants, observing for any sign of detection would hear me calling the cops, and the corkboard door was sitting next to a glass window that almost spanned the width of the room. I just reasoned I’d be quiet for a minute…
That was when the phone rang.
I don’t know why I thought, “Oh! It must be Kayla apologizing for being seven hours late!” But I suppose thats not what anyone in a horror movie thinks when they do something stupid, like taking a shower or making themselves a sandwich.
“Hello?”
There was no response, only heavy breathing… and then a dialtone.
Fuck, fuck, fuck… now they know someone is in here. I froze, waiting for any sign of movement from the outside when I received a second call. Might as well answer now…
“Hello?”
“Did you see it?” came the response from the deep, urban accent of Jacksonville, Florida.
“Say again?”
“This is room 206, right? Did you see it?” The voice was insistant, antagonizing.
“No man. I don’t know what you’re talking about.”
Dialtone…
I piled what I could of the furniture in front of the door and hoped the criminals wouldn’t be smart enough to break the glass. I spent the night perched awake behind my barricade.
I flew out the next day.
Thanks a lot, Kayla.
