CHRISTOPHER MALONE - WHITE KNUCKLE

Christopher Malone is a Maryland writer, teacher, and musician.  When he's not busy working, he enjoys time with his wife and son.  His most recent novel, Harold in the Name of Love, was published by Silver Bow Publishing.  His first novel is called Hangdog

​White Knuckle

Ricky Forsythe’s closest friends since early childhood were now infamous, and for the most terrible reason imaginable. John Grieves and Jackie Copenhaver’s mugshots were on the front page of The Daily Whig’s website and rapidly shared across every internet connection in town.  It was a grim portrait; the two of them looked haggard and ruined – the way Ricky looked right now.  
The news was his call to action.  He was seriously going to kick it this time, because he had no other choice.  If the heroin didn’t kill him, he was worried that one of his best friends might.  There would be no big speeches made about good intentions or changing ways; instead, Ricky left quietly, while there was still a chance to make it out alive.  
He picked a spot that would take him through the woods near Doc Grove Street, down to the old ravine that used to be their childhood camping spot.  He abandoned his bike by the side of the road and traveled ahead on foot, forging through as quickly as he could with the early July sunshine bearing down on him oppressively.  The heat would not subside for some time; not until the sun crept beneath the line of trees that surrounded the immense cornfields of the otherwise empty rural area where Ricky, John, and Jackie had grown up.  It was the perfect place to do battle with the drug and fight the good fight. He’d win it, too. He’d recapture that sense of self he’d lost from hitting the needle before dealing the leftovers for easy money, because he knew now what he refused to believe then:  
He was weak. 
His friends were weak. 
The world of drug dealing had consumed them entirely.
Now he needed to kick the habit.  After that, he’d leave town for good.  The confidence that he could do it, however false it was, spurred Ricky on through the tall stalks of nearly ripe corn, nipping and picking at him as he made his way to the woods.  Once there, the path quickly descended into the deep embankment that housed the abandoned railway where Ricky and his friends had spent many a night hiding out from their parents and the rest of the world.  
In its glory days, the railway ran through the farmlands, primarily hauling crops to the broader world outside.  After all, the big cities couldn’t grow their own food, and if they wanted to thrive, they needed what towns like Grace Harbor and the surrounding farms could provide for them.  That was the past, though. Time moved on, and so did the big cities.  
It was every small town’s swan song.  Demand for locally grown crops gradually diminished, and even with increases in technology, farming only got harder in the face of corporate competition.  Once agriculture had almost completely collapsed in the area, the most prominent farms sold off the lion’s share of their land to developers who were keen on creating semi-secluded suburban paradises, and Grace Harbor’s second life began.  The railway became a relic from the way things used to be, and fell into disuse before being completely abandoned. Now those rusted tracks were tucked behind the few small farms that remained, lining either side of Doc Grove.
Ricky, John, and Jackie had grown up in one of the neighborhoods that used to farmland, transformed to look like a blissful area where one could escape the busyness of metropolitan life. When their parents had moved into the prefab homes that were all neatly symmetrical and nearly identical to each other, they never considered that they were trading a chaotic city life for an irrepressibly boring existence out in the sticks.  So it was for their children. Maybe the three boys were damned from the start, growing up in a community that provided no real sense of culture and no work to alleviate their idle hands before they could become the tools for the devil.  
They tried earnestly in the beginning, though, long before they discovered the market for pain pills and heroin.  As kids, they explored every inch of road that their bikes could take them, including Liberty Avenue, the road they all lived on.  It was an isolated stretch of pavement, roughly two and a half miles in length, dumping out to Highway 272 on the one end, and joining up with Doc Grove at the other.  The boys rarely ventured toward the highway; eighteen-wheeled vehicles often used 272 to navigate around interstate tolls, and their bikes didn’t stand a chance against them.  Instead, they’d meet out in front of Jackie’s house, whose parents were nicest to them, and hang out, enjoying drinks and snacks before they’d hop on their bikes and pedal out to the stop sign at Doc Grove.  
From there, a right turn led to a steep downhill ride toward Route 2, the stretch of road that ran alongside the river before a grueling climb up to the Conestoga Dam, which was cool to throw rocks off of, but not much else.  That trip was only for mild days, though. One ride to the dam on a hot day taught them how miserable the ride back from the dam could be, pedaling uphill non-stop while the sun beat down on their backs for the three miles it took them to get home.
More often than not, the boys took a left turn onto Doc Grove instead.  Sure it started with an uphill slant, but after roughly five minutes of pedaling, the ground quickly leveled out and it made for an easy bike ride toward open farm land ripe for exploration.  That was how they found the old train tracks, and as boys, that was where they established their own private fort.
***
When the news about Jackie and John broke, Ricky panicked and came up with a plan that could only make sense to a junkie.  He’d get high one last time, go to the camping spot, and ride out the initial withdrawal symptoms. It wasn’t his first time drying out, and he knew what to expect; seclusion was a requirement.  The train tracks were hidden enough, and Jackie and John hadn’t gone there in years. Privacy would be his ticket to getting clean.
He got his “goodbye high” and meant to leave the house by noon, but he accidentally nodded out and didn’t wake up until half past two, after an obnoxious pounding on the front door of his parents’ home had roused him from his stupor.  Ricky leapt off the couch in the basement and raced up the stairs. If it was a cop, he wanted to his spare his mother the embarrassment of having to open the door. Instead of the police, though, it was someone way worse: Mrs. Copenhaver.  The look on her face suggested there would be no formalities exchanged. 
“Where is Jackson?” she demanded in a voice that gave Ricky chills.  She looked frantic. Her hair, which Ricky remembered as a beautiful, honey colored brown when he was a kid, was now streaked with gray, and going in all directions.  The bags under her bloodshot eyes suggested she’d been crying instead of sleeping, and there was alcohol on her breath.
“I haven’t seen Jackie since…” Ricky began.
“Don’t give me that,” Mrs. Copenhaver spat, cutting him off completely.  “I go through all the trouble of lawyers and judges just to make his bail, and this is how he repays me?  Running off to get high with his drug buddy?”
Ricky’s eyes widened.  “Did Jackie say something about coming over here?”
“What do you think?” she barked at him.
“I swear to God, Mrs. Copenhaver,” Ricky protested, “Jackie isn’t here.”
“One lies and the other swears to it!” Mrs. Copenhaver muttered.  Without warning she blew right by Ricky, heading down the stairs to the basement.  Ricky trailed her, dreading that she might wake up his mother, who had gone back to night shifts at the hospital.    
“Jackson Copenhaver, you get out here now!”  She yelled for her son like he was still ten, but there was a quality to her voice now that hadn’t existed back then.  What used to be the tone of a mother commanding her child to fall in line now had an air of desperation in it. She dropped to her knees, checking underneath the couch, as if she were looking for a missing wallet or set of keys instead of a full-grown person.  
Ricky stared down at her, unsure of what to say, frozen in place.  He feebly attempted to quiet her with the occasional “Mrs. Copenhaver, please!” and “My mother’s sleeping upstairs!  I swear he isn’t here!”  but his pleas were drowned out by hers.
They carried on this way for several minutes when, in the breath of silence between Mrs. Copenhaver’s calls for her son, a soft voice came from behind Ricky.  He closed his eyes tightly against its tidal force.
“Mary?”
Mrs. Copenhaver looked up to find the one person who could comprehend her pain and frustration.
“Oh, Donna!” she cried out.  “You haven’t seen Jackson, have you?  We paid his bail and took him home, but when I woke up this morning, he was gone, and I thought maybe… I thought…” 
She struggled to find the words she was looking for,  grasping for something resembling normalcy – as if it were another one of those “Look at what our boys have gotten themselves into!” types of situations, but her eyes betrayed the raw sadness of what she had raised up and was therefore responsible for.  Ricky’s mother, overflowing with sympathy for her friend, walked past her son, fell to her knees, and locked Mrs. Copenhaver in a tight embrace.  Ricky watched this happen with the discomfort of an intruder barging in on one of life’s most intimate moments. He felt completely drained. His mother didn’t even acknowledge his presence.  He may as well have already disappeared, as far as she was concerned.  
All three of them could’ve shared mutual feelings of disappointment in what Jackie and John had done; they could’ve taken comfort knowing they weren’t actually complicit in what had gone down.  That’s not how the nature of friendship or the relationship between mother and son works, though. Those cruel bonds twisted them into thinking there was something more that they could’ve done. Grief and guilt encumbered each of them in pain and humiliation.  There was blood on everyone’s hands. 
Ricky stood transfixed by the two mothers comforting and supporting each other. Unable to say anything, he turned away and let them have their moment. He had already wasted too much time at his mother’s house.  He went upstairs to his old bedroom, grabbed the overnight bag he’d packed, and left his mother’s house in silence. He would make everything up to her when he was clean, but to get to that point, he had to put his plan into action, especially now. Jackie Copenhaver had skipped bail.
***
As most people were setting up their barbeque grills or proudly driving by with their flags waving out of the backs of their pick-up trucks, Ricky’s frail and frantic frame furiously pedaled along Doc Grove.  He gave no thought to the star-spangled homes he rode by, decked out in all of their old glory. He moved as quickly as he could, soaked in sweat, and then veered off the pavement, ditched the bike, and disappeared into the corn field near the tracks.  When he got to his intended camping spot, he realized that in his rush, he forgot several important elements for personal survival. Although he remembered his bed roll and the change of clothes that were going to be necessary after a night of sickness, he had failed to grab extra water, food, and a working lighter; there’d be no way for him to even make a campfire to comfort himself.
“I’d probably just burn the forest down anyway,” he muttered, trying to laugh it all off as he unpacked his bag.  The real kicker was when he realized that he left his wallet back in the basement at his mother’s. He’d most certainly need that, and he flirted with the idea of going back to retrieve it.  It would be an easy ride, sure, but the thought of having to look his mother in the eye was enough to keep him hidden. Instead, he unrolled his bedding, placed the two small bottles of water he managed to bring next to his pillow and lay down, staring into the sky.  He squirmed to find a comfortable position on the hard ground under his bag and thought things through. No wallet could be a good thing. “Less chance I’ll have the urge to skip out and buy,” he said out loud.
But it wasn’t a good thing – not really.  What if trying to kick killed him? No one knew he was out here, save for the two or three cars he passed on the way, and they were driving too fast to noticed him.  He had grim fantasies of his bones resting on top of a moldy sleeping bag; untouched and undiscovered, because his mother wouldn’t care if he lived or died, and wouldn’t waste time reporting his disappearance.  He tried to blink the image away, but could not. Death was all he thought about lately - death, and Gerald Sommers.
***
Gerry was a decent guy – two years older than Ricky, Jackie, and John, although circumstances put them in the same classes in high school.  In the early days, when it was just swapping pills in the back of Mr. Gostling’s history class, Gerry would kick the back of John’s chair, lean forward and say, “Don’t hold out on me, Johnny.  Papa needs his candies.”
That was then, when everything was still a laugh – being in high school, getting high, and going to high school parties.  When they graduated, everything shifted. They were still getting high, and going to high school parties, but there wasn’t as much laughter.  Jackie became focused on turning a profit, and John fancied himself the muscle of a legitimate operation. Slowly, the two became more menacing than inviting, and Ricky turned into the guy that could get them into house parties they could never get into alone.  Ricky had a charming smile, and his teeth were still good. He knew how to talk to people and didn’t get caught up in the pretenses of how drug dealers and their enforcers were supposed to act, which was always enough to get all three of them in the door. It never occurred to him that when others looked at Jackie and John, they saw two dangerous guys.  Ricky could only see two childhood buddies wrapped up in a very elaborate game of pretend.
In all of this was Gerry, still floating around, way too old to be hanging out with high schoolers, and too cool to take the hint.  He treated Jackie and John like they were still two pill popping idiots sitting in the back of an endless history class where all it took was a couple of kicks to the back of a chair to score a little.  If they didn’t watch their stuff around Gerry, he might swoop in and take a little bit, like he was entitled to it. That was all fine and well when it was a couple of Oxies or a Vicodin, but soon packets of cocaine and heroin and stacks of cash were going missing, and Jackie and John had to make a decision.  Was it a game of pretend that they were engaged in, or were they the real thing? Would Gerald Sommers recognize that fact? Did they need to make him recognize?
***
After the boredom settled in and just before the sickness took hold, there was time to think.  Faint odors of roasting hot dogs and hamburgers drifted through the air, and traces of classic rock could be heard through the silence of the woods – patriotic songs by John Mellencamp and Tom Petty.  Ricky listened along and worked his personal history with Jackie and John. In the beginning, they were equals – it was all three of their fort, all three of them riding bikes, all three of them sitting in the back of the classroom…
And yet, between the three of them, it was clear that Jackie and John had created the tighter bond, with Ricky’s presence slowly eroding over time.  He’s become something of an intruder, smiling and laughing when the other two didn’t see anything to smile and laugh at. For Ricky, it was all a joke; they were stoners living in the country.  These weren’t the streets.
The Daily Whig told a different story…
***
Officers apprehend two suspects in slaying of Conestoga-area man
Posted: Wednesday, July 3rd, 2013 3:40pm
By Seth Tyger [email protected]
GRACE HARBOR – Officers have charged an alleged gunman and a separate driver in the shooting of a man who was gunned down Wednesday at the end of a long driveway outside his residence, police reported Friday afternoon.
The fatal shooting of Gerald Lee Sommers, 23, of the 700 block of Legrand Street, took place after an apparent altercation with one of the murder suspects - Jackson Bradford Copenhaver, 21, of the 100 block of Liberty Avenue in Conestoga.
“Mr. Copenhaver had an intense argument with Mr. Sommers before the slaying. It is believed to be over the theft of a large amount of illegal contraband and a sum of money,” said Lt. Adam Woods, a spokesman for the Conestoga Police Department. “It ended with Mr. Copenhaver giving the order to execute Mr. Sommers.” Woods declined to specify the exact sum of money that Copenhaver accused Sommers of stealing, but did comment, “It was hundreds of dollars.”
What is confirmed is that Copenhaver’s accomplice shot Sommers multiple times at close range, around 4:50pm as Sommers sat in the driver’s seat of his idling Dodge Neon.
Investigators arrested the suspected gunman at his home, also on the 100 block of Liberty Avenue. He was identified as John Walter Grieves II, 21. Both Copenhaver and Grieves are formally charged with conspiracy to commit murder and first-degree murder, respectively. They remain in the Conestoga County Detention Center, according to court records. Only Grieves has been denied bond.
“An eyewitness – a motorist – witnessed the incident first-hand,” Woods said, “reporting on a short man of medium build with a taller, thinner man (Copenhaver) who approached the vehicle at the end of the private lane, near the roadside.  The witness saw the short stocky man fire several shots into the Dodge Neon, then watched the two suspects flee the area in a black Ford F-150.”
During a thorough investigation – which canvased the area, collecting a number of interviews with eyewitnesses, witnesses, and persons knowing the suspects and the victim – detectives learned that the suspects’ F-150 broke down just inside state lines on Route 272, police reported.  From there, the suspects called an acquaintance, who arranged to have the disabled F-150 towed back into Conestoga County, and also provided transportation for them back into Conestoga County.
Upon interview, the acquaintance provided necessary information that allowed officers to locate and capture Copenhaver in the parking lot of RSB Banking Services in Grace Harbor on Thursday night.  Grieves was captured at his Conestoga home on Friday morning
More details will be reported as the story develops.
***
Of course Ricky hadn’t thought anything wrong when his friends called him for a lift.  He pulled up alongside their truck, where the smell of burning rubber still lingered around its smoky engine and asked “What seems to be the problem, boys?”  He smiled at them, but his grin was met with blank stares. The two glanced at each other before John replied in a quiet, frustrated voice.
“Fuckin’ timing belt,” he muttered, and he and Jackie made their way into the car on loan from Ricky’s mother.  Oddly, they both got in the back seat, making Ricky feel like a chauffeur. Normally, he would’ve said something, but not this time.  His two friends looked like they had both gotten into a really bad fight with each other, in spite of the fact that they were sitting side by side.
“You call Uncle Jeb to get that tow?”  Jackie didn’t ask this as much as command it.  Uncle Jeb was really John’s uncle, but the boys had all grown so close over the years that they had naturally adopted each other’s family members as their own.  That sense of family, however, seemed missing when they got in the car.
“Well ‘hi’ to you too!” Ricky replied angrily as he put his mother’s car into drive and made the U-turn back toward home.  He expected some kind of response, but got nothing in return except an overbearing silence that only amplified the weird feelings within the car.
“What are you guys going into Delaware for, anyway?” Ricky asked, more defensively than he had meant to sound.  “You copping something without me?”
“Jesus Christ, Ricky,” John burst with exasperation, “just drive the fuckin’ car, will ya?”
Ricky felt his grip on the steering wheel tighten, but let the comment slide, and silence pervaded the car for the better part of fifteen minutes.  Then, some barely audible whisperings came from the back seat.
“We’ll just lay low for a day or two,” Jackie said. “Uncle Jeb’s got a pretty quick turnaround. Lotta cops are gonna be out, though.  We’ll can make another go of it after the holiday.”
“I think some people seen what happened.”
“I doubt they know what they were looking at. Besides, we got the stuff out of the glove box. No one’s gonna know why we did it.”
“And we was right, too. He had it all.”
Ricky just drove, listening intently.   He wanted to piece together what they were talking about, but John and Jackie went quiet for the rest of the ride, and Ricky thought better than to pry. When he pulled up to John’s place, they got out and said nothing, and Ricky gave them a sheepish, “Well, see ya,” before driving back to his own house.
The next morning, a detective knocked on Ricky’s door and his mother answered, still wearing her nursing scrubs. She was saddened, but unsurprised, when he asked for her son.  Ricky approached the detective with some trepidation, but still had no clue as to what Jackie and John had done. To his credit, the detective’s line of questioning didn’t reveal much either, and Ricky had no idea what kind of damning information he was giving away.  In his mind, he figured Jackie and John were getting busted for breaking into parked cars again. He knew nothing about Gerry Sommers yet, and he wouldn’t find out until everyone else saw the news, too.   
***
By nightfall, the pain of kicking really made its presence known, and Ricky was in a bad way.  He was sure he’d been able to get clean before. In fact, he chose to start using again just because of how easy it had been for him to quit cold turkey.  He figured he could stop whenever he wanted to, but now he felt like maybe he had remembered things wrong.  Maybe he hadn’t ever really kicked anything, because he couldn’t remember it feeling this bad. Drinking water wasn’t helping at all.  It just became more liquid for him to vomit into the brush near his bedding.
He fought hard for clarity, traveling way back into the recesses of his mind for a happy place, where the magic of riding bikes and enjoying summer breezes was still a vivid reality, and the thrill of a finding a secret hideout for three close friends hadn’t yet faded.  He tried to cope by remembering the nights they stayed up until the darkest hours, retelling jokes they heard from older people and laughing at things they didn’t quite understand. He thought about the time they lit their farts on fire, and how Jackie had singed his ass pretty good.  They laughed it off once they knew Jackie wasn’t seriously hurt, and they even tried again, in spite of the danger. He even thought about the nights when they’d camp out during the town’s Fourth of July fireworks display, and how they’d be on top of their sleeping bags, marveling in wonder at the way the exploding lights would illuminate the tree tops and back-light the branches high above them.
It wasn’t until they got older that a pecking order was established, and Jackie found himself the de facto ringleader.  He told the boys when to meet, where, what to do, and once had gone so far as to convince John to steal things from his father for the boys to share.  Courtesy of John’s dad, Ricky saw his first dirty magazine at age eleven. At twelve, the three of them split their first drink beer, and by the time they were fourteen, John was sneaking pills.  
Their first dose was a half tablet for Ricky and Jackie each, and a whole tab for John. (Jackie had divvied up the stash and said, “Go on, John. You earned it.”) They freaked out when the pills made their hands start to swell up, but they held fast to their personal rule of never telling and always trying.  Just because you get singed once doesn’t mean you stop.
Now, as Ricky found himself in the throes of withdrawal, he felt differently about those moments.  In his current state, the memory of those campouts stopped being about three happy friends and he felt closer to the truth.  They were three lonely boys that clung to each other, because they were too awkward for the rest of their class. In reality, getting into parties never happened for them in middle school, and only really started occurring until after puberty had vastly improved Ricky’s appearance.  By then, the kids in school understood that inviting Ricky meant inviting John and Jackie as well. They were their own gang – a unit that was impossible to dissolve.  
But by the time Gerald Sommers was found dead in the front seat of his car, the impossible was a done deal; the gang had broken up, and it was time to face facts.  Jackie and John were a duo that held onto Ricky for easy access into the broader social scene where they could sell their stuff, and they’d ply Ricky with drugs whenever they needed a lift.  Now, as Ricky suffered, he tried hard to recall any genuinely good times he’d had with them, but all he could conjure up was the image two cold and hollow killers, devoid of any humanity.
***
The town’s fireworks display made the sky glow in deep reds, bright blues, and shimmering whites; these brief flashes of light would make startlingly visible the swaying branches that danced in the steady breeze high above the forest bed and over the old train tracks.  Then the darkness of the night would envelop them once more, until the next round of fireworks were launched upward, accompanied by the resounding boom of a canon’s roar. 
Ricky rolled out of his bedding, threw up once more into brush, and then collapsed again into the stink of stray bile clinging to his clothes.  His guts were killing him, and his hands clenched themselves into tight fists. Small tears formed at the corners of his eyes. The fireworks didn’t help.  Each successive explosion felt like a jab to his self-awareness. He was alone and detoxing in the woods. The world was celebrating without him.
***
Several hours later, well after the night sky settled into complete and uninterrupted darkness, Ricky was still trying to cope, and failing miserably.  He lay still, waiting for sleep to take him, but his body couldn’t stop shaking. He tossed and turned, and rolled himself back onto his knees with his head hanging low. 
“I just need to ween myself!” he screamed, frustrated with himself and his own miserable weakness.  
White knuckling it wasn’t working.  He didn’t have anything to take the edge off, and he’d all of the water was gone.  The plan was a bust. He needed something.  
He jumped up from where he was kneeling, full of determination.  My house, he thought.  I’ll go home, sneak in, grab a shower and sleep in my bed.
He made motion forward, but stutter-stepped instead, and then froze in place with shame.  He couldn’t go back to his mother’s house. Their relationship was wrecked, and he didn’t want to put her through anymore.  He wouldn’t.
He sat down, hugged his knees to his chest, and tried to steady his breathing.  “I just need to ween myself,” he repeated, over and over. If he could take it back to where it all started, crush a few pills, just to take the edge off… but he had nothing.  No one was going to sell to him, either. Not after the Jackie and John, anyway.
“Pills,” he moaned, and then, like a jolt of desperation, an idea of pure craze struck him.
“I could go to the hospital,” he whispered, “A trip to the ER and a quick script for some Oxies…”  And just then, one final flashback from childhood poured over him, giving him the answer to how he’d put himself there.
***
They were kids still, just thirteen, coming out of the corn stalks to grab their bikes.  John wasn’t paying attention and stepped out onto the road, looking over his shoulder at the guys and laughing about something stupid.  Everyone heard the brakes squeal, and John instinctively turned away to brace himself. The small Chevy truck had slowed down a great deal, but still smacked him in the small of his back, near the love handle, knocking him to the street.  John cried initially, but was surprisingly okay. The old man behind the wheel was exasperated, but relieved when John got up on his own and insisted he was okay, not wanting to get in any trouble with his dad. The damage was minimal, and most kids in their class refused to even believe that John had been hit, until he showed off the Chevy emblem that was bruised into the meaty part of his flesh.
***
“I could do that,” Ricky thought.  It was near six in the morning – drivers were usually cautious during in the early hours of the day.  Ricky’s body could handle the speeds they’d be driving at. It would be like a deer jumping out in front of a slow moving car.  That was all the thought he needed to put into it.  
He hobbled out of the ravine, through the woods, and weaved his way through the thick stalks of corn to the edge of the road.  He’d be hidden away, with the advantage of seeing the oncoming traffic. By the time he found a decent vantage point, the morning sky was already shifting toward shades of purple and pink, with dawn working its way over the horizon.  Ricky stood in place and waited patiently for someone to pass. When a compact sedan began to wind its way down Doc Grove cautiously, Ricky felt he’d found the one. At the moment of truth, though, he hesitated one second too long, and stepped out of the cornfield as the car was moving away from him.  He clenched his fists, cursed himself for being a coward, and went back to his spot to wait for the next moment.  
The longer he stood there, though, the worse his body felt.  Ten minutes went by, and Ricky started getting spasms in his stomach, as if he was ready to vomit.  Another wave of sickness was coming on, and it was going to be bad; terrifying geysers that couldn’t be helped.  He closed his eyes tightly and tried to shake it off, but was greeted with a spinning darkness and a sudden throbbing in his temples.  The acid churned inside his intestines, threatening to rip him apart, and then it all came up with a powerful force that caused him to step forward, into the road, with his eyes clenched tight against the pain of the withdrawal symptom.
An old brown Dodge Ram had been coming his way, streaking down Doc Grove in speeds that weren’t normal for that time of day.  Ricky had his eyes closed against his own internal forces, bracing himself against what was going on inside. When he stepped out into the street, he was in a dizzying darkness.  Afterward, there was nothing.
***
Pedestrian slain in automobile collision.
Posted: Friday, July 5th, 2013 9:00am
By Seth Tyger [email protected]
GRACE HARBOR – An unidentified man was struck down early this morning by a    driver who was reported to have been returning home from work.  The incident occurred on the side of Doc Grove Road near the intersection with Liberty Avenue just after 6am.
Officers arrived after the driver called 911 and as of now, no charges have been filed.  The identity of the victim remains a mystery. Police found no form of ID and the body remains unidentified at this time, nor are there any local reports of missing people to rely on.  
More details will be reported as the story develops.