The Death of Myrtle [Part III]

Where we left off...

I was on my way... but the fun wasn't over yet.

If you've missed the rest of the saga, you might want to go have a look at Part I and Part II before continuing here.

I'd done a walk to some local farms and scored some oil along the away. At one of the farms I walked into, there was nobody home. I was so damned frustrated at that point I rifled through their shed anyway. I figured if I found what I needed there I'd take it and leave whatever cash I had laying there for them in order to make some sort of attempt to apologise for breaking in and taking their oil. But no avail anyway.

Finally I got back on my way, with a mixture of lawnmower oil and a little of the right stuff slurping around in my stressed-out engine. I nursed this poor clapped-out beast of a car with shot brakes toward my destination. Sometime during the previous night (before passing out) I had organised for the kelsuperstarsinger and IcePick, the friends I was to meet up with, to start making their way toward me to meet up. I planned to leave Myrtle somewhere out of sight and mind until my fun, relaxing weekend with my friends was over and only then think about what to do with her.

Oh boy, Myrtle wasn't well. Not well at all. She rattled and clattered another hundred kilometres or so, getting worse and worse as she went. Myrtle and I got ourselves to the town that joins the wiggly little back route that I'd taken to one of the most well-used highways in the country - the Pacific Highway. Home of idiots in cars, trucks, caravans, and a hell of a lot more idiots. But I digress. The lead-up to getting on this nightmare highway consists of two roundabouts. They are hemmed in on either side by guard rails. There's traffic going every which way and everybody is in a hurry to get on the highway and out of there.

Myrtle got me through the first one, just. Something in her went clunk as I negotiated my way around. The second one was where she spoke for the last time. You're Fucked she said, as she died mid-roundabout and left me with enough forward momentum to get onto the verge on the other side of the exit. There she was, past the roundabout, but half off the road and nudged up against the guardrail on a section that nowhere to pull completely off. Great.

I was pissed. I couldn't even quietly dump her now. She was the equivalent of a big neon sign flashing ABANDONED on a very busy section of road.

Luckily kelsuperstarsinger and IcePick were only minutes away from catching up with me. We ripped everything off the car of any worth to me, including the plates. I was having a hell of a time trying to get everything out of the centre console, so IcePick sorted that one out for me. Giggling the whole time, he grabbed the entire console and ripped it out for me.

With that, I said goodbye to Myrtle. We drove off toward our concert, with the prospect of drinking wine in the sun and cheering on Ani Difranco being far more appealing than dwelling on the crime I had just committed and my new-found lack of transport.