In my Internet travels, I’ve seen the good and the bad and the tasteless and the strange. One thing that I saw that struck my fancy was a writing genre I think are called “BAWW Stories.” These are short stories – either true or not – that exist for the purpose of being heart-wrenching and emotionally hyper-charged. Usually, the story involves a close friend, family member, or pet in a terrible series of events. The end result is that you just break down and bawl – “bawwwwww!” I’ve wanted to try my hand at writing one, so let’s see how well it turns out. Gratefully, this is total fiction.
…and that’s that. I’m single now, I guess. Who am I kidding, I know I’m single. When you call your girlfriend up and you hear from the background noise that she’s at some party that you had no idea was planned, when you hear a guy asking “Is that him?”, when she stutters and hesitates when you say you’ll see her tomorrow, these are some pretty obvious signs.
It’s not like I didn’t see it coming. She’s always been more social than me and I could tell I was holding her back. I’m not going to bother deleting all the emails and texts just yet. I just want to sit for a bit and think about the good times. We had, what, maybe a month? That’s pretty good for me, considering all the first/last dates I’ve been through.
Bub is here beside me. Bub is my closest friend, even though he’s a cat. He always knows when something’s up. I take good care of him and he never fails to show his appreciation for it. Bub chose me, which is something I could never expect from any human companion.
Bub was a stray that showed up at the house one afternoon. Who knows why he chose my house. He was thin but clean and he seemed so happy to see me. As time went on, Bub became closer and closer to me, like a child. And he’d seen many of my ups and downs as I stumbled through my failed relationships, so he understood how I was tonight.
I figured I should go for a drive to clear my head. That’s usually what I did in times like these. Bub seemed to know what I was up to (as usual) and headed to the door. That was one of the coolest things about Bub, that he was so dog-like. He actually enjoyed car rides. So, I hauled him up and we got in the car together, Bub settling down in my lap after I buckled my seat belt.
As I drove through the back roads, I ran through the last few days in my mind and analyzed how my latest relationship fell apart. Yeah, she had become distant. Yeah, I didn’t seem to care about it. Yeah, yeah, yeah. It was me. Bub was in my lap, purring. Bub didn’t care about all that stuff. If I ignored him, he just hung out with me. That’s how a relationship should be. No, no. I’m being selfish again.
I turned on to the interstate for the drive home. The back roads are nice, but sometimes you actually want to get somewhere in decent time. Although Bub liked car rides, the Interstate made him a bit nervous. I reassured him frequently as we drove on.
Suddenly, Bub tensed up and I looked down at him. While I looked down, a truck horn blared right beside me. Bub scrambled off my lap and down onto the floor. Freaking out myself, I look up and see a wall of stopped cars straight ahead. I look down again quickly for Bub. He’s pressed himself down at the front of the floor, under the brake pedal. All the blood drains from my face when I realize what was going to happen. I only have seconds to react.
The tears burst from my eyes as the screeching of tires is drowned out by the screaming from the front of the floor of my car. I’m so sorry.
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