They passed two houses that were on the right hand side, and then she pointed to a driveway on the left. It was half a mile long, wrapped up to a hill and met at a house that was just a double wide that was spruced up to look as nice as a double wide could look, with a fake porch on the outside and trees blocking the air conditioning unit hanging out of the far left of the houses siding though there was a weird shading going on around the walkways of the house but it was still a little too far off to understand, though in About 40 seconds it would be in very clear visual range due to the grade of the hill and valley that the house sat in and around, respectively.
"That's it. The only truck there? That's his..."
The driveway, while a bit away, was in a tricky spot. It was built in a way that a state worker that couldn't see the house might assume the road made a 'Y' and would put an extra road sign up. From their right hand lane they would almost have to make a 180 degree turn to just go down the driveway.
The driveway dipped almost immediately into a steep hill, and then at the top rested the house barely visible from the road.
"One crucial bit Caleb left out. Likely because he wanted to see how we dealt with a challenge. Firstly, have your gun because I don't know if they are caged-"
Maddie was great at deception, but when she was being honest she had a way of distilling fear on accident. Her wording almost made it sound like, at first, the family had something scary like a wolf-dog or a tiger. It was common knowledge that there was a tiger living in Carbondale, but the owner was anonymous for privacy reasons. The rumors said that the owner would even walk the damn thing down the road and occasionally release it if they spotted any raccoons or opossums. Fish and Wildlife had been called out a few times. Surely, it wasn't the Troxel families tiger.
"-they have a litter or so of them-"
Still not helping, but it could be a litter of German Shepard pups maybe. They were great dogs but around here people kept them caged because dog knapping could be a problem for the rural family. There was a craigslist black-market esque shakedown that went on for the dogs that didn't have microchips- or pedigree titles. Often good looking dogs would be knapped and then sold cheap for a quick buck. A few made it back to the pound- the ones that were feisty and kept their collars on or the ones with the microchip collars. So, that was good news- avoiding a German Shepards bark would be hard but...
No. There was an electric fence surronding the property line obscured by the shrubs that were in front of most of the fence. cut down tree stumps that were anywhere from 40-50 feet behind the fence, even those against the hillside and a metal gate surrounded most of the car port, the walkway from the driveway to the front and back doors, and the garage itself. A large hole was open for cars to park, with the doors to the fenced in section no more than 3-5 feet from the sides of the fence. The fence that was around the walking areas was also vertical, making almost a circular corridor.
"-the family has a bad habit of getting exotic animals which is why they have a poor as shit vehicle repertoire and a shitty house. They blew about 18 thousand about a hundred and fifty days ago for breeding, some kinda pet insurance, more life insurance on eachother and Bradley and some other shit I don't remember. I only know that because we all parties for Bradley's 18th birthday and they bitched about it. Anyway, they have the tiger and it has three to five kittens I believe-"
Nope, this was the MDMA that was making Maddie weird. She could force herself to appear scared- her body wasn't producing that emotion. Secretly, it was because she honestly wasn't all that scared and the MDMA further suppressed it. A thought crossed her mind- that if she died by a tiger while high as fuck on high quality dugs, that wouldn't be the worst thing in the world. She had always joked that if she died in a cool way she wanted it on her tombstone and '
fighting for life from a tiger maul'sounded cool to her. Aly, who wasn't high however, might have had different thoughts. This conversation, while littered with maddie's thoughts between brief half second pauses, was completely normal sped but the words seemed to roll out of her lips in slow motion from the adrenaline intensity they could cause.
"-their tiger is only about 350 pounds, something about it sweating in the summer and losing weight-"
Only 350 pounds. She was definitely slightly ditzy or speaking to fast to truly comprehend what she was saying OR she was comprehending it completely and was downplaying it with a chipper attitude and an unwavering persona of false anxiousness.
"-I know my fair share about tigers from the BBC. So, two, we need to face towards it if it sees us, three, if we hear it growl but don't see it, let's just leave. Theirs an electric fence, it has a strong ass shock collar and it won't follow us if we leave the property. I've been here before- I know they had a little den way out in the sticks of their property for the tiger so I'm thinking it won't be anywhere near the house-"
The amphetamine part of the MDM'A' started to really show, as she was rambling a mile a minute.
"-I know the shock collar hurts really badly because we all went over for Bradley's party and he had to introduce us to the tiger through the fence and we had to feed it so that it wouldn't rush at our cars if we wanted to leave in the morning or something like that but anyway they had a spare collar and I lost a hand of strip poker but most of Caleb's friends and Bradley are kinda nerdy and not attractive and I didn't wanna take my top off and Caleb didn't want to see me topless because we are cousins, even though I lowkey think he is cute I don't mean that incest wise but I would totally date him if we weren't related and he loved me like he did Atheena, and so they told me I could take my top off or I could put on the shook collar so I put on the shock collar and they zapped me at the highest degree which is what he said the tiger feels and it made me fall. I would've fallen anyway because it hurt so bad but my knees gave out without like my permission, and that shit pisses me off because people don't listen to me unless I'm nice but I shouldn't have to be nice to my own body to get it to do as I tell it to, but I digress and anyway it hurt like super bad and then they joked about it turning me on and it lowkey kinda did but I wouldn't admit that to them because Caleb's cute friend Elijah is there and he rejected me because he thinks I'm a whore and I wanted to impress him. Like I know I'm kinda a whore and I joke about it like ALL the time especially with Calen and You but I don't mean to be. Like someone like you I could settle down with because you're an 8/10 and not a 10/10 and you act like you think you're a 6/10 which means not only can I stay confident but it means you're probably like more loyal. I know I joke about sleeping with you, and I've slept with a lot of people but no one has ever dated me and usually if I sleep with someone I secretly want them to stay with me and I kinda want that with you. I know Caleb was really checking you out earlier but it made me super jealous because although we both fucked Atheena he didn't know that until after the fact and that's slightly weird and I can't fuck someone Caleb has fucked and he should fuck someone that I've fucked if he knows about it. If you just wanna ask me out instead of sleep with me and wait, I think that's really cute and you should do it because even though I don't understand cars I think it's cute to see a girl looking girl and not a butch get down and get her hands dirty because I worked with Caleb at his machine shop and I respect that kinda handy work and I- oh we're here-"
She said, finally shutting up. Her words were going a mile a minute out of her mouth, something that was impressive since she was able to squeeze all of her conversations into the time frame of only 40 minutes. If Aly was half asleep, it would have sounded almost like a triple-sped-up dubstep remix of someone talking without the accompanying bass drop. She seemed so confident, fluent and eloquent with her energetic words.
However, inside she felt anxious- not about the fact they would be occupied for about 30 minutes in only a 100 acre maximum distance from a fucking female, 400 pound tiger that had a few kittens, but because she was worried that she had
annoyed Aly by talking too much. She never considered when taking the two points of PURE MDMA how the food she had eaten when she had pigged out at a fancy German restaurant was still mostly fresh in her intestines. The first point hit not too long after she first took it- only in 45 minutes. The second point, or maybe a mix of the two that were finally making it to her lower intestine that were re-upping her, or maybe it was the adrenaline making her blood pump again, was just
now really kicking in and in this high stress situation, her brain was trying to create solutions for the fact that they were about to murder a kid- or at least stage his murder. Oh, and he owns a fucking tiger!- but all her brain could conjure were solutions and information to life problems and embarrassing secrets because the drug was so potent that it didn't disrupt her emotional thinking to being just happy but it was disrupting her mental functions to crave a similar feeling of happiness or something weird like that with brief anecdotes of sanity and more anecdotal information about random events that weren't completely related.
Luckily and unluckily, they could see from this vantage point and could spot a few things. Bright pink and red
fucking bowling balls that the tiger likely played with, and the glorious sight of that ugly S10 sitting. Alone. In the driveway. Not even a spare vehicle was there. Bradley was home alone. Worst come to worst, they could always find a way to get the tiger to eat him.
(I wanted to interject right here and just say, that the story of the tiger likely sounds like complete BS. In real life, the troxel's have 50/50 timber wolves/German Shepard wolf-dog puppies however in the neighboring county there actually is a man that owns a tiger and pays for it to have kittens or Cubs or whatever and sells them to zoos or something I guess. It's in the neighboring Christian County and the tiger lived with the dude up until 3-4 months ago because he didn't renew some license of some sort that allowed him to have it. He was anonymous and I only know he exists because he commissioned my uncle (Caleb's dad) to build the cages at their tool and dye shop and send repair parts. I know it sounds like such horseshit, and if anyone else said it I wouldn't believe it. It's possible Caleb and his dad were just fucking with me, and if they were they have amazing acting skills. The story is Somehwhat jokey because when Caleb and his dad were paid extra to deliver said fence parts, they said they saw the tiger
swatting bowling balls like they were dodge balls though in real life the tiger just had a fifteen foot tall fence that covered only a 100ft x350ft area (caleb estimated. He's bad at guessing the size of things but I just went with it regardless.) and it didn't get to roam the property or leave the cage whatsoever. Sorry to break the immersion, just wanted to share and make sure you didn't think I was completely making this up and creating an unrealistic scenario that broke the theme of the RP)
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@LuckycoolHawk9 )
Little did the boisterous and relieved young-teen Matthew know, but following the path down Main Street and simply driving straight through the Madisonville limits and into Earlington, that he would be on a collision course with destiny. A simply right turn and thirty minutes of open and lonely early morning road was all that separated him from a crime in progress that would leave him in a community of cut throats that would be much better family to him than even his wealthy parents. A group that did not tolerate those that didn't accept others- a group that believed in loyalty, love, money and freedom that was so borderline extreme in their tactics and calculated in their crimes that they were on the FBI's potential-terrorist cell watch list.
The tribe would come to accept Mathew when he would join them almost immediately- not because they would harden him too much, or for anything special he might or might not accomplish when he is with them, or even Caleb's words of good faith that he would put in. But the tribe would come to accept and love him as they do anyone that makes it into their ranks because his beaten past gave him a hidden drive- even if he was timid and did not show it- that would keep him loyal that his relatively soon-to-be cohorts would take note of.
An entire different, significantly less wealthy but significantly more self made life of freedom, work and family, was just one turn and forty five minutes away. Destiny sat past the Earlington lake. Past the old Sutherd's church where the police would sometimes sit. On a road which due to an event, one that Maddie and Aly avoided only because they had to turn down to get to the Troxel's house to off Bradley, such as a simple car wreck with a deer and the nearby roadway department, had set up that would nearly force Mathew into this new life. The roadworkers erected their danger signs in probably record timing, since the accident was not too far away from their headquarters in the county. They placed their blockade just after the turn passing the church which freed the road with an empty lot and a goofy dinosaur sign open turn around in. An almost, so-precarious-that-it-should-be-considered-, one way road that was too narrow to turn around on- one that must be followed to one of the few driveways that were attached to it to actually turn around in acceptable time and space to go back to madisonville. A little backwoods road, that housed the counties'
claim to fame Tiger property.
And it was all only one right turn, a railroad track crossing, a scenic 40 minute drive down a desolate country road, and a recruitment by a weary cousin trying to protect her forced friends and her only true family in this world away.
It was as almost if divine intervention and dictated that Mathew would get his shot at controlling his destiny- though not on the side of the law most people find their way to.
)
