Madness and Women
Stories
Poetry
the snow storm
his bus slid off the highway around midnight on christmas eve.
it was below freezing with blizzard conditions and they were stranded in the middle of nowhere.
he and another person were the only two passengers.
the man's name was paul and he talked about himself as they sat there.
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in 1965 paul was a helicopter pilot in the vietnam war.
his aircraft was fitted with "chemical flame throwers that evaporated everything in their path."
he loved fire.
he flew naked except for wearing a pair of boxer shorts.
during the missions he played background music on a toy flute called a kazoo.
he was known as nudie kazoodee.
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the roads were dangerous and unpredictable at this time of year.
the bus driver came prepared with an ounce of cocaine and a gallon of tequila.
in a while someone contacted them on the short-wave radio.
a state police helicopter was on the way.
when nudie heard that he went into military mode.
he asked for "the extraction point coordinates and when was their estimated time of arrival."
the driver didn't know.
nudie determined he'd scout for a possible pickup location.
the driver gave him a walkie-talkie to keep in touch.
he entered a field nearby and they lost contact with him.
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an hour later the helicopter arrived.
that's when a flare shot up and nearly hit it.
the bus driver said “that crazy fuck took my flare gun.”
the helicopter veered off and flew away.
nudie got on the walkie-talkie and thought he was talking to the pilot.
“kazoodee to extraction team come in extraction team.”
they saw him standing in the middle of the field under the light of the flare.
he had stripped down to his boxer shorts.
“ground to extraction team get back here you cowards and i’ll fly that goddamn bird outta here myself."
the bus driver advised the pilot to pick up nudie first before he froze to death.
the helicopter hovered over his area and another flare headed straight towards it.
the pilot maneuvered out of the way with seconds to spare.
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the bus driver set the walkie-talkie down and took a long swig of tequila.
as he began cutting more lines of coke he said "this could take a while."
there were three more cartridges still left in the flare gun kit.