Thread by @TheRickWilson

1/ Driving the family truckster with the kids to a small town in the Midwest, somewhere she can wait tables in a little roadside diner.

Country music on the radio, and the simple rhythms of life and the seasons centering her, letting her breathe at last.

https://twitter.com/JonMesser7/status/1150982899119693825

2/ Soon, the kids are in 4H, and she's taken up a life that suits her more than she could have imagined. It's not Manhattan, and she's strangely ok with that. Folks around tow, if they remember her, don't say much.

3/ Oh, she'll cut the occasional rug on a Friday night down at the Whippin' Post or the Dew Drop Inn, and even bed the occasional rangy farmhand, but she's happiest sitting on the porch watching the sun set.

4/ Then, one afternoon when V -- for they all call her "V" instead of her full name -- is in the post office when old Mrs. Bracewaite says, "Oh, honey. Did that nice man find you?"

She feels a chill down her spine, a hollow feeling in her gut and the raw desire to run and run.

5/ "What...man?" she stammers. Mrs. Bracewaite says, "Oh, dark haired fella. Real big shoulders, like a weightlifter or a dockhand."

She feels the burden lift. A man with muscles looking for her? It couldn't be...him.

6/ The next morning, with the kids off to school, she drives her perfectly restored 1956 Ford pickup -- she sold that Suburban the moment they hit the Kansas border -- to the diner and notices a that a few cars behind her the same Kia Soul has been following her for a bit.

7/ Her hackles rise, and after leaving Manhattan and the world where her prior level of spa treatments was common, it's hard to keep one's hackles maintained. Still, the postmistress said mentioned muscles, so it couldn't be...could it? The Kia Soul was a giveaway.

8/ As she's walking into the diner, the Kia whips into the parking and out steps a dark-haired man wearing a vintage Affliction t-shirt, a quart of Drakkar Noir, and skinny jeans springs out.

9/ Buddy, the grizzled owner and short-order cook of the diner senses trouble, and heads toward the door, a #9 cast iron skillet in hand. It's been a minute since Nam, but he's fond of V and senses danger.

10/ V stands, unable to process what she's seeing. The Affliction t-shirt is stetched tight over bulging muscles. The man's neck is a thick as a small tree-trunk, but those eyes...

11/ Those eyes, like hard, black plastic eyes found on the floor of an abandoned Russian sex doll factory evacuated after Chernobyl, are unforgettable. Her fear is thick in her throat, but she senses buddy has her back.

12/ "Ja...Ja...Jared I told you I never wanted to see or hear from you again." The voice hasn't changed much, "It's JERRY now, babe. JERRY."

For a long moment, she tries to process this.

"I've changed," he says, "I LIFT. I have a bookie. I went ziplining."

13/ The cloud of his cologne is overwhelming.

"Jared, what is that...smell?" V has become used to the clean country air, the ripe scent of the fecund earth, even the ammoniac edge of manure, but this is...

14/ "First, it's JERRY. Second, it was broversary gift from Gorka. But enough about you. I'm here to get you back. Your dad won't come out of the Tower, Don Jr. is in SuperMax, and Eric..."

15/ "What about Eric?" she whispers, memories of his enormous, gummy mouth hovering close by in family photos. Jerry is distracted for a moment as two cornfed local girls glance over at him. He grabs his crotch and yells, "You want some?"

16/ Jerry recenters, does a chest-ripple which leaves V repulsed in ways she hadn't felt since he initiated breeding with her a decade earlier. She never forgot his offer to "rub cloacas."

"Gonna need you back in NYC, babe. Eric's marrying the wrong girl."

17/ The tension drains out of her. "So you're not here to..."

Jerry grins, "What? Kill you in a weird ritual with a lot of candles and chanting with a priest in a goat mask, then ritually butcher you then dance naked in your skin? Jesus, Ivanka, I'm not Stephen Miller."

18/ V, for she thinks of herself now as V, her old life in the past, feels a wave of determination. "No...Jar....Jerry. I'm not leaving. I'm done with all of it. Eric's been married four times..."

"Three and a half. That stripper don't count."

19/ "Four times. It's time for you to go...Jerry."

He looks stricken and whispers, "If 'Jerry' is too weird, you can call me K-Dogg."

"That's all right...Jerry. I have to go, and you do too."

He muscles himself back into the Kia Soul, an absurdly tight fit.

20/ He fumbles for the window control, struggling as he did with Middle East peace. "You wanna know who it is?"

V, halfway in the diner, turns and says, "OK...Jerry."

"Tammy Lauren." The Soul peels out, and K-Dogg disappears in a cloud of Drakkar and ethanol-rich 87 octane.

21/ The End. And they all went miserably to an early grave.