The Yellow Line – a true story – by Steven Wynne

Names of people and establishments may or may not be changed to protect the identities of those involved / cover for my forgetting the name of the one guy.

My friend—let’s call him Tim—was working at the Radiation Dome (fake name), a popular establishment in Lancaster County (real county) where wild, rambunctious youths / pot-smoking teens and twenty-somethings gathered to play Radiation tag (fake game) and watch Radiation shows (fake thing). In anticipation of Halloween (real Holiday), the managers (fake gods) had erected a sweet haunted house and had been looking for volunteers (fake employees) to help out. My social calendar (fake thing) had little else other than ‘work’ and ‘drink’ on it at this point, so I got in pretty easily.

I’ll stop with the parenthesis now (unless necessary).

Anyway, that’s how I ended up working as a scare actor in the local haunt.

Imagine my surprise when the powers that be, namely Tim’s boss—a guy we’ll call Dennis—decided I’d make for a good closing act, and he put me in the last room before the exit. I wore an orange prison jumpsuit and a Hannibal mask, and I kinda hoarded all the fake blood I could get my mitts on.

From where I stood, I got a decent view of the two scares before me where people were ushered down the hall. Dennis had a pretty kitschy Reaper costume, and hid behind a curtain at the start of a hallway that spectators would enter through a separate door. When they were halfway down the hallway, Dennis would jump out behind them, shout “It’s your turn!” and then turn around and jump back behind the curtain.

I have no clue what he’d been going for there.

Regardless, they’d walk down and around this long, bending hallway, and Tim would be hiding in a well concealed nook with a circular saw and some mask I don’t remember the specifics of. When the spectators filed past him, he’d let fly on the saw and laugh like an idiot. He got some good scares out of that, actually, which was great to see.

After that, Dennis would pull a switch that opened the door to the final room and exit: My room.

The scared visitors would wander in, see shelves with some nicely curated severed hands and feet, a little dry ice, and a strobe light. I’d hide in a small nook (this place had a shit ton of nooks, I tell ya) and wait for the people to be well into the room before Dennis slammed the door shut behind them, leaving them locked in with me. At this point, I would fall straight onto my back from the nook before arching up on my head and toes Exorcist-style, spit fake blood everywhere, and make Cradle of Filth screams while writhing on the ground. As I started slowly crawling towards them, Dennis would open the exit, and they’d run past. I’d feel like I’d accomplished something as they screamed well after they’d slammed the door behind them. Then, we all resumed our positions and waited for the next batch of kids to come through, all the while hoping my throat would hold out for the rest of the night.

But, as is the case with children, some of them are complete fucking assholes.

One kid, a kid I actually recognized because he played in a band I saw earlier that year at the Radiation Dome, was just such a juvenile asshole. The kid was talented, which is why it sucked so hard to see this little shit walk through the haunted house, give everything a brief, uninterested once-over, and say “Pfft. That’s fucking gay.”

I’m not usually an angry person. If I try to make a joke among friends, and it comes out poorly worded and is taken as a sniping comment, I feel horrible for weeks. I really don’t have it in me to be a willing prick on my worst days. Seeing this kid being a snotty little fuck, though, especially after knowing he played guitar and sang in a band at his age (I’m guessing around 12), something about it just got my goat and made me hate this little bastard.

I mean, if this little shit was this smug and self-entitled at 12 years old, what’s it gonna be like when he hits high school, and then college?

So, this utterly meaningless twerp comes down the hallway. Dennis jumps out, does his “It’s your turn!” thing like he hasn’t heard this kid being a complete douchebag his entire trip through. Kid turns around, looks at Dennis, and says “Fucking f****t.”

Dennis is bi.

So am I.

Fuck this kid.

Tim gets called ‘gay’ for his efforts with the circular saw. By this time, there’s really not much I want to do more than drill my boot into this preteen’s teeth, but I maintain my composure.

Seriously, I actually have to weigh the pros and cons of criminal charges for aggravated assault of a minor.

The pissant walks into my room, and the door slams shut behind him. I take off my Hannibal mask, and walk right up to the kid, and make sure he’s looking me directly in the face when I speak.

“Kid, your parents are gonna get divorced, and it’s gonna be your fault. They never wanted you. They argue constantly about how you’re being raised, and you’re going to forever be a recurring footnote in an endless tally of losing arguments. Now fuck off and get out.”

The kid calls me a f****t.

The exit opens, and he fucks off and gets out. I like to think that, as he descended the stairs back to the parking lot, his parents quickly wrapped up the argument about their wasted lives and unfulfilled dreams before ushering him into the car for a long, uncomfortable, and quiet drive home.

As I fantasize, Dennis and Tim emerge from their spots laughing hysterically, throw their arms around me and say I’m their hero.

You just gotta know who the real enemy is sometimes.

The rest of the night is great. We scare the piss out of kids, teens, adults, friends, strangers; it’s all awesome. As everything is wrapping up, Tim and I congregate with some friends, and we’re talking about that fucking shitty kid, among other things. Around this circle, there’s me and Tim, and we’ve been joined by our buddy Quentin, and two people who work with Tim at the Radiation Dome. We’ll call them Liz and Brian. One of us, I don’t remember who, suggests we enjoy Halloween properly and go do some ghostly shit.

Specifically, make the hour plus drive to Gettysburg.

At 10:30 at night.

On Halloween.

On a weekend.

Passing a bowl around.

Apparently, none of us had ever heard of a DUI checkpoint before in our lives. We were young, cocksure, and clueless. Liz took the wheel, and we set off, not a care in the world.

What could possibly go wrong?

To give an image here, there are five of us in Liz’s coupe. Tim is in the front seat, because he’s 6’3. Brian and I are about the same height (roughly 5’10), and we’re both around 200 lbs. Poor little 5’5 Quentin is sandwiched between us, thus completing our veritable clown car formation for this haphazard tragedy.

From where we were in Lancaster County, the quickest and surest route to Gettysburg would have been to jump on Route 30. 30 takes you directly into Gettysburg, so of course, we went another way. I can’t remember the route we took, but it was largely secluded. I seem to remember more back roads than anything. A few bowls were packed and smoked, music blared, we unanimously hated that kid, and much mirth was felt.

About an hour into our drive, Liz announces that hey, she knows where we are, and we should be there within ten or so minutes. The notion that she might not have known where we were this entire time had not occurred to me, but I was relieved to hear we were almost there. Ya gotta love those little curveballs, don’t ya?

No sooner does Liz say this, that we crest a sizable hill, and suddenly our vision is assailed by a phalanx of flashing red and blue lights. We’d just driven straight into the biggest goddamn DUI checkpoint I’ve ever seen in my life. To this day, it hasn’t been topped.

Naturally, as idiots are wont to do, we panic. Obscenities are screamed. We keep driving straight, not taking cues from the other drivers near us who are just straight-up banging U-turns left and right. We remain rolling onward to face the wonderful police officers who are always understanding of kids and their ways of having fun.

Tim’s holding the bowl, going ‘shitshitshitshitshitshit’, looking in every direction trying to figure out what to do.

Alas, poor Quentin.

Look, obviously, if you’re trying to hide something in your car, I don’t know, say, a CD your partner hates, or a porno mag (do they still make those?), the glove box is a fairly decent place to get something out of the clear line of sight of a casual onlooker. Most people who jump in your car aren’t going to look in there, unless they are a nosy prick. So, when Quentin shouts to Tim, ‘Put it in the glove box!’, he may have really thought it was a good idea.

Guess what cops generally like to see when you’re pulled over?

Yep.  Registration and Proof of Insurance.

You know where those are usually kept?

Ayup.

To complete the arrangement of this dumbass bouquet, we all light up cigarettes at the same time to try to cover up the smell of the weed.

We actually think this will help.

So, when this little white two-door packed to the brim with pure unadulterated idiot pulls up between the two state troopers who are monitoring our lane, I’m pretty sure they’re having a hard time containing their laughter. What they see is five young people crammed into a coupe with all its windows down, every occupant has a freshly lit cigarette and is dripping with the stink of weed, and nary a clear eye among the bunch.

“License, registration, and proof of insurance, ma’am.”

Liz nods.  “Sure thing.  Hey, Tim, could you get the registration and insurance from the glove box?”

As she asks this, the second cop materializes out of the night next to the passenger window and shines his flashlight directly at the glove box. Just for dimensions here, this cop looks to be about 6’6”, chiseled from granite, and positively murderous. I don’t know that there’s an emotion to properly convey the depth of dismay on Tim’s face at this moment. I’d expect it’s kinda how you’d expect someone to look after seeing a loved one killed by a Tiger that’s been thrown from a tornado seconds after learning they were adopted.

A moment passes in silence, and Tim meekly accepts his / our fate, and opens the glove box.

“Oh! What’s that ya got in there?” The cop barks, seeing the bowl immediately because of course he does. “Everyone out of the car.”

So, we all shuffle out, are slammed against the car and frisked. One cop pats me down, and the dickhead cop who was mean to Tim points me over to the yellow line in the road and tells me to stay there and not move. Liz is getting some kind of field sobriety test. Tim, Brian, and Quentin are getting grilled by the cops, especially Tim, as the glove box was right in front of him.

While we’re being frisked and everyone is being questioned, the cops search the car and find Quentin’s bag of weed he ‘dropped’ on his way out. The dickhead cop gets his mitts on it, and he’s waving it in everyone’s face like you would a rolled up newspaper at a dog. “Is this yours? You carrying this shit? You selling?” He’s barking at us like he found a dead kid in the trunk.

He asks me, “This yours?”

“No sir,” I say. He glares at me.

Oh! Forgot to mention: I’m still covered in fake blood.

“Oh? It ain’t yours? Then whose is it?” the cop asks, just begging for a reason to beat up some punk kids.

“I’m not sure,” I lie to the guy. “I only met a couple of these people tonight.”

“Jesus, these fucking pricks just do this shit with anybody these days!” the cop shouts. I almost shout back, Yeah, it’s called ‘making friends’, but I think better of it. The cop returns to grilling Brian and Quentin, and Tim is given an all clear by a different cop and sent over next to me on the yellow line. No nod of acknowledgement between us, we just stood in silence until my dumb ass felt like cracking a funny.

“Good thing we didn’t pick up any beer.”

“Shut up, man.”

To our left, Liz is getting cuffed, read her rights, and tossed in the back of a squad car. The dickhead cop gets in on grilling Quentin and Brian to figure out whose weed it is, because if neither one fesses up, it gets thrown on Liz, which none of us want. Slowly, reluctantly, Quentin breaks. The cops send Brian over to the line with me and Tim.

Quentin and Liz are thrown in separate squad cars and carted off, leaving us in a bit of a state, as you might imagine. Compounding this is when a different cop approaches us and tells us we’re free to go.

“My phone’s in the car,” I say. “Can I get it out to get a ride?”

“Sorry, bud,” the cop says. “That car’s locked and getting impounded. Nobody goes into that until the owner claims it later. We’re gonna need you to get out of the road now. The Rutter’s on the corner over there has a payphone you can use.” He points with his thumb over his shoulder to the gas station. Then, he gives a really douchey smile to us as he delivers his parting line:

“Have a good night.”

#

A few minutes later, the three of us are sitting in a small booth inside the Rutter’s, wondering what the living fuck to do with ourselves. We’ve tallied up our collective inventory, and between us, we have roughly twenty bucks cash and two cell phones, of which Brian’s is dead, and Tim’s has only %12 battery power and is dwindling by the minute. My phone had lumbered its way into the unfortunate purgatory of between the cushion’s of Liz’s car, so I’m SOL until this all gets sorted. It’s also about 1:30 AM, Halloween night. Damn near every friend we’ve got is almost definitely at a party, closing out a bar, or just getting blasted by himself / herself.

Oh, to be an early twenty-something again.

“Look, man, we need to figure out someone to call,” Brian says. “Isn’t there anyone we know who might not be shit tanked to the gills right now?”

“I only know a few numbers off the top of my head,” I say. “One of ’em is Shea, the other is Roy the Troy. I think it’s pretty safe to assume that neither of them are gonna be in any fit state to drive.”

“Shit,” Tim mumbles.

Brian and I turn, and Tim’s eyes are screwed shut, his head bowed.

“What?” Brian asks.

“I think I know someone we could call.” Nothing about him seems relieved or hopeful about this possibility.

“Yeah? Who?”

He gulps air. “I could call Dawn.”

We sit, thinking it over. “Yeah,” I say. “This has some promise.”

Silence.

“What’s your battery at?” Brian asks.

Tim opens his eyes. “Ten percent.”

“Shit,” Brian says.

“Shit,” I agree.

“Fuck.” Tim nods, and hits the call button.

Those of strengthened deductive skills among you may have correctly guessed that Dawn (hugely important to point out this is a pseudonym) is, at this point, Tim’s recent ex. Their breakup wasn’t the smoothest of affairs, as they worked together at the Radiation Dome, but they had, thus far, been able to maintain a sort of stasis while on the clock. She had worked the late shift at the dome that night, and there was a good chance she was awake. Also, she didn’t drink, so in normal circumstances, she would be a dead ringer for the go-to call.

Except for the fact that she wasn’t drinking because she had just learned she was pregnant from a one-off rebound after Tim and her split. We didn’t know it then, but it turned out to be twins.

We sit with rapt anticipation as the phone rings. Tim is sweating bullets and dry swallowing air with considerable difficulty.

Dawn picks up.

“Hey, Dawn,” he says. “Look, hey. Shit. Um… are you busy?”

We can’t hear what she says, and Tim’s poker face is on point as he relays the events of the last two hours to her and our current location. When he’s finished, we wait for any sign of response. After a few seconds, Tim closes his eyes and drops his head.

“You are a fucking lifesaver.”

They exchange their goodbyes, and he hangs up. “She’ll be here in an hour,” he says. “She wants the twenty bucks.”

We all breathe easy, and we wait for our savior to appear in the night. I don’t remember anything we talked about, except for maybe that punk-ass kid in the haunted house. Dawn pulls into the parking lot at roughly 3am, and we shuffle into her car for the long ride back to the Radiation Dome, where all our cars are parked. She takes the rough approximation of twenty dollars in mixed bills with the air of a judge delivering a guilty verdict.

The rest of the night played out without incident. We returned to our cars and drove home. Liz and Quentin were both released later the next day. Tim met up with her not long after and procured my phone for me. They had a brief fling, which is fitting because of that line from the movie ‘Speed’, where Sandra Bullock and Keanu Reeves lament the statistics of lasting relationships that began in emergency situations. This was kinda like that, but lacked the Hollywood picture-perfect charm of ‘Speed’. Their relationship ended with little fanfare.

Her and I hung out once a few months later, and we saw the remake of ‘Nightmare of Elm Street’ in theaters together, thus ensuring nothing would ever happen between us.

I don’t think I ever saw Brian again, but I can’t be sure. Much of my twenties were an alcoholic blackout. Brian might not actually be his name. I genuinely don’t remember.

Tim’s employment at the Radiation Dome ended not long after this episode; his former girlfriend of many years left him for Dennis, his boss. Dennis then almost immediately fired Tim and accused him of stealing cash from the register. It might seem a weird thing to say about a guy in his late twenties who dates teenagers, but Dennis was kind of a shitty dude.

Tim, who had absolutely and repeatedly been stealing from the register for months, rebounded well. He drifted between jobs for a few years, then joined the military. He lives in another state now and has “grown up”, as the kids say.

A year or so after this episode, Liz contacted me out of the blue to tell me that Ian MacKaye was doing a live Q&A at F&M College that night. I blew off plans to make it out. Liz wins this story.

Quentin is now bald.

Dawn and I never crossed paths again, and I can’t help but think it’s better for everyone that way.

As for me?

I still get irate when I think about that punk fucking kid. I hope his parents got divorced.

Happy Halloween.

AUTHOR BIO:

Steven Wynne writes Dark Fiction and lives in Central Pennsylvania. His work has appeared in Siren’s Call Publications, Lycan Valley Press, The Gal in the Blue Mask, and elsewhere. He can be found at @hoopsticks.bsky.social