Bob’s Senior Prom Date: Kathy Jo Burnett (née Vincent)

Kathy Jo, or KJ as she preferred to be called, stubbed out her Marlboro Red and glared at the headset. That was the seventh hang-up this hour. Normally the marks just let it go to voicemail, but every single one of the last seven calls had actually let her get through her entire pitch script before disconnecting the call. Hell, that last one had even gotten all the way to the verification before saying that she wasn’t interested and hanging up. Telemarketing sucked.

But, ya gotta pay the bills, and with Tony serving at least 5 years upstate she wouldn’t be seeing an alimony check anytime soon. At least since the pandemic they’d let her work from home. There were times she wished that she’d never gotten back together with that shit after the original breakup freshman year. She and Tony had dated all through middle school and when she went to the fancy Catholic school she dumped his ass. They argued about everything anyway, and even back then he was only interested in getting in her pants.

It was the first week of school when that senior asked her out. Bob was kinda cute but a little bit of a nerd, but more importantly he had a car and was willing to spend money on her. And he was a nice guy, which was a far departure from Tony. She had some fun with Bob. He was a good kisser and knew how to use his hands. He got her engine going pretty good, and she almost let him go all the way one time when they were hanging out at his house.

Ultimately though she was only using him to go to prom, and after that she broke things off and went back to Tony. Tony had money then because he’d started slinging, and they stayed together through the rest of high school. Tony went to work in his Dad’s pizza place, and KJ and he got married the month after graduation.

They still fought constantly, but then they would get high and fuck. Sure that was fun for a while, but KJ wanted more security out of life than a husband who sold pot and spun pizzas so after three years of marriage she moved back in with her parents. From that point she’d bounced from job to job, boyfriend to boyfriend, and before she knew it she was looking at the wrong side of forty.

My back hurts.

Everything was starting to hurt actually. Every morning it was harder and harder to get up. She needed carpal tunnel surgery she couldn’t afford, a hip replacement at some point, and that cough that just wouldn’t go away was starting to worry her. She wondered, not for the first time, if things would have been different if she’d stayed broken up with Tony all those years ago.

I’ll just pop an Oxy and go to bed.

She logged out of the proprietary VOIP software as she popped one of her last three pills (have to score soon…) and was just about to shut off her laptop when the tell-tale ding of an arriving email sounded.

Something from her boss.

Odd subject… It’s an honor to be nominated

She clicked on the message and then stopped dead as the spiral pattern filled her screen, stopping all movement and thought.

Then everything went black.

Not much to look at. Bob at least tries to keep up his appearance.

Heidi looked over the newcomer, taking in the greasy light brown hair, streaked with grey, the leathery slightly yellowed skin of a smoker, and the flabby body of a woman who hadn’t kept up with herself after her metabolism shifted from growing to grown.

We’ll fix that soon enough though.