Sigh. Missed The Mark Again

Every week, along with hundreds of others, I like to submit answers to B3ta's "Question of the Week" in the hope of ending up on their "Best" page at the end of the week. It's a hard process though. B3ta caters mostly to idle British schoolboys, and my writing is just too milquetoast for their tastes: not enough carnage, humiliation, drinking, and juvenile humor. This week I thought I had a sure winner. But I missed once again. Maybe if I stopped repeating the same stories over and over, it would help my chances.

Here is my answer to this week's question:

Have you ever seen a dead body?

How did you feel?
Upset? Traumatised? Relieved? Like poking it with a stick?

which I answer with an (unfortunately) true tale, plus some of the reader's comments:

The Night Of Sex And Death

New Year's Eve 1995 was notable. I was visiting my family in Albuquerque, New Mexico, USA, and took the opportunity to visit a strip club called the 'Ice House'. It was a frolicsome good time, but very frustrating after several hours of persistent sexual titillation at the hands of buxom maidens. In search of simpler pleasures, I left before midnight and went back to my family's home and walked my dog Sparky instead.

We were walking along a dark boulevard about 11:45 p.m., when suddenly a racing engine thundered in the distance. A pickup truck inexplicably careened off the street, rolled out-of-control across a no-man's-land, and then plunged into an empty ditch. Sparky and I ran to see if we could help.

Arriving first at the scene, I scrambled into the dark ditch, opened the driver's-side door of the pickup truck, looked inside, and saw - nothing at all. No one appeared to be in the vehicle. Where did the driver go? I could hear a distinct mechanical gurgling that I attributed to coolant escaping from the shattered truck's radiator. I decided to check the passenger side of the vehicle.

Different story over there. What happened was, the driver, who had fallen asleep at the wheel (as I learned later, apparently after just one New Year's Eve beer), had gone halfway through the windshield upon the collision, and had fallen backwards, catching his throat on the broken glass and slashing him from ear to ear. He had then fallen under the passenger-side glove compartment (which is why I hadn't seen him at first). The gurgling sound I heard was his last bloody breath. And there was blood EVERYWHERE!

The victim was labeled by the local news media as the first Albuquerque fatality of 1995, but I knew he was the last Albuquerque fatality of 1994. Poor guy - age 18, he had been married just one week. Life is unfair. No sexual frustration had he, I'm sure, but then he was cursed with a low tolerance for alcohol. Laid, but not alive, whereas I am the opposite.
Marc Valdez

Nicely told
All the people going on about "what a crap QOTW this is" should read answers like this. Yes it's not funny (whoever said a QOTW answer has to be funny?), but it's well written and moving.

Well done!
MrC - a camel named Simon

hmm
I read that as "wanked my dog Spanky instead"...
scoshi

Ok,
yeah, so did I!
MrC - a camel named Simon

Umm, no. Life is not unfair.
This was not fate cruelly snatching away life. This was an idiot who didn't wear his seatbelt, and was clearly in no fit state to drive, who paid for it dearly.
Musuko

Musoko
Oh do be quiet
theweapon

ooooo
I have loads of family in Albq.


that's all I've got....sorry
flirting with badgers

Tolerance
The low tolerance for alcohol was a bit of a tradgedy, the low tolerance for seatbelts doesn't get any sympathy.
Grey_Ghost