Shut The Fuck Up And Die! Read Online Free

cupped his nose. His eyes were squeezed shut so
tightly that creases formed at the corners of his eyes, giving
subtle hints of the old man he'd someday become.
    She scampered across the seat and grabbed him
by his shoulders.
    “ Oh shit, baby . . . oh shit . . .
you're bleeding .”
    Spurts of blood leaked between Matt's fingers
and trickled through the grooves formed by his knuckles.
    Mona's head whipped to the side where she saw
the battered animal kicking in the snow as if it could somehow find
the strength to rise up on its shattered bones and scurry into the
night.
    “ Fuckin' deer! Fuckin'
piece of shit, apple eatin’, salt lickin’ son of a
bitch!”
    Her voice was a shrill screech and she
punctuated each word by punching her fist into the foamy covering
of the roof.
    “ Mona . . . baby . . . I'm oday,
sweetie.”
    Matt's hand muffled his voice, yet it
still sounded as stuffy and congested as when he'd caught the flu a
few months earlier. It robbed his voice of hard sounds,
smoothing K s and C s into something that sounded more
like a D and dropping the
letter G altogether.
    “ Fuddin' busted my nose on the fuddin'
steerin' wheel. You oday, baby? You hurt?”
    Mona had leaned over the seat and pulled
clothing from one of the duffel bags hurled forward upon impact.
She snatched a t-shirt as if ripping a tissue from its box and
wiggled her way back into the front of the car again. Bunching the
shirt up, she pulled Matt's hand away from his face gently and
winced. His nose had already swollen to the point that it looked as
bulbous as a drunkard's and his palm had smeared blood across its
bridge. Crimson finger marks trailed across his cheeks and his
nostrils looked so much smaller surrounded by the puffy flesh that
imprisoned them.
    “ Damn, baby . . . you whacked yourself
good.”
    She pushed the t-shirt against his face
and, for the first time in her life, wondered exactly what was
meant by apply pressure . How
much pressure? Did she need to press the cloth against his injury
so tightly that she risked hurting him? Or could she simply dab it
against his face and allow the fibers to soak up the blood so it
could begin clotting?
    “ Does that hurt? Shit, Mattie, this
ain't right, it just ain't right.”
    Matt took the t-shirt from her and pushed it
onto his nose with both hands.
    “ You oday, baby?”
    Mona had begun stroking his hair almost
before the shirt was even out of her grip. She needed to be doing
something . . . anything . She
just couldn't sit there and watch her man bleed: she wanted to
scoop him into her arms, to bury his face into her chest as she
rocked back and forth, to somehow reach deep inside him and take
the pain away.
    For the first time in the last year and a
half, Mona felt as powerless and ineffectual as she had during the
majority of her life. She felt small and quiet, like a shadow that
had fooled everyone into thinking it was a person . . . but this
man had saved her from all of that. He'd shown her that she could
be strong, that she was worthy of being loved, that she deserved to
be treated so much better. And now, when he needed her most, she
was trembling like a child as she sniffled away the tears that
blurred her vision.
    “ Mona! Are you
oday ?”
    “ Shhh . . . I'm fine, baby, I'm fine. I
just can't stand to see you hurtin'. Do you need something cold? I
think there might be a pop in the cooler or I could dunk a shirt in
melted ice or get some snow from outside or . . . .”
    Matt chuckled and glanced at her from the
corner of his eye.
    “ I been worse. 'member that time
outside Ronoade?”
    Mona forced herself to smile as she continued
to run her fingers through hair that was as soft and fine as
individual fibers of silk. It splayed over her hand, tickling the
little webs between her fingers.
    “ How could I forget something like
that?”
    It was typical Matt, reminding her of a
time when she had been strong and fearless. He'd been hurt so bad
back then . . . much worse than