Requiem looked sideways at the old man who sat next to her. In truth, he couldn't have been that old, no mor that forty-five or so, but his short grey hair and sunburned face with two dozen wrinkles hid his true age from her. She assumed he must have been at least sixty.

"So, what's yer name?" the trucker asked her as they rolled along the highway.

Requiem froze. She hadn't anticipated this. While Dorothea wasn't likely to send anyone out searching for her, going by her real name wouldn't be wise.

"Qui-qui," she replied, using a nickname Soliloquy used to call her. "Qui-qui Fris--" At the very last moment, she cut herself off; any further and she would have said her real last name, Frisby.

"Kiki, eh?" he said, mispronuncing it. "That short for anything?"

"Err...Katrina," said Requiem quickly.

"Mmm. Well, my name's Todd. Where you going, Kiki?"

"California. To see my, err--" mumbled Requiem.

Todd nodded knowingly, even though Requiem suspected his assumption was completely off. "Yer parents know?"

"No."

"Thought so. Hey, you know what happened to me last week?"

Requiem looked at him. TOdd switched topics so quickly and randomly that it was daunting to her. No one she knew talked with this sort of ease. Before she could open her mouth, Todd had started. Clearly, the question hadn't required an answer.

"Well, I was drivin' home that night from work--I live in a town close to where I work--an' it was gettin' late, see? So anyway, I was drivin' down the road and it was real late and this raccoon just ran out in front of me. Stopped in front of my headlights and just froze, y'know? Anyway, he was too close and I couldn't stop, but luckily I hit him straight on. Th' thing didn't feel a thing, probably."

With her head turned to the window, Requiem half-listened. Her stomach turned a bit in hearing all this, but she stayed quiet to hear the rest of the story.

"So anyway, I ran over it straight. You wanna hit 'em straight on so they die immediately, 'cause leavin' them squirming on the road would be cruel. So I was drivin' for a while longer and I heard this sound. Something was draggin' on the front of my truck. I figured it was just a stick or something and would shake off, but it kept draggin'. I didn't get a chance to stop until I got home, and then I went out to look at what was dragging. And you know what I saw?"

"Oh, no!" Requiem cried quietly. "Not the raccoon!"

"Nah," Todd said cheerily, shaking his head. "My bumper cover was hanging off the entire time. Wasn't much damage--it's just plastic--but I had to take it off and my license plate's on it, so I hope I don't get the police on me for it.

"Anyway, it's just funny that a little raccoon could do that. Even that deer I hit didn't cause much damage. Tasted good, though," and he grinned at Requiem, who squirmed in her seat. "You ever had deer meat?"

"N--no."

"Best stuff in the world, deer meat..."

---

Requiem Frisby is one of three sisters born to Dorothea Frisby. Her eldest sister, Silence, is dead at the beginning of the story, and Soliloquy, her second-eldest sister, is distant. Their mother always has been a bit spacey and is utterly convinced that the three of them were literally given to her, by God, to save the world. Requiem isn't sure she believes this and goes on a mission to find out the truth--and old photos of "distant relatives" in California (her aunts, actually) are her only clue.

It was actually a kind of neat idea, and I wrote a lot of bits and pieces about the Frisby girls. There's enough stuff that, if I find it all, I'll probably give them their own little section, rather than tossing it all in "Story Fragments.

Oh, and fun fact: the story Todd tells to Requiem actually happened to my father. He told it to me in about the same way. This story's purpose was mostly to write down such a weird little occurrance.

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