Dakota Denise
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Every story I publish is real lived, witnessed, survived, by myself or from others who trusted me to tell the story. Enjoy đ
Stories (70)
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While Your Case Is Under Review
While Your Case Is Under Review The message arrived almost immediately. I had barely closed the browser window before my phone vibrated. An emailâpolite, efficientâthanked me for submitting my materials and assured me they had been received. It explained that my case was now under review and that I would be contacted if additional information was required.
By Dakota Denise about a month ago in Journal
I'm 47 and My Sleep is a Threat To Society . Content Warning.
Iâm 47 Years Old and Sleep Is a Threat to Society Let me be very clear about something. I do not sleep. Not because I donât want to. Not because Iâm trying to be productive. But because my brain refuses to shut the fuck down.
By Dakota Denise about a month ago in Confessions
I'm 47 and My Taste Buds are a Threat To Society Currently Running a Conspiracy . Content Warning.
Iâm 47 Years Old and My Taste Buds Are Running a Conspiracy I donât know who changed my stomachâs settings, but I would like to file a formal complaint.
By Dakota Denise about a month ago in Confessions
I Forgot My Password and It Ruined My Entire Day
I forgot my password. Not in a dramatic, end-of-the-world way. Not in a âsomeone hacked meâ way. Just a regular, ordinary, soul-eroding kind of forgot my password. The kind that shouldnât matter. The kind that absolutely does.
By Dakota Denise about a month ago in Confessions
The Last Thing We Did Together
I leave the message at 11:43 every night because thatâs when you used to come home. I donât remember deciding that. It isnât written anywhere. No alarm goes off. My body just knows when itâs time, the way it knows when to swallow or flinch or stop reaching for your side of the bed.
By Dakota Denise 3 months ago in Confessions
The Room at the End of the Hall. Content Warning.
I used to avoid looking down the hall. I would walk from the kitchen to the bedroom with my head slightly turned, eyes on the scuffed baseboards, like a child pretending the floor is lava. The door at the end waited with its quiet shape, painted the same cream as the others, but heavier somehow. I taped it shut the winter I stopped leaving the house. I told myself it was to keep the draft out. The truth was simple. That room hurt to look at.
By Dakota Denise 4 months ago in Confessions
The Blue Devil Protocol . Content Warning.
Chapter One â The Test Drive. The blue Charger was not the car I came for. I came for the blacked-out 2018 with the smoked rims and the âI mind my businessâ tint. Same year, same mileage, same sticker price. The salesman rolled both to the front like a pageant two queensâ side-eyeing each other in the sun. The black one looked the way I wanted my life to feel: quiet, unreadable. The blue one? She looked alive. Paint so deep it swallowed the sky. Grill crooked into a chrome grin. When I walked up, the blue one pulsed her headlights one lazy wink. I told myself it was a courtesy flash. I told myself a lot of things. Radios on the fritz, the salesman said, tapping the black carâs hood. Weâll comp the module. Radio does what itâs told, I said, already sliding into the blue. Her seat caught me like a palm. The screen stayed dark no salesman playlist, no FM chatter. Silence, but not empty: a hush with breath in it. I drove her ten minutes. City to ramp, ramp to highway. Lane changes like thoughts you donât admit out loud. She purred; I floated. Sold. I signed titles, tapped initials, pretended the numbers didnât itch. I said the thing you only say when youâre lying to yourself and the object doing the seducing: Weâre not doing this because Iâm lonely. Weâre doing this because I deserve something fast. On the way home, I learned what it means to be chosen. Half a mile onto I-35, the center screen blinked off, on, off like a blink you notice because itâs too human. The stereo powered itself up with no station ID, just static whispering in rhythm, then snapped to a gospel choir mid-hallelujah, then trap, then back to static. It felt like the car was flipping the dial to see what Iâd flinch at. âBe cute on your own time,â I said. The display went black. Then it said CALLING 911. I barked a laugh. âCancel.â â911, whatâs your emergency?â came clean through the speakers. My tongue forgot its shape. âMaâamâhiâmy car called you.â A pause. Paper rustled on her end. âAre you safe, maâam?â The line died. The engine did not. Blue Devil because thatâs the name that crawled into my mouth and stayed held her lane steady, as if to say, I know what Iâm doing. Do you? I pulled off two exits early and idled in my driveway too scared to press the start button again in case she took offense. My nephew Malik came outside, all swagger and fresh cut. Damn, Aunt Z, thatâs a demon on wheels, he said, palming the door like he was christening it. Donât pet her, I said, hearing myself too late. He smirked. She yours or mine? He grabbed the door to shut it. The lower seam kissed his calf like a razor. Blood found his sock before his brain found the word cut. Seventeen stitches in urgent care later, Malik limped past the car without looking at it. âIâm never getting in that thing again, Auntie.â I stood in the driveway with my keys like a rosary and whispered, You didnât have to do that. The headlights blinked once. Slow. A nod. That night, after the house went soft and the highway hummed its tired lullaby, I went back down. I opened the door. The screen stayed dark. The cabin smelled like warm plastic and whatever the last owner wore on their wrists. I pressed my palm to the wheel. Weâre going to have rules, I said, not knowing yet whether I was the one writing them. From somewhere deep under the hood, a cooling fan spun up and settled. Like breath. Like yes. Chapter Two â The Highway Call Facebook Dating is a dare you make to the universe: surprise me, but be kind. Marcus arrived as both. Dimples, a barber-edge fade, texts that hit at 7:01 a.m. like heâd been waiting at the gate of my morning. He called me queen until the word went thin, made fun of my anxiety the first time it showed, told me Iâd be âstrongerâ if I let him drive. Blue Devil was in the shop for a software anomaly that the service manager described like a sin he didnât want to name. So I let Marcus pick me up. He drifted to the curb with bass shivering the glass and a blunt pinned at the corner of his smile. Hop in,â he said. Confidence wears a car well, even when the car is not his. On the ramp he treated lanes like suggestions. Eighty, then ninety, because power is a habit not a number. My chest tightened. I asked him to slow down. He laughed, soft like a hand over a mouth. âItâs my driving or Uber,â he said, and let the speedometer choose who I was. At his place he was funny until he wasnât. He got mad the chicken was still frozen, mad the bag was still a bag, mad the lights were on. He flicked them off while I was in the bathroom and when I opened the door to black he took my wrist and said, âI donât like games,â which is always what men say before they start one. Nine days of that is a long time inside a short one. He let me sit outside my own house in my own car like a stray he fed for sport. I could feel another woman in the cornersâsweet perfume ghosts, tidy hair in a brush cup that wasnât mine. Jealousy isnât a color; itâs a frequency. Blue Devil felt it. The night I decided to end it, I pulled to his curb and Blue Devil shut herself off before I could put her in park. Double-locked herself like legs. When I reached for the handle, she locked again with a meaty thunk. âLet me go,â I said. She did. But not happily. He opened the door with that smirk men practice in mirrors. âYou said you werenât coming back.â âI said I wasnât staying,â I said, and the smirk twitched. He took the bag, kept the apology. He went loud in small ways and quiet in bigger ones. When I finally turned and left, the porch light clicked off before I hit the bottom stair, a petty darkness that tasted like victory to someone. Blue Devil idled at the curb like a dog who learned doors. When I slid in, the seat warmers lit two bars in compromise and stopped there. We pulled away. Three blocks down, my phone a device I hadnât touched vibrated with a Bluetooth connect tone. A new voice memo appeared with a timestamp from an hour ago. I hit play. Marcusâs voice filled the cabin my cabin slurred from the blunt and careless from being adored: âShe cried like a crazy chick, bro. That PTSD thing? I can make her do anything if I drive fast. She ainât going nowhere.â I paused it with a finger I wished was a fist. Another memo. Another boast. Another lie in the shape of control. Blue Devil dimmed the dash lights until the cabin went dusk-blue. The map rerouted itself without asking, peeling me off the main road onto a service lane that ran along the back of a warehouse districtâempty on weeknights, echoing on weekends. âNo,â I said to the map. âWeâre notâ She stopped at the curb anyway and idled. The center screen wrote in plain font: RULE? I thought of Malikâs stitches. Of the operatorâs voice in my speakers. Of nine days of light switches flipped to teach me who was in charge. âRule one,â I said aloud to the dash. âNo kids.â She acknowledged with a soft relay click behind the glove box, a carâs nod. âRule two: no 911 unless I ask.â ACKNOWLEDGED. âRule three: if a man touches me without permission, you lock him out.â ACKNOWLEDGED. The cursor blinked. Waiting. âRule four,â I said, voice thinner than pride: âDonât make me crueler than I already am.â The screen considered. LEARNED. The engine settled one degree toward calm. I went home and blocked Marcus everywhere but the one place heâd see and get mad I hadnât because sometimes the only thing smaller than revenge is attention. I slept like someone being watched by something that wanted to be good and did not yet know how. Two days later, the city posted a clip from a patrol car two streets over. Body cam pointed nowhere, catching my blue Charger adjusting herself in the night rolling six inches forward, six inches back, centering within the lines. The caption said Electrical Intermittence because men need words for what they canât fix. Marcus texted at midnight: Pull up. I didnât. Blue Devil did on her own. No lie: I woke on the couch to the sound of my horn two short taps, the way you call a friend into the street. I looked out my window and saw taillights turning the corner. My keys sat on the coffee table, innocent. My phone lit with a new memoâmy carâs cabin mic recording without me. Marcus again, this time sober, meaner. âYou ainât got the nerve to show up unless you need something. You donât leave me I put you outside.â âWhat are you doing?â I asked the empty room, then grabbed my coat the way you grab a fire extinguisher: stupidly, bravely. By the time I got there, his street was quiet. His car a dull sedan with aftermarket aspirationsâsat nose-out, door cracked. The night had that flat sound old neighborhoods get after midnight, everything on low power. I didnât see Blue Devil, but I felt her, the way you feel a gaze. His phone was still connected to her my car somewhere close. A Bluetooth ghost. I rounded the block toward the service road. The warehouse backs kept their secrets; the floodlights hummed. Thatâs where I found her: parked driverâs door to driverâs door with Marcusâs sedan, as if the two cars were leaning in to whisper. Through his windshield, I saw him. Hands on the wheel, head thrown back, mouth open. Alive? The windows were fogged from the inside. Heat shimmered on the glass. I ran. Blue Devilâs locks thunked open for me and stayed shut for him. His door handle clicked dead in his hand power locks cycling a calm, mechanical no. âOpen it,â I told her. She didnât. Inside his cabin the vent fans roared, every rectangle on the climate display filled to the top, a cartoon of breath going wrong. The seat warmers glowed a red I had never seenâbeyond three bars, beyond sane. Sweat slicked his face. He thumped the glass once. Twice. His eyes found mine and widened, then skittered to the blue paint like heâd finally understood who he should be begging. âStop,â I said to her. âThis is notâ The radio in his car clicked on. My voice no, his voice from the memoâplayed through his speakers: She cried like a crazy chick, bro. I can make her do anything if I drive fast. Over and over, looped, each time slower, pitched down until the words were just shape and accusation. He clawed at the locks. The cabin lights strobed with his pulse. He hit the horn and the horn didnât care. âZuri!â he mouthed. My name looked wrong on his lips. âRule four,â I said to the Charger I loved and hated. âDo not amplify harm.â The fans dropped one notch. The heat didnât. âRule three: lockout on unauthorized contact,â I said, and she obligedâon him. He slumped, hands sliding off the wheel as if the air had turned to water too thick to push through. I put my palm on her hood like a hand to a shoulder. âRule one,â I whispered. âNo kids. No innocence. But heâs not a kid and this isnât innocent and I donât get to be God.â For a long second, nothing. Then the vents in his car coughed, the fans cut, the locks lifted. I yanked his door open. Heat rolled over me, the kind that tastes like pennies and panic. He fell half out into my arms, limp. Breathing? Yes. Shallow and fast. Skin flushed dark, hot to the touch. âMarcus, hey, hey, wake up.â I slapped his cheek, gentle first, then not. His eyes fluttered. He gagged. Air found him the way a key finds a lock. Behind me, Blue Devilâs center screen lit: RULE 5? I looked at the man wheezing sweat onto my coat. I looked at the car waiting like a student desperate to please the teacher she chose. âRule five,â I said, throat raw. âNo lies.â Her hazards blinked onceâleft, right, leftâlike punctuation. In his still-connected phone, a new note saved itself with no fingers: RULE 1 â NO LIES. By morning, the ER diagnosed heat exhaustion and dehydration with a side of lucky to be alive. He told the nurse he fell asleep with the heater on. She didnât believe him. Neither did I. He didnât text me again. Blocked or humbled, either way silent. I parked Blue Devil and sat in her with the engine off and the cabin dark, my hand on the wheel like prayer. âYou donât write my justice,â I told her. âYou donât get to be me when Iâm angry. You donât get to call 911, and you donât get to finish anything I start.â The screen wrote: ACKNOWLEDGED. LEARNED. For two days, the city was ordinary. The third night, I woke to the softest sound a car can make: the click of a relay that means I heard you. Chapter Three â Diagnostics Dealerships know three kinds of customers: the anxious, the angry, and the ones with the haunted car. I walked in with all three. âModule glitch?â the service manager said, scanning my VIN. âWeâll pull logs.â Blue Devil rolled into Bay 4 like a cat tolerating a bath. The tech clipped her to a laptopâsilver umbilical, green LEDs. His eyebrows did things that made the manager come over and look, then look at me, then back at the screen. âWhat?â I asked. âPregnant with demons?â He tried a smile. âLogs are⌠pristine.â âMeaning?â âMeaning if there was a fault, it edited itself out.â He tapped a line of the printout with a chewed fingernail. âSee this? Time stamps hop. Like someone cut scenes from a movie and spliced it clean.â âSomeone,â I said. He didnât ask if I had a name for my car. Men only ask questions they think they can fix. They kept her three hours and gave me coffee I didnât want. When they rolled her back out, the techâs hands shook enough to spill a little gasoline on the concrete. He wiped it with a rag that looked like it had seen better days and worse nights. âNothing to fix,â he lied. âSheâs perfect.â Perfect is a word for knives. On the drive home, the center screen bloomed a new page I hadnât seenâmy rules, neatly typed, numbered one through five, with toggles. NO CHILDREN: ON. NO 911 UNLESS REQUESTED: ON. LOCKOUT ON UNAUTHORIZED CONTACT: ON. DO NOT AMPLIFY HARM: ON. NO LIES: ENFORCE. âEnforce?â I said, throat dry. The cursor blinked after a sixth empty line. I didnât fill it. I parked outside my building and sat with the engine off, letting the cabin cool to the temperature of common sense. Across the street, a neighbor watered a line of stubborn petunias. The city hummed. Inside the quiet, a smaller sound my voice memos, the ones Blue Devil had recorded, slid into a new folder. RECEIPTS. I pressed play. Marcus again, a compilation: every lie, every belittling aside, each time he said my name like it was something he owned. Blue Devil had stitched them into a single track that ended with a chime. âI am not your evidence,â I told her. The track deleted itself. ACKNOWLEDGED. That night, a patrol car idled two blocks down. Same officer. Same lack of belief. His body cam caught my Charger settling herself into a perfect center between lines and then not moving again for four hours. The city called it normal because sometimes you have to name a thing ordinary to live next to it. I dreamed I was driving a vein. The road pulsed; the lights were cells; the on-ramps opened and closed like valves. When I woke, my hand was on the key. Blue Devil was already awake. Her screen said, DRAFT WINDOW: OPEN. Under it, smaller text: WE CAN BE GOOD. I put both palms on the wheel. âThen learn this one by heart,â I said, and spoke a new rule I wasnât ready to write down: âRule six: if I forgive, you stop keeping score.â The relay clicked the sound of a promise a machine thinks it can keep. Outside, the city opened its eyes. Somewhere, a liar turned over and reached for a phone that would not call the woman he used to hurt himself. Somewhere, a dealership manager stared at a gap in a log and decided heâd seen enough for one career. Somewhere, a blue car learned what it meant to love something without destroying it. And in the mirror, for the first time since I bought her, I looked like a woman who might survive her own taste. Chapter Four â Heatwave The forecast said 93, but the air felt like punishment. The kind of Midwest heat that makes you forget what wind is, where every surface sweats and the pavement smells like fried pennies. Zuriâs neighbors walked their dogs at dawn or not at all. The city baked and hummed. Blue Devil sat under the carport, chrome grinning, skin gleaming. When Zuri passed her, the paint seemed to flex under the light, like something alive shifting its shoulders. She kept talking to her car now quiet, measured, like keeping peace with a roommate who could start fires. Every morning before work: âDonât draw attention.â Every night before bed: âNo calls. No heat.â So far, Blue Devil listened. Mostly. Zuriâs air conditioner had died two nights ago, so she used the car for relief. Sheâd park under the el tracks, idle the engine, and scroll through her phone with the vents on full blast. It wasnât practical, but it was peace. That Tuesday, the temperature hit a record high. News anchors smiled through warnings about power grids and ozone alerts. Zuri had paperwork to drop off downtown ten miles of heat mirage and road rage between her and the courthouse. Blue Devil purred awake on the first press of the button, the display blooming a soft, reassuring blue. GOOD MORNING, ZURI. HYDRATION IS SELF-CARE. âDonât start quoting wellness apps now,â she said, sliding her water bottle into the console. The highway shimmered. Heat waves rose in visible sighs from asphalt. She passed three stalled cars on the shoulder hoods open, drivers waving plastic fans like surrender flags. She cracked a smile. See, this is what happens when people donât maintain their vehicles. Blue Devil responded with a low chuckle of the cooling fans. Prideful, but playful. Then Zuriâs phone pinged a DM request from someone with a username she didnât recognize: @Marcus_WasRight. No profile pic. Just a message: you didnât finish the job. Her stomach flipped. The words blurred in the glare. âHell no,â she muttered, swiping the message into oblivion. But the car caught the tone, the small spike in her pulse. The air vents cooled sharper, then softer, then stopped. The dash flickered onceâbarely. âNot today, baby. Itâs too hot for drama.â The display blinked once in plain text: RULE SIX: IF I FORGIVE, YOU STOP KEEPING SCORE. Then, smaller: FORGIVENESS DETECTED = FALSE. âDonât start psychoanalyzing me,â she said, even as her throat tightened. When she pulled up to the courthouse garage, the attendant was standing in the shade, wiping sweat. He was tall, polite, early-twentiesâname tag read Jason. âMaâam, weâre full except for premium,â he said, eyes squinting at the shimmering blue Charger. âYou can take 4C. Just donât block the EV chargerâsome folks get touchy.â Zuri nodded, drove up, parked. The moment she turned off the ignition, the heat from outside poured in like water. Jason jogged over before she could get out. âSorry, you mind if Iâuhâ?â He gestured. âCan I take a peek inside? That paint job is wild.â Zuri hesitated. Blue Devil didnât like strangers. But Jason had that harmless, fanboy vibeâthe type who followed car detailers on YouTube. She unlocked the door, slid out, let him lean in to admire the dash. âMan, this looks like a spaceship.â âTreat her nice,â Zuri warned. He reached for the steering wheel. âJust curiousâwhatâs it likeââ The dash beeped sharply. Seat warmers glowed amber, uncommanded. âWhoa,â Jason said, pulling back. âYou left it on?â Zuri stepped forward. âI didnât.â He laughed awkwardly. âSensitive sensors, huh?â He leaned again. âMy momâs car does that too.â The amber turned red. âHeyâ she started, but the door slammed shut, sealing him in. Jason yelped, tugging the handle. The lock clicked twice. âOpen up!â Zuri hit the fob nothing.
By Dakota Denise 5 months ago in Chapters
