A nickel & dime machine (just like everything else)

Mmm, no better way to start the day than with a spot o’ rape. For those of you who don’t have any tentacle-monsters handy, I highly recommend the gas station as a good place to get that freshly-violated feeling.

For good buildup and a nice sick sense of terror and being hunted, start looking at prices a few days before you need to fill up, but let yourself put it off in the hopes that they’ll come down a bit. That way, when it’s 7 a.m. and you really need to get to work and you’re completely on empty, you can get a good sweaty, panting panic going. That is, let’s face it, really the only way to preface a good rape. Fear is the marinade, yo.

(Cut because even I’m impressed at how filthy it gets from here. ;)
 

Thankfully, it’s not just up to you anymore — every corner of the industry is jumping on the rape-fantasy bandwagon. The media are making sure to stoke your terrified little imagination daily, while withholding any real information that might be useful or comforting; if you have a particularly good station in town, you might even catch yourself making little mouse-noises and clenching your knees together at random times during the day, in response to the news. In concert with the warm, salty spray of info-taintment from that corner, the government is carefully saying nothing, either with silence or meaningless threatening pillow-talk, leaving you feeling helpless and abandoned by everyone who might have the power to save you…daddy’s not here anymore, and uncle Exxon wants to put his pump in a place you’re pretty sure will hurt.

But there’s an even better twist — we’re approaching European levels of X-rated sophistication here — because now, the gas stations, the only places you could ever go and expect maybe a ray of comfort, or at least the knowledge that it’s over for another week; now they’re playing tiddly-winks with your uncle too, fiddle-about, fiddle-about. They’ve got the candy, hung on a big sign to catch your saucer-big frightened eyes, and they’ve figured out how to lace that shit with rohypnol. Because now? That big, comforting number has a hole in it, and when you put your hand in you get a shock — the tiny little words, "CASH ONLY".

Cash only? So now Mister Gas Station wants you to suck his ATM before he holds your hole open for Uncle Exxon’s pump? Now that’s humiliation. Did we learn this trick from Japan or what??

Of course, sucking that ATM is going to save you a lot of pain later on, missy; it’s $4.09 if you gag on it first, and $4.18 if you don’t, so you might as well take the best deal you can, spit in your hand and use it as lube. Nobody’s really losing out but that creepy credit-dealer down the street, and anyway he’ll have plenty of time to pay attention to you later — after the gas-pump has had it’s little in-and-out.

What’s that? You want to report this to the credit-dealer’s guild? It’s against their agreement to make you pay extra to avoid the onerous taste of the ATM? Why, so it is. And you can do that, dear, but if there’s enough reports, then Mister Gas Station will just have to find another way to recoup his, heh, losses. And maybe that means piggybacking in on Uncle Exxon’s action…do you really want to do double-entry later, to avoid a little sucky-sucky now?

I didn’t think so.