I barreled through the intersection with the stop light on red, running west with my chest heaving and a sawed-off .410 across my lap. Pounding adrenaline had fixed my hands for 30 miles, one to the wheel and the other on the pistol grip. Two metro cruisers wailed angrily behind me, baying for blood, but only choking down road dust. I crested a rise, tapped on the brakes and swung hard right in a squeal of abused rubber; two of the dog-dish hub caps cut out left, preferring to take their chances alone. I didn’t blame them.
+++++I put the hammer down and the burbling growl of a 440 six pack curled itself around the night. The cherry tops were loosing ground (objects in the rear view mirror may appear closer than they are), their staccato flashes fading out like a Polaroid left in the sun.
+++++I allowed myself to relax a little and Carla Jean’s face face instantly flooded my mind.
+++++“Please Johnny, don’t hurt him.” She had said. Told me how she was real sorry.
+++++“Well, I’m sorry too baby.” I said to the empty highway.
+++++I fished in my shirt pocket for a match, set fire to a Marlboro and drew deeply.
+++++Funny thing was he hadn’t said anything, he just stood there with his dick hanging out and a ‘fuck you’ grin on his face. I tried hard not to think about what happened between them. Instead I thought about how that greasy car salesman screamed when I went to work on him with the blow touch and how I couldn’t stop even after he was long past feeling the hurt. But mostly I thought about the crash of side by side barrels that ended five years of marriage to Carla Jean. A marriage as worthless as the third hand beaters on that bastard’s fly-blown lot. I screwed up a fist, dried blood – maybe mine, but probably not – flaked away from the knuckles. Outside another badlands town shot past in a sodium blur of bleached out rust. I lifted off the gas and let the needle ease back down the dial until it rested comfortably on eighty. The world contracted to the stretch of the headlights and my ’71 Dodge time machine ate black top. The past was falling behind and I wasn’t waiting for it to catch up. Lurking somewhere in the darkness, beyond the high beams was the future. I knew it was coming, but that didn’t matter, these bucket seats were firmly in the present.
+++++Heavy blades whirled above, chopping at the cool rush of midnight. Searchlights hunted in the desert scrub, one flitted across the hood, back tracked and locked me in a cone of harsh glare. I slewed the car to a halt with a rattle of gravel. Nevada’s finest had assembled themselves in ranks and ranged across the road ahead.
+++++I peered into the future, but all I saw was a pair of bloodshot eyes, hollowed out like a Halloween pumpkin, staring back at me from the bullet crazed windshield. I stayed in the present. Smelling the ashes of a burnt out car lot, listening to the contentment of an idling V-8 and watching the orange tip of my cigarette. I sucked it closer until it touched on the filter and all I had left was the taste of heat.
+++++Fuck it.
+++++I flipped the used-up butt from the window, pancaked the gas pedal and left more piece of trash smoldering in my wake.

by

The following two tabs change content below.

• Bio
• Latest Posts

Chris Leek

Chris Leek is the author of the forthcoming novellas, Nevada Thunder (Snubnose Press) and Gospel Of The Bullet (One Eye Press). His debut short story collection, Smoke 'Em If You Got 'Em, is available right now. He is 1/5th of Zelmer Pulp and a contributing editor at western fiction magazine, The Big Adios. He can be contacted at www.nevadaroadkill.blogspot.co.uk

Latest posts by Chris Leek (see all)

• Used Cars - September 17, 2012
• Reno - February 14, 2012