Johnny's Prompt Answered....

Prompt:

He opens his mouth to a crack that might accommodate a communion wafer, and then closes it again

50o Word Answer (more or less!)

He'd had cause, over the last several weeks, to wonder about his manhood. Running, instead of standing and fighting, ran against the grain, but run he had, first from one part of town to another, and then from one city down the highway to the next city, and the next, and the next, always looking in the rearview mirror, or out the plate glass window of a diner, or strain to see over the crest of the next hill to see who might be in the next car approaching in the lane to his left.

Sweat collected in between his palms and the leather wrapping of the steering wheel. He rubbed it off, alternately left and right on the faded blue fabric of his jeans until their color neared that which they’d had when he’d first taken them down from the shelf of the Wal-Mart store in Ida at least a dozen years before.

He gripped the top of the wheel with his left hand and massaged the tension from the right side of his neck. It only stayed relaxed until he looked, for the god knew how many times, over his left shoulder out into the hot desert air blowing with hurricane force into the interior of the Volkswagen rabbit, its air conditioning long since blown nothing but hot air smelling of the mold and fungus that now inhabited its dark channels.

His neck snapped forward as the engine missed once, and then again, and then ran roughly until it rolled to a stop in the gravely shoulder of the road.

“Goddammit, fuck, shit, cocksucker,” he screamed at the windshield though there was no one to hear his curses. “How the fuck could I be out of gas?” he asked as rhetorically as he opened the door and walked back to the gas gap opening.

He looked into the black hole and seeing nothing, he looked over top the small car to find something long enough and skinny enough to plumb the depths fo his gas tank. Letting out a long breath he walked around the rear of the vehicle he strode into the sand and broke off a desiccated shoot from the top of a nearby century plant and walked even faster to his car.

Dipping the slim reed into the gas tank, he withdrew it and found the tank at least three-quarters full.

“What the fuck?” he began when the sound of an approaching vehicle. He looked at the reed once more before throwing over the car back into the sand and then began to wait for the car to cover the distance separating them.

The relief that had begun to ease the tension in his shoulders stormed back when the car approached closely enough for him to see the driver was a woman and then closer still, close enough for him to recognize her.

The screech of her tires preceded the large pickup truck sliding to a stop a few feet from him. He stuck out his chin and stood and straightened from where he was leaning against the passenger door.

Cuss words barely formed were cut short by the crack of an automatic handgun. Six shots made six small red dots in the center of his shirt from which blood began to seep into his shirt. His body, thrown by the impact of the large slugs back against the sheet metal of his battered car before gravity took over and pulled him down to the gravel.

He mouth opened to a crack that might have accommodated a communion wafer to apologize one last time , and then closed again, forever silenced.

(605 words)