The road was dark. It wasn’t an unusual darkness, one that Eric’s eyes had become accustomed to over the years taking this road home, everynight, but it was dark nonetheless. He would complain, as much as he could, about how, “It was goddamn 1957, how they didn't put no goddamn lights on this goddamn road?” He was an old widowed man, and he had a boring life. Mostly. Street lights were one of the main concerns of his. His complaints weren’t unfounded. It was a main road, though, this late at night, nearly 12 am, it was desolate. The road went right along the swamp, and outlined the murky, algae ridden water. It screamed welcome to Binford, Louisiana. At least Eric thought so. He kept driving, the radio silenced, the road illuminated by nothing aside from his Hardtop Ford Fairline’s headlights, the small, slow raindrops visible in the headlights. The car was an ugly color, in his mind, a bright, light blue, but he was far too cheap to get it repainted. That’s southern love. Money, money, money. At least in this little section of the south. Eric truly didn’t know too much about the south. His windshield wipers pushed the small droplets of rain off his windshield. It wasn’t raining too bad, at least it wasn’t too bad by Eric’s standards.
A simple bomber jacket, which proudly proclaimed his service in the pacific theatre, was more than enough protection. Iwo Jima was his playground, back when he was young, spry, and his Martha was waiting for him back home. He shook thoughts of his late wife out of his head, running his fingers through his thinning, combed over, graying hair. He looked at his barely visible, slightly square head, tanned white, wrinkled skin in the rear view mirror, before staring into his own dark, chocolate brown eyes. He sighed, as he looked back at the road, noticing a set of lights, headlights, most likely, moving towards him. The car was on the other side of the road, obviously, and he quickly noticed how fast it was driving. A white Corvette whizzed past his passenger side, the humming of the sport’s car’s engine audible as it zoomed by, at least doubling the speed Eric was driving. He looked at the speedometer in the near darkness. He was going about 30 miles per hour. He watched the Corvette in his rearview mirror, and was stunned as it came to a skidding stop, before whacking a very quick, nearly professional three point turn, and zooming down the road, now behind him.
The Corvette was making ground quickly, the engine humming once again audible in Eric’s ear. Eric shouted in a southern drawl typical of the area, to nobody in particular, “The fuck’ wrong with this bastard?!” Eric didn’t speed up, and almost considered brake-checking the reckless asshole in the Corvette, before thinking better of it. He merely kept driving, figuring the Corvette would simply go around him, and be on its merry way. Then he started to do some mental math...the extreme speed, coming from the direction his house was in, the three point turn, almost like they were there for him. As Eric had these thoughts, he saw something, what, he couldn’t quite tell, sticking out of the window of the Corvette. His eyes widened as he realized what it was. It almost looked like a short black pole, but the brown near the end of said pole made it pretty clear what it was. Every Binford boy, and even some of the girls, could recognize a shotgun, even in this dim light. He yelled, “Holy Shit!” Before swerving, the shotgun fired with a flash and bang, the pellets audibly ricocheting, piercing the concrete where his back tires had been only moments ago. The shotgun disappeared into the Corvette, Eric’s eyes wide with fear, hands gripping the wheel with white knuckles, his foot pressing into the gas pedal. His Ford’s engine began to hum nearly as loud as the Corvette’s, before quickly being nearly silenced by the Corvette’s, speeding up to catch up, nearly bumping him from behind, as the shotgun materialized outside the window again. Eric tried to swerve, but with another flash and bang, his back left tire was demolished by buckshot. Eric yelled in dismay, losing control of the car, and swerved off the road, crashing into a maple tree just off of the tarmac. The Corvette screeched to a halt, leaving tire burns, even on the thoroughly soaked road, and the two doors of the sports car were immediately thrown open.
From the driver’s side, emerged a man dressed in work boots, typical of the town, jeans, leather gloves, and a dark brown leather jacket, a white motorcycle helmet, the tinted visor hiding his face, sitting snug on his head. In one hand, he held a lighter, and in the other he held what was once a vodka bottle, though a rag stuck out from the top now. He was a fairly tall man, standing about 6’2, and seemed to have an athletic build. From the driver’s side, another man, dressed fairly similarly, though his jacket was black, and his motorcycle helmet orange, emerged. He was shorter than the other man, about 5’10, and much stockier, almost built like a bulldog. He cocked the shotgun he held in his hands as he stepped out of the car, the spent shell falling onto the concrete with a slight clunk. Meanwhile, Eric was trying to force the driver’s side door of his Ford open. He was relatively unharmed, only suffering a few cuts from the windshield breaking, but his door mechanism seemed to be stuck. He was focused solely on the door handle, trying with all his strength to get it open, before he saw some movement in his peripheral vision, and looked up to see the blackened visors of two motorcycle helmets staring down at him, through the window. His eyes widened in panic, and before he could even register a thought, the stock of the shotgun crashed through said window, giving him another glass shower. A gloved hand grabbed his collar, and practically dragged him out of the window of his own car, throwing him onto the tarmac. Eric groaned, feeling his entire body practically crackling and popping as rose to his elbows.
Eric rose to his knees, and he saw the taller of the two men, standing directly in front of him. The taller man knelt down like a catcher, his white motorcycle helmet almost level with Eric’s head. The man asked, in a southern drawl similar to Eric’s own, his voice slightly muffled by his helmet, “You know what the fuck this about, Mr. Bordeaux?”
Eric vigorously shook his head, as the man holding the shotgun walked up behind the taller man, saying, in almost a New York, Brooklyn clip, “He’s fuckin’ lyin’.” “Shut the fuck up, and lemme do the goddamn talkin’.” The taller man told him, his tone caustic, and biting. The other man chuckled, before the taller man asked, sarcastically, “You wanna change yer’ answer?” Eric gulped, before he gained his confidence, shouting, “WHO THE FUCK ARE YOU CRAZY FUCKS?! FUCK, NO, I DON’T!” The taller man sighed, before he showed Eric the lighter, flicking it to life. The lighter, despite the rain, stayed lit, as the man asked, the flame deflecting off his visor, “There ain’t no shortage o’ people in this town who could tell us exactly what we wanna hear from you. Squeal and live, Mr. Bordeaux.” Eric responded, sternly, “Fuck you.” The apparent New Yorker growled, “Didn’t expect nothin’ less from this goddamn hillbilly.” With that said, he raised the shotgun, and blasted Eric in the chest, the buckshot ripping through his chest like it was made of paper mache. Eric crumpled to the concrete, blood pooling on the concrete, mixing with rainwater.
The taller southerner, still crouching, closed the lighter with a click, before hissing, looking over his shoulder, “Were you born with some kind a’ goddamn retardation?” The New Yorker hissed back, shaking his head, “He wasn’t gonna tell us shit.” The southern man sighed deeply, telling him in a foreboding, angered tone, “Fuck it, fine. We’ll discuss yer retardation later. Get in the goddamn car.” He jabbed his thumb at the Corvette, standing up, turning away from Eric’s body. The New Yorker merely grunted in response, grumbling under his breath as he walked back towards the car. The Southerner flicked his lighter back to life, while he casually strode back over to Eric’s crashed car. He lit the rag sticking out of the bottle, a cocktail of the Finnish variety, on fire, before he threw it in through the broken windshield, the bottle immediately breaking. The gas in the bottle was lit instantly, and fire quickly began to spread within the crashed Fairline. The Southerner then casually walked back over to the Corvette, fell into the driver’s seat, and slammed the door with force. The Corvette pulled another three point turn, peeling back off towards town, while Eric bled onto the street, the fire licking the interior of poor old Eric's car reflecting in his glazed over eyes.
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