Hot and Cold on a Long Taut Road

The bastard sun they got down here was trying to kill me again.

Its midday beat-down tenderised the blacktop, my thick pulse swirling behind the sticky wheel, her cool curled body in the trunk.

She'd chewed me into this.

A faded Polaroid, strung from the visor, fluttered on its noose. It was us, fresh-faced, eleven flaming revolutions ago. A summer romance, meant to be ephemeral, contradicted by my sharpie scrawl captioning the tanned couple: 'Bruno loves Jessie forever.'

A twinkling gas truck passed the other way. I caught my reflection in its flank - some funhouse mirror lunk stuffing the bucket seat of a leased Chevy Impala, as white as Christmas and double the disappointment.

Jessie lately was rabid jealous of the boys in the bar, and what a cold one or three or five after supervising a slaughterhouse belt all day really meant when she was home with a defrosted chicken. I turned up in the small hours like a stomped penny - bust head and scuffed tail. A sack of kerbside drunks had razzed my Canadian accent, their Tex-Mex flavour of hick overpowering mine. Instead of sympathising, she reminded me of my responsibilities, meaning some white-picket-air-con-ever-after.

She wore the pants. She made me an immigrant. How the hell did that happen?

We lashed half-truths that bruised.

You've got zero ambition, Bruno! You're a grown ass man!

My tongue tip unbuckled.

Is EVERYTHING not enough for you, Jessie, you ungrateful bitch?

The endless asphalt repelled into oblivion. Every surface fried my optic nerves. I squinted up at that fiery prick. A feral bead of sweat trickled from my receding hairline, congealing in the red rinds of my bloodshot eyes.

A new spinal dread sizzled. I'd left my sunglasses there, a piece of me, bumped off in the scuffle.

I janked an ugly U-turn. The cop car on my blind side shot by as stealthy as a muffled bullet, hooking the same move with hollow-point precision. Its aqua lights flickered, a sharp whoop blunting my flight synapses.

I pulled over, my memories and misdeeds welding.

Jessie always wanted a cat. I'd put an end to her wants on that farm track. It wasn't planned. The sign to act, to finally get the last word, had sneaked up. I'd snapped and spun in the dirt, feet dragging to the ditch, alive with squeals and teeth and claws. I hoisted her by the neck and watched in creeping satisfaction as she turned compliant then loose. Sleep came, just like that.

I watched the highway patroller bounce out in my rear view. She was five foot nothing - one hundred twenty pounds, soaking wet. In a fair fight, she'd be a meat smear, but the Glock on her belt nudged the odds.
She kept coming. My throat closed like a rusty gin trap. The way she tapped her holster told me what the game was - a khaki coyote nipping at a wounded wolf.

“Was I speeding, officer?”

She tipped her mirrored aviators, flashing me big browns, a cocked dimple. “You tell me. You in a hurry?”

“That ain't how it works,” I gritted, the mercury spiking quick, even for me.

She flexed her hips, her soft hands hugging those dainty handles. “You sayin’ you know the law better than me, sir? License and registration.”
I slapped the plastic card against the door, leaning out on a flexed forearm, taking in the credentials on her chest. “Listen... Officer Fuentes. We all got business to attend to -- ”

“Oh yeah? Where you going? Where you been?”

She gave me a second do-over, clocking the fresh gouges on my wrist.

“You shoulda seen the other guy,” I shrugged.

“No shit? You half tough or full dumb?”

She trailed her tendril fingers along the scorched metal casket, raking dust in parallel streaks to the cartoon stink lines coming from the rear, cracking her fine forehead at the blankets.

Her honed button nose twitched at the smell.

A ripple?

“What's in the trunk?”

“My business,” I snarled.

“Big talk in the middle of nowhere.”

“Look, I know my rights.”

“And here and now, between me, you, and the lord, you got the right to shut your hole. Now, I asked where you been, Bruno?”

“Southern hospitality don’t get me no ‘sir’ no more?” I spat her sloppy drawl back.

“Step out.”

I complied, like those times before, resting my chafed palms on the vehicle’s blistering roof, legs spread. Biceps coiled.

The trunk sprung. The needled cop whipped the covers away.

She cupped her trembling mouth. Her shades clattered to the ground, revealing the soul of a herbivore. Of shimmering prey.

I checked the long taut road - that vanishing line crushed by the flat infinity of a wavering horizon.

Her windpipe locked, nice and easy. I cradled her eggshell skull and squeezed, my bared teeth grazing her ear. "Did your mama never tell you what curiosity did?"

She threw an elbow, slipping daylight between us. Her whole body lifted and latched, thighs wrapping ‘round my rib cage.

Her lips nuzzled my salty neck.

The black tabby in the fruit crate meowed, stretching and preening like a pit stop stripper.

My crowbarred grin sputtered skyward. "This one was hell. She reminded me of you, Jessie Fuentes."

My girl melted, offering the spoiled surprise a pinky to gnaw on. "I'll work the kinks out."

"The sign said ‘free kittens’, but they're a life sentence."

Jessie framed my lopsided mug on tippy toes. "You know I'm all about that long game, lover boy. We’ll call her Libra. She'll keep us balanced."

I grabbed an ass firm enough for roots to take, my face squelching hers, wincing to the haze of heaven. "I love you, Jessie, but... that son of a whore is my nemesis, I swear."

"The damn sun ain't no nemesis, Bruno! You’re a cat daddy now, work around it, like the rest of us.”

BIO: Ian Johnson is an emerging writer from North East England. His words appear in Trash Cat Lit, Product, Apricot Press, Underbelly, Pistol Jim, and Free Flash Fiction. He is a 2026 'Best of the Net' nominee.