The Studebaker skidded on the rain-slicked asphalt and hit the gravel on the verge of the road. A blown tire.
I killed the lights. The night loomed in over the windscreen. A cold moon lit the deserted highway. I got out of the car and lit a cigarette. The hoot of an owl penetrated the drizzle. I needed to move. The cops were wise by now. Never trust a dame with attitude and a fur. I was wise too late. Framed. On the lam.
I pulled up my coat collar and headed down the road – there must be a house hereabouts. All I heard were my shoes scraping the gravel.
She came at me from behind. At first all I heard was panting, a wild orgasmic moan. A blonde running down the road and naked under a trench coat. Hysterical, crazy, and calling out “the big what’s-it!”. Figures. Of all the highways in all the world to hit the skids. A crazy beatnik in an open sports rod screeches past chasing that dizzy broad shouting “va-va-vroom”. His headlights lit up a California bungalow off the side of the road. I head for it. Big mistake.
The cloying fragrance of honey-suckle. I hit the bell. A dame in a towel and a crazy blonde wig pulls open the door. “You’re not selling insurance are you”, she says all aglow.
“Lady, I’m selling whatever you’re buying.”
I just realized after reading this twice that this is another one of your “creative” pieces, a prose consideration of a typical noir moment. You’ve set up the mise en scene quite persuasively here and with much elan.
I never forgot the Studebaker I owned in my early 20′s. I forgot to put oil in it for a while and the motor “ceased.” God, I was reckless in those days.
Great piece of atmospheric writing.
Tks Sam. Just a bit of fun – a noir mashup really. I’ll see where it goes…
Nice – reminds me of a mid-60s Dylan song with all the allusions, or else one of those kid’s books or cartoons where the character wanders from fairy tale to fairy tale. As someone who’s always loved works as part of a larger canon as much as (sometimes even more than) works in and of themselves) I dig it…looking forward to where it goes from now. (By the way, there’s a character meme circulating the web…you should do a noir reading of such).
Thanks Movie Man. I am not sure where it will go from here, I guess it will come to me somehow. It started around 2am one sleepless night as I twittered it sentence by sentence on my cell phone…
Apropo, check out this graphical novel collaboration: http://huzzahnoir.blogspot.com/. I have asked to use one of their plates for a post on their project.