(no subject)

[jack_f_twist]

And that's all it is.

Just a road, stretching straight as the eye can see

(which is odd, 'cause weren't it winding like a snake trying to shed its skin just a minute ago?)

and the only thing on it is Jack's old broken-down truck, the same old piece-of-shit he'd driven to Signal, the same one what kept trying to quit on him once he got down from Brokeback

(that's if he'd ever gotten down from Brokeback, and if those mountains sitting humped and purple in the distance are any clue, he never truly did)

and he's just sitting on the hood, sweating and grease-stained and just about ready to give up on the damned thing.

"Shit," he says, softly, to himself, and squints into the sun.

He hates changing flats.

Comments

[e_delmar]

There's heat beneath his hands and heat in his brain

(or maybe that's heat falling down his face in long wet tears)

and he can't see Jack and he can't see the light and he can't hear nothin' but the sounds of the bugs around them and he can't feel nothin' but the hot wet flesh below him but there ain't nothing moving, not on a hot still day like this one.

[jack_f_twist]

He fights back, of course.

Jack's always been one to take on a fight (though he ain't hardly won a one of 'em), and he fights back now, kicking and hitting out wildly. They wrestle in a terrible parody of lovers, but the end is the end and that's never changed.

In the end it's still again, nothing moving but grasshoppers and the sun slowly climbing its way down to the plains below (no mountains--must have just been cloudbanks, before), and Jack tastes salt before everything goes dim, bone-tired as he is, and he slips into something like sleep with relief and loose as any rag-doll.

[e_delmar]

He's breathing hard and harsh now, grabbing and moving and punching and he gets some fabric between his hands and as he pulls on it, he hits the ground.