INDIE 500
Here we go again. This week we pick up where the prompt posted this past FRIDAY left off. Please post your submission of 500 words or less to your blog, then in the comments below share the link to your submission here. Readers, please use the RATING stars to vote for the story or stories they like, the story with the highest rating as of WEDNESDAY will be kept and used as the prompt for the coming week.
Below the line of asterisks is my submission. If you find it worthy, please vote using the comment section below where I too will place a response.
I’m looking forward to reading your work!
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Homeward Bound
“Jesus. Belch. What the fuck?” Jacob stepped forward palming his forehead with a sweaty hand, then stepped back again, his eyes shifting focus.
“Howdy, Jacob.” Norman Belcher, business partner of Jacob’s father, Cornelius MacManus, and family friend, tongued the salty split in his lower lip.
“Why were you inside that bag?” Jacob began to wheeze as he often would whenever he was nervous or overly stressed.
“Slow down.” Belcher raised up on an elbow and tried to manage a seated position without success. He settle back again, pain clearly evident upon his usually handsome face.
“Who put you in there?”
“Breathe, kid. One thing at a time.”
“Your wrists are taped up. It looks like someone beat the shit out of you.” Jacob fumbled inside his pocket and retrieved a tiny aerosol cylinder. He sucked on the plastic mouthpiece and pumped, his face contorted in a grimace.
Belcher held his hands before him, as if in prayer. “Jacob. Keep your shit together and get this tape off me.” Jacob quickly obliged.
“Listen Jacob, we need to get out of here. They’re probably watching us. Now help me up would you, because as a matter of fact, I did get the shit beat out of me. You should see the other guys.” Smiling, Belcher reached up one bludgeoned hand which Jacob accepted.
“Who? I’ve got to call my father. Shit. What’s all this about? What are you into?” Belcher stiffly bent over and grabbed the canvas sack. As they ambled toward the car he tested a couple teeth for stability. Pressing his thumb to his nose, he occluded one nostril and cleared a blood clot as the two men, this odd pairing, one more child than man, opened the Saab doors.
“It’s not just me, kid. It’s you too.” Belcher tossed the sack into the back seat; a bound stack of hundred dollar bills spilled out.
“That’s a lot of money.”
“It is. Seed money. Now, get in and drive.”
Belcher adjusted the passenger side mirror. On the rise behind them idled a black sedan with tinted windows. Its passenger door opened. “Drive, Jacob.”
“Seed money for what?” Jacob pulled the door closed and reached for his shoulder strap.
Sun light glinted off a shaved head and mirrored glasses.
“Let’s go, Jacob.”
Belcher watched as a long matte finished barrel was leveled across the upper frame of the sedan door.
“Drive.”
There was a flash as the passenger mirror exploded.
Jacob stepped full on the gas; the Saab fishtailed spitting gravel then straightened when rubber bit asphalt.
“Do me a favor, Jacob.” Belcher turned his head to face Jacob who was hunched before the wheel like a ninety year old driving after dark.
“What’s that?” Jacob chanced his head high enough to scan the rear view and found no one in pursuit.
“Don’t tell you father. Not yet, anyway.”