Horror - Short

This story is a work of fiction. Names, characters, places, and incidents are fictitious and any similarities to actual persons, locations, or events is coincidental. This work cannot be used to train artificial intelligence programs.  No AI tools were used in the writing of this story.

All rights reserved. Blacktop Execution Copyright © Eddie Generous 2026

BLACKTOP EXECUTION

Jim Nixon swallowed a leaden ball as he stumbled forward at the guards’ insistence. The rubber of his prison-issue boots was sticking to the hot, hot asphalt below. This was it; this was how it all ended. He fought back tears, didn’t want to give his parents the satisfaction of seeing him cry.

“We ain’t got all day,” one of the guards said and gave Jim a nudge forward.

—

Backpack loaded of everything he had worth saving, Jimmy hurried out the farm laneway toward the highway. He couldn’t take it anymore. His father screaming and pulling his ears and pinching his legs. His mother walloping him with wooden spoons, belts, even a cookie sheet when nothing else was handy. Being seventeen and graduated meant he didn’t have to take their crap anymore. Never again.

A Peterbilt rig pulled over and the driver shoved open the shotgun door while leaning on the seat, and said, “Where ya heading?”

The answer was anywhere but there. It wasn’t easy, and the $700 he’d saved didn’t go far in the city, but he found a job. After a handful of years, Jimmy had become Jim and was staring his future dead in his face.

Unfortunately, the cube truck was out of his budget by about half. With that truck, he could quit working the appliance delivery job and become the master of his future. Anything a body wanted moved, he’d move it.

“Thinking of taking out a loan,” Jim said to his girlfriend, Megan. “I swear, it’s like being back on the farm, that numbskull Wayne yelling at me all day.”

They were sitting at the rusty and peeling Formica table in the dining crevice of their one-bedroom apartment. Megan was pushing macaroni noodles in red sauce around her plate, eyes on the motion like it was the Moon Landing.

“Something wrong?” Jim said.

Megan took a deep, deep breath. “I’m pregnant,” she said, exhaling the breath around the words.

“Oh.”

“Twins.”

“Oh, oh no,” Jim said and rubbed his scalp. He needed that truck now or he’d never get it. His savings would fly away on baby stuff and he’d be stuck under that sonofabitch boss until Kingdom Come.

Unless…

“Hey, Jason, it’s Jim.” Jim had taken his cellphone into the bathroom so Megan wouldn’t hear him—she’d already kiboshed the idea of buying his own truck, starting his own company, building his own future.

“Jimmy, what’s happening?” Jason said. Jason was Jason Nixon and was Jim’s older brother by four years. He’d stayed on at the farm, until their parents sold. Jason got his inheritance early.

Jim did too, but of course, his was $0.

“Had an idea. Want to go into business together, as partners?” Jim said, and despite that it meant he’d have his own business, butterflies of worry began to bounce around his guts.

—

“Get the lead out,” Jamie said as he leaned against the wrought iron fence of a customer’s new home. “I tell ya, that kid is lazy as a housecat.”

Jim had to clench his jaw not to yell at his brother. From day one, Jamie had acted like he was in charge because he was older, had in fact, acted very much like their father used to on the farm.

Once everything was loaded into the home, they were back in the truck, rolling to Jamie’s to drop him off; the truck sat nights outside Jim and Megan’s apartment. Jim had cooled down but had to say something.

“You know you aren’t the boss of this operation.”

Jamie, in the passenger’s seat, blew out a puff of steam from his vape pen. “Somebody’s got to be.”

“Nope. Partners. Means starting tomorrow, we do equal lugging.”

Jamie huffed. “Lazy Jimmy, always trying to get other people to do his work.”

“My name’s Jim, and if I recall correctly, you spent half the day trying to impress the customer while she spent half the day trying to stay upwind of your bad breath.”

Jamie dropped the vape pen to his lap and spun in his seat. He grabbed Jim’s thigh with a vise-grip pinch and twisted. “You always were lazy.”

Jim grabbed Jamie’s hand and slammed the brakes, the truck rocking and rattling as straps and empty boxes tumbled about the cube. “You pinch me again and I swear to god.”

Jamie sat back in his seat. “Way I see it, this operation’s nothing without me. You couldn’t buy the truck on your own. You can’t move a couch on your own. You’ll never get nothing going on your own. You ran away from the farm ‘cause it was work and you gonna run away from this for the same reason.”

That night in bed, it hit Jim. His brother didn’t want to work at all. No. He wanted to make Jim miserable enough to quit and then sell the damned truck, thinking he’d get all the money. Jamie was a dumb hick, just like their daddy, and he wasn’t going to beat Jim, no matter what dirty tricks he pulled.

—

 Three weeks later, after Jim spent most of the evening loading the truck for a customer’s move the following day, he went looking for his brother. They’d been only a block from the apartment where Jim and Megan lived, and five minutes into loading, Jamie had said, “Jimmy, gotta shit something fierce. I’m gonna run to your place.”

Nearly every day there was something, usually it was the need to sit on the can; Jamie had pulled that trick all through their childhood. At lunchtime, Jim rode the whiny elevator up to the ninth floor. The door was unlocked and as soon as he opened it, he heard Megan’s familiar high-pitched panting. He stepped into the hallway and saw into the bedroom where his brother had his pregnant girlfriend bent over the new mattress they’d had to buy because since carrying all the extra weight, Megan noticed the lumps and springs in a way that kept her awake.

“Pinch me! Harder!” Megan howled.

Jim backed up, too shocked to do anything else.

—

The following morning, with a truckload of household items, they rolled toward the customer’s new home. Jamie was taking huge, crunchy chomps from a Granny Smith apple. “I was thinking,” he said around a mouthful, “we sharing so much in the business, might as well share Megan. I think she’d be up for it.”

Jim began to tremble from his center outward but said nothing.

Jamie tossed the apple core out his window. “You listening?” He reached over and pulled on Jim’s ear the same way their father had. “Talking about expanding the business.”

Jim didn’t shift, didn’t try to pull his head away. “You planning on paying for one of the twins, too?”

Jamie immediately released the ear and put both hands before him like he was in the middle of a stick-up. “Whoa, now. I don’t want none of that.”

As was his norm, Jamie helped with the big, awkward things, and spent the rest of the day gabbing. At one point Jim had heard him say, “He’s my little brother. It’s a favor to him that I hired him,” to the very man who’d set up the appointment with Jim in the first place.

While carting four cartons of books into the huge living room, it hit him: the only logical thing to do about Jamie was to kill him. He’d have the whole truck, the whole business, and his whole girlfriend. He instantly felt better about his future.

—

To get away with murder, one needed to plan, needed to act with a clear head, needed to eliminate themselves from the suspect pool.

Anger was a thick red fog as Jim pulled up the laneway to the modular home where Jamie lived. There was no yard, only gravel. The home was located on a parceled section of land that had originally been part of the family farm—their parents had set it up for Jamie even before they retired from farming. Trees surrounded the building and much of the laneway. Such a private, intimate setting to commit murder.

In a flash, Jim felt every pinch, ear pull, and nasty thing his brother had ever said. He put the truck in park in front of Jamie’s home. “Wait a second, those people didn’t want a whole box of DVDs. Guess since we’re partners, we’ll split it down the middle.”

“I call dibs!” Jamie said and popped from his seat to rush back into the cube behind the truck. He began kicking and tossing empty boxes. “Where the hell—ow!”

Jim had grabbed one of the clamping straps from the fridge moving cart and had latched it onto Jamie’s ear. Blood oozed as the teeth of the locking, gator-like clamp took hold. Jim’s face broke out into a wild, gleeful smile.

“What’s wrong,” he began cranking the winch handle to reel in the strap, “don’t like your ear pulled?”

“I’m bleeding, cut it out!”

“Okay,” Jim said, and instead of helping his brother open the clamp, he turned the handle as fast as he could.

Jamie screamed as he fell, his face tight to the fridge cart. Jim backed away a step as Jamie continued to scrabble against the hold. The flesh around the bottom of his ear had torn, revealing a gap big enough to host a human eyeball. Jim looked around the dim cube and found his next tool.

“Get this off me! Please, Jimmy!”

Jim snatched up a twenty-foot strap and played out the entire length. He then ringed one of the hooks through the middle belt loop at the back of Jamie’s pants—the man had ceased screaming and was fingering around the clamps, feeling for the release, finally having some of his wits back. Jim dropped the other end of the strap by the big door and then sprinted through the cube to the driver’s door and outside. He stepped down and around back. It appeared Jamie was just about free.

For now.

Jim took the second hook and attached it to a hole on the inside of a tire rim. Jamie had freed himself and was sitting in the back of the cube, unaware a second act was underway.

“Jimmy, you just about ripped my fucking ear off.”

Jim got back into the truck and looked over his shoulder at his brother and said, “Oops,” before starting the truck. He pounded the gas after putting it into drive. The strap wound quickly and launched Jamie out the back, pulling him ass-first into the spinning wheel. His screams were intense, piercing. Jim did three big ovals in the lot in front of the home before stopping to check the progress of his brother’s murder.

“Jimmy,” Jamie gasped, dusty and bloody and busted all over.

Jim bent close to his brother. “What happened?” he said and before the man could answer, Jim stuck and index finger into the now accessible ear canal. “Say, does that hurt?”

Jamie was wailing, his voice banking off the surrounding trees and echoing back. Jim sighed and got back into the idling truck. He put it to reverse and crunched over his brother, the variety of snaps sending warm and fuzzies all through him. He killed the engine and got out, smiling widely enough to make his cheeks ache.

Then he heard them. Sirens.

Then he saw a drape shift within the house. Megan.

—

Trying out new things was the only way to keep the world from going stale. Nobody wanted to see rockets blast off anymore. Nobody cared about great leaps in medicine anymore. Nobody gathered to watch a death penalty play out anymore.

Or they hadn’t.

“Jim Jacob Nixon, you have been tried before a judge and found guilty by a jury of your peers. Do you have any last words?”

“This is wrong,” Jim said, trying to keep the acid in his guts from streaming up his throat.

“Kill the bastard!” Jamie Nixon Sr. shouted.

The crowd, and what a fine crowd it was, cheered.

“Jim Jacob Nixon, for the crime of murder via motor vehicle, you have been sentenced to suicide by motor vehicle.”

Jim looked out at the slightly curving bridge with no guardrails or shoulders. It looked hot and sticky, but not sticky enough to help him make it. If he managed to clear the mile stretch, his crime would be forgiven, but dammit, the bridge wasn’t even as wide as the buggy convertible he’d be driving. His wheels would be half off at all times; still, it was possible.

“Come on, then,” he said, nerving himself up.

Once to the buggy—four wheels, an engine, a seat, and a steering wheel—he saw the drop beneath the bridge. It had to be 300 feet, maybe more. The guards put him behind the wheel and uncuffed him.

“Hey, wait,” he said, kicking around, discovering there was no gas or brake pedal. He shook his head. Fuck. Maybe he could do it, just maybe—“Hey!” He brought his hands up, trying to fight the guard pulling the hood over his head and clamping it to his coveralls. “I can’t see!”

“That’s the point, you lazy shit!” Josephine Nixon shouted.

Much of the big crowd laughed.

The guards stepped back and the buggy immediately began rolling forward. Jim put his hands on the wheel and tried to envision the bridge, thinking, if there’s any fairness in the universe, I’ll make—

“Nononononono!”

XX