You got any ideas?

(A short story ©Paul White)

She is a 1970 Dodge Challenger RT. Ya know the one, like was in that film, vanishing something… anyways, when I got her she was as rusty and as bent as an old pie tin in a trash can.

Now, ha, well. I’ve sorta darned gone an put my mark on her, made her mine, all mine.

I spent hours downtown. Rented a workshop and kinda of lived there for a while, well like two years a while.

Sometimes I would sleep in the shop, not wash for days, not sleep much either.

I was constantly an oily, greasy mess. My hair was lank, and I stunk like the ass end of a skunk. If I ventured into town folk used to stare at me, wondrin what the heck I was.

I found their looks of total incomprehension an their slack-jawed faces as funny as Fu… well, darned funny anyways.

Two years I spent working in that workshop. Two years that just seemed ta be gone, like that.

Time flew by.

Time weren’t nothin though, not while I was working on her. Not until I looked back, an you know what?

A lot happened in those two fucking years.

My divorce settlement came. I spent all of it on tools and parts and spares and paint. Well not all of it. I got a little food and a bottle or two of Kentucky smooth.

I got the house from the settlement too.

I sold the house. Too many memories I did not want to be living with anymore. So, I moved here, to this small place out of town and out of the way. Moved the Challenger out here too, into the barn.

That’s where I finished her. That’s where I got her looking the way I planned.

Not once, not for one single, solitary moment in all those two years that sorta slipped away when I weren’t lookin, did I deviate a fraction of one iota from my plan.

She was my baby.

Everything under the hood looks pristine now, betta than when she was new, when she rolled off the end of that production line.

The pipes and hoses are coloured, pale blue for cold water, dark blue for hot. Red for fuel, green for oil and so on. What is not covered in colour coded silicone, or paint, is inside woven steel cable, or under bright, shiny, polished mirror chromium.

Inside the seats are covered in soft cream leather, handstitched by me, with deep pink piping around the edges. Just like the door and roof lining, and the deep pile carpets.

Polished wood, chrome switches, all original design. All of them, along with retro dials complete the dash.

Outside she was sweeter still, real sweet if you know what I mean.

I covered my baby in a solid, shocking pink paint, metallic flake topped with seven layers of high gloss lacquer.

Like I said, I’ve put my mark on her.

She was now a sorta Barbie car, a ferocious, mean, growling bitch of a Barbie car, a sort of Harley Quinn  Barbie, right down to the hood ornament, which I designed it myself; a chrome-plated sculpture of a severed penis.

Yeah, you heard right.

A small soft dick.

Just like my ex.

It puts the message out there. “Don’t you mess with this bitch; unless you want to lose your manhood.”

You see, two years livin in an oily back street workshop ain’t no place for a sweet girl like me, unless you gonna get something for keeps from it.

An I am keeping my girl.

Now, all I gotta do now is find a real good name for her…

If you got any ideas, gimma a shout?

---

If you enjoyed this short story then check out my books. There are novels, short story collections, and novellas, some published as ebooks, or Pocketbook Paperbacks, and many full-sized paperbacks. You can find them all right here, http://bit.ly/paulswebsite , or scan the QR code below.

Advertisement