Topeka Heat Rising
(entered in Nerve.com's Pulp Fiction Contest)
By
Diana Grove
The skyline of Topeka was a sea of broken fingers; blue, twisted, and jutting precariously skyward.
Phyllis paced the floor of the seedy motel room, her heels clomping like a restless racehorse in need of a brushing. She plucked a cigarette out of its case and impatiently wrestled it between her sturdy lips, lighting it with the snap of a match.
She sighed and clutched her forehead. What was she doing here anyway? What if she didn’t get the envelope from Frank? What happened to her panties; did she leave them on the train again? All these questions made her brain throb in its pan.
Suddenly, the doorknob turned, slowly, then a bit faster, then slower again, then it fell off its mounting and rolled to the floor.
He pushed the door open and stood before her, tall and imposing, like a government building in downtown Des Moines. The detective adjusted his trench coat with his fist, tossing his spent cigarette behind a sagging chair, the envelope crinkling conspicuously in his hand.
She had hired him just last week to locate her missing husband. But ever since, she had been unable to erase his sturdy frame, powerful gaze and exceptionally well-blocked hat from her mind.
Phyllis tried to hide her excitement by smoothing her skirt with moistened palms. Her head swooned from the damp air and the cut of his broad shoulders. What answers did he have for her? Did her husband really disappear on a turtle shoot down on Calliope Key with only his terrapin hat found next to a tortoise hole? The truth was unbearable, yet she couldn’t resist these new feelings that burned between her thighs.
Detective Frank Gill inched toward her, slowly, with the guile of a panther and a tremendous twitching in his trousers. The heat from their bodies met and gestated into a quagmire of forbidden passion. The scent of jasmine, rifle oil and Red Dye Number 6 commingled with their increasing closeness.
Suddenly and unexplainably, the room smelled of pastrami.
Frank couldn’t hold himself any longer. With tremendous force, he grasped Phyllis by the waist, causing her well-coifed hair to collapse into a cascade of tumbling wiglettes and hairpins. He pressed himself against her, nudging his gun into her side. Her nipples were hard, erect and facing Mecca (which was quite a surprise considering she’s Lutheran).
“Frank, please. What about the envelope? What about my husband?” Phyllis panted.
Frank’s rock-hard manhood was aching for her. But he pushed himself away, clearing his throat. “Baby, there are some things that you just shouldn’t know. Terrible things.”
She trembled and held her tear-stained face against his, her eyes two kidney-shaped pools of desire. Unable to control her passion any longer, Phyllis hiked up her skirt and wrapped her legs around his hips, his back, and amazingly, his neck.
Frank dropped the envelope containing the grizzly, turtle-rampaged photographs of her late husband and pushed them under the rug with his toe. He then proceeded to plow Phyllis with a ferocity unseen since the invention of the John Deere backhoe. She moaned in ecstasy with each successive thrust.
With one last blow, Frank reached his climax and straightened his trousers. He picked up the envelope and slowly removed the pictures. “He’s gone baby. And there’s no use cryin’ about it either. The truth is …he was a no good turtle poacher and he got what he deserved.”
“No, it can’t be!” Phyllis cried, pushing him away with her overly muscular knees.
Suddenly, a gunshot fired and Frank, gripping his side, crumbled to the floor. The force of her powerful legs had apparently activated his hair trigger. He looked up as her blurry figure darkened and faded, and he cursed himself. “Now I really need to finish that sandwich.”
Dabbing his fresh wound with the envelope, Frank smiled and unpocketed the remains of a pastrami on rye he had packed earlier. He hobbled out the knobless door and mused to himself, “That’s the way it is with Topeka dames; all curves and lashes and no post-coital finesse.”
