Southern Justice.

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I'm going through some of my old stories I wrote when I was younger. Some are short some are long but ive been bitten by the creative bug and decided to go through and refresh and finish them. So since we are getting close to spooky month here's a short little story from the dusty old box in the back of the closet.

Southern Justice.
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Its late at night as a pickup truck with two occupants cruised around the twist and turns of an old Georgia back road with its loud exhaust echoing through the night and some country music blaring from the speakers.

Suddenly a car speeds up behind it and tails them for a moment.
"The hells this guys problem?" Cody Gentry asked as he watched the tail gating car in the rearview mirror.

"Here I'll fix him up" Caleb Gentry his little brother laughed as he reached over and hit a switch on the dash causeing the led lightbar on the back rack of the truck to come on.

"Ah fuck?" Cody said as suddenly the car behind them flipped on the blue lights.
Cody quickly turned off the lights and pulled over on a side road.

He grabbed his wallet and pulled the insurance card out of the clip on the sun shade.

The gravel on the road crunched beneath the officers feet as he walked up to the driver's side door.

"Evening boys" He said shining his bright flashlight in their eyes.
"Evening Jimmy" Cody said recognizing the deputy.

"You boys been drinking tonight?" The deputy asked smelling the alcohol.
"Ah.. no sir my older brother bought a bottle of jim bean earlier and it broke in the back seat.

"Step out of the truck please" the deputy said.
Cody nodded and got out of the truck.
"Come back here to my car" The deputy said.

After the two were behind the truck Jim made Cody turn around.
"You're not under arrest this is for my safety" Jim said as he placed hand cuffs on Cody and lead him to the back seat of the car.

Cody noticed that the car was an older crown Victoria not one of the new chargers his old man had donated to the department a few years earlier.

Not long after Caleb was lead back in cuffs and placed in the car next to him.
"Hey man whats going on?" Caleb asked like a scared little kid as deputy Jim got in his car and started to drive away leaving their truck sitting on the road side with the doors open.

It was at that moment Cody noticed that this car didn't have any of the normal things you'd find in a police car. No computer, no long gun rack no center divider nothing.

"What the fuck man, where are we going? " Cody yelled trying to get his cuffs off.
The boys yelled and made their pleas as Jim drove deeper and deeper into the back woods without saying a word.

The boys were crying and pleading as Jim turned off on a grass and dirt road that lead off into a thick pine thicket.

Soon they come to a stop and jim got out of the car. He then disappeared into the blackness of the night.

The boys were scared, none of this made sense. They had been arrested before but this had never happened.

Soon the darkness was lit up by the led lights on a mid sized excavator that was sitting in the small cleaning next to a deep hole that had been dug.

Jim returned to the car and pulled Caleb out first.
"What the fuck man why are you doing this? Jim dude you need to think man chill the fuck out" He yelled as he was drug over to the hole.

Cody saw jim saying something to his brother. He then saw him hold his phone up in front of him.

Caleb went to run but was grabbed and pulled to his knees. Cody couldn't comprehend it when jim pulled out a pistol and shot Caleb in the head letting his limp body fall into the hole.

"Oh fuck, oh fuck" he repeated as Jim walked towards him.
"NO NO PLEASE GOD NOO"Cody yelled laying on his back and kicking at Jim. But it was a useless jester cause Jim just grabbed him by his foot and dragged him out of the car kicking and screaming.

"Why are you doing this? What the fuck man?" He yelled as he was dragged over to the hole and then pulled up on his knees.

"Oh fuck" he gasped seeing his brothers body in a crumpled heep at the bottom of the hole.

"This is why" Jim said holding his phone up to Cody's face.
"That.... your killing us cause of that?" He said as the gravity of his situation caught up to him.

"You a freaking faggot?" Cody laughed nervously looking at the picture on the phone.
"Nope, and I don't like gays or people like this as much as the next guy but what you boys did, no one deserves that you sick twisted fuck" Jim let the words seep out like venom.

Months of nightmares and memories of finding that poor kids body, mutilated and desiccated. Seeing hi... her face in reflections or in passing glances like some spectre stalking him.

Almost like her spirit was calling for help, calling for justice. The memory of her screams on that video, the video that should have sent these fuckers to prison but mysteriously disappeared from the evidence locker before their trial.

Those screams, the look on her face as... as they cut her to pieces.
No one deserved that, no one capable of such things should be allowed to live".

"Fuck you faggot"Cody snarled spitting in Jims face but looking like a terrified child.
Jim laughed as he wiped the spit off his cheek.
"Naw boy, I'd say you're the one whose fucked.

The last thing Cody Gentry heard was a pop.

After backing the car down the slope on the other side of the hole and onto the trash Jim used his dads old excavator to bury
Everything. He loaded up the excavator on the trailer and climbed into the old ford dually it was hooked to.

He felt tears pricking at his eyes as he glanced in his passenger seat at what seemed to be a teenage girl sitting there.

He only saw her for an instant but he grinned as he put the truck in gear.
"She was smiling" he thought as he drove down the trail.

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Comments

I confess

As long as it stays fiction I enjoyed this. In practice I despise vigilante actions and the death penalty.

And then, her business on Earth done, she went into the light...

laika's picture

A well done story with a simple straightforward plot. It had every element it needed, events and motives all explained (the brothers' motive were more implied- they were ignorant vicious bigoted animals whose own transphobic bullshit was more important to them than a human life {murder as a remedy to their own insecurities, which is why homicides against transwoen are so often extremely brutal}); Many would consider this a perfect short story, and I can see why they would; but my mind can't leave well enough alone and I wish it was longer. A bit more detailed in areas. Like uh...

Increase the irony somewhat (taking advantage of a momentary opportunity, Cody almost escapes, until-) and make it a bit more brutal and you'd have something out of the immortal Jim Thompson. Increase the supernatural element by 30% (Jim haunted by recurring hideous nightmares of the murder from her point of view, which lead him to the missing piece of evidence; and driven half mad by his possession by the trans girl's spirit he knows what he needs to do...) and you'd have classic Stephen King.

But I can't blame you for just wanting to finish this one ASAP and get it out of your head. It's not a happy story. And though he clearly felt he needed to do this I suspect the justice came at a cost to the deputy's sense of himself as an ethical, honest, law abiding person; something he'll never get back, so like all bad solutions to an even worse problem it leaves a brackish aftertaste not a clean sense of satisfaction. Which maybe it should do.
~hugs, Veronica

Sometimes…….

D. Eden's picture

The ends really do justify the means.

Good story.

D. Eden

Dum Vivimus, Vivamus

Awesome

Wow that all to be said, Good old boys got their just desert. Southern Justice they should have left in the woods for the coyotes.

Video?

Daphne Xu's picture

There was no good reason to disappear the video. They'd have been acquitted anyway. The old-fashioned nightmare lawless society.

Southern justice? Inner-city justice? War-on-terror justice? Police-state justice?

The supernatural element may have brought justice, but may further injustice in another story.

Nice story.

-- Daphne Xu

still happens

Miyata's picture

Things like this still happen today in the USA, especially in Appalachia. If anyone has ever seen the Burt Reynolds Movie called Deliverance, then understand that is the way life is in some parts. Many still follow the Old Testament. Plus, they practice Live and Let Live more than you think.

Miyata312

'Do or Do Not, There is no Try' - Yoda