History has a Hot Rod
A story of engines and escapes
A key turning—the twist and torque of fingers. An engine coughs, then rumbles, then purrs. Ryan doesn’t think of it as a beast awakening. He does not need to anthropomorphize to find the poetry in the sound. A machine stirs and performs its task with simple efficiency. Rubber clings to asphalt. Pistons churn. There is beauty enough in that for him.
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He grew up on these streets. His first steps were taken on the same cracked paving slabs that surround him now. His knees were scuffed here. His lip bloodied. These have always been those sorts of streets. Proverbial hard knocks given and received. He’s always loved these streets. They just haven’t loved him back. He doesn’t blame them. They're streets. Ryan really doesn't anthropomorphize much.
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A foot depresses an accelerator. A spring resists. Gears mesh. Needles on a dashboard arc. Ryan is pressed back into his seat’s foam cushioning. Friction fails and tires spin. Gravel spits and chews. Everyone stares. Ryan doesn’t need the attention, but it’s already too late anyway.
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He met Logan on these streets. He doesn’t remember exactly how anymore. Logan was just another face in another roving pack of kids trying to come up with another reason to stay out past their curfew. Just another kid who was already sick of life’s bullshit by the time he was eight year’s old except one who stuck around for more than a week or two. Who wasn’t dragged off to juvie or by social services, or rescued by a parent finding faith, or rehab, or whatever. A friend.
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He can already hear the sirens, their caterwaul and clamor approaching. He peels out, fishtailing. Rear bumpers graze like lovers exchanging brief touches as they pass each other on the stairs. His heart thunders. Palms are slick against the pleather of the steering wheel. Man and machine united in a moment of desperate, panicked rushing.
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It was Logan who got him into drugs. People never seem to believe that, always see it as a shield he’s thrown up to defend himself from the truth. Whatever. What other people think about him is out of his control. He’s learned to accept that. That was part of getting clean. Focus on what you can control. Get through today.
But it was Logan who started it. He knows that even if no-one else does.
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Left turn. Right. Use the maze. Get lost. Get free. Stay that way. Needles red-lining. Engine howling. Ryan howling because he saw the squad car in the rearview before he was around the corner. And if you can see them, they can see you. It’s already too late. They’re pack hunters, and you can run, and run, and run, but they won’t ever give up.
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The main person who doesn't believe Ryan about Logan getting him into drugs is Logan’s brother, Xavier. People call him Spot. He says that’s because that’s where X marks. Ryan says it’s because Xavier was a pizza-faced teen with more zits than hair. Doesn’t say it to Spot’s face, though. Especially now. Now, when the streets administer hard knocks, it’s usually Spot doing the knocking.
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A horn bellowing. People bellowing. People scattering. Ryan and his car plunging through their midst, a bull charging toward the promise of a distant red flag, and all the matadors are in pursuit, their swords sharpened and ready. Cop cars mount curbs. Asphalt, dirt, and dust. The ricochet of gravel flung by Goodyear. A world in motion. Ryan and his tires both desperately fighting for traction.
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He’d stayed away a long time after Logan OD’d. It was the smart play. The only play. The only road that didn't inevitably end in a shallow hole beside a highway. Spot blamed him. It wasn’t fair, but why should this be different from the rest of life? So, Ryan put his head down, got clean, kept moving. But then his mom stopped. Or at least, her heart did. And there are some things you just have to come home for.
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Onto the freeway. Ryan without time to appreciate the oxymoron of the name. Ryan only with time to appreciate he has nowhere to hide on a gray desert, eight lanes wide. Channeled, and funneled, and racing pursuers he can’t outpace. Ryan desperately praying for an exit.
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Spot’s boys pulled him off the street right after the funeral. That's what passed for respect for the dead around here. The respect ended there. They’d dumped what was left of him on a basement floor. Spot loomed. He’d put on a lot of weight and muscle in the intervening years.
“What would you say my brother’s life is worth?” he’d rumbled.
Ryan hadn’t had much to say on the topic.
“They tell me,” Spot had said, “that these days you’re a driver.”
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Ryan heaving on the handbrake. Bags from the bank job slamming back and forth in the back seat. The car pinwheeling. Ryan dazed in the aftermath, driving head-first off the on-ramp. Back into traffic, into horns and chaos. The world crashing around him. Cop cars and history he can’t outrun behind him.
Would the couple hundred grand in the back seat really set him free? If he got it to Spot, would it really be an exit, or would his reward be just another job? Or just a bullet? As the squad cars crowded into his rearview, Ryan wondered if perhaps there was another way out.
Abruptly: a truck. Sixteen wheels of obfuscation clogging an intersection between him and the cops. With it: a chance to turn, to vanish, to throw another street between him and the inevitable.
How many dead ends can one man walk down?
Tires squealing. A foot pressed to the floor.
Ryan slamming on the brakes and waiting for everything to catch up with him.
I don’t normally add notes to the bottom of these stories, but this week I had a longer story, “Wolf’s Clothing,” come out in the latest issues of Underland Arcana. It’s a sort of weird/cyberpunk story about hijacking animal minds and unforeseen consequences that took a while to find the right home. I’m very happy its finally out in the world, and hope people are able to check it out. Cheers!