Drive (540 hits)
Category: NoneRating: 1.81 on 11 reviews (Rate this item) (V)
Submitted by Paddles (View user info) at 2008-09-30 01:00:55 EDT
I'm gunning down the asphalt, the open road by the cliff face and the lake, with two guys breathing motor oil down my neck. I'm coming up to a bend in the road and I slam on my breaks, working up an awful dust in the summer heat as I kick the accelerator just as hard and rocket off down the path. One of the guys on me pulls ahead as we turn and I coax the Caddy's engine into turbo, nitrous flooding the intake. The car shudders as it's pushed past its limits and I close in on my target at half again the speed.
The whole car bucks violently as it smashes into my opponent's coupe. Metal mates with metal and tears apart just as fast, each fire-breathing steel beast inflicting a vicious wound upon the other in their deadly joust.
The loser in the coupe is off the worse for wear from our exchange, and his little Japanese shitbox careens through the guard rail and is sent plummeting noisily 100 feet down a sheer cliff face to be broken on the unforgiving rocks below. I shove him out of my mind and keep driving, finding the other aggressor on my right side and stomping down on the gas as hard as I can.
Off we go again, colliding like two boxers in the middle of the ring. My approach is perfect and I give it to the guy's Eurotrash muscle car at full volume, wrecking everything behind the driver's side door. He swerves from the impact, readjusts, and stands fast. The car's tougher than I gave it credit for. That's fine. I can deal with that.
He slams on his brakes suddenly. I steer out of the way just in time, old reflexes kicking in on cue and the big beast beneath me growling as it complies to move out of danger. Behind me now, my opponent kicks into high gear and takes me at the next bend.
There is a deafening roar as the two mounts clash and their riders turn to face each other. I get a glimpse of my opponent as he sends me hurtling towards the edge, powerless to stop the wounded titan beneath me. My car goes through the guard rail like it was ticker tape. The face of my death is hidden behind a helmet.
The rocks take the car with no remorse, splitting the vehicle, the proud 400-horsepower predator borne of passionate steel into so much water-bound junk to be swept away by the tide.
I lie still, knowing even if I could move my neck I wouldn't want to see the shape my body was in. I'm covered in blood from some deep fatal wound on my body, probably just above the heart.
Or through it.
I've got that curious cool and euphoric feeling snaking its tendrils around my consciousness, the one I'm a little more accustomed to than I'd like to be. I sit and wait for the reset to take me.
There's a blinding flash of light, a painless jolt - more like a jerk around my spine, and I'm on the road again, breathing deep the sweat smell and vulcanized rubber in my helmet, eyes searching for the guy who took me out.
I've got that woozy punch-drunk feeling the reset brings on. The fatal injury I just suffered is a distant memory of pain and copper-tasting blood, and though I can't focus that great my resolve is sharp as ever. The survival instinct is rising to the top of everything, taut like an archer's drawstring and clearing my head one cobweb at a time.
The reset has brought me back in the middle of the road, at the very end of the road parallel to the cliff face. A final turn breaks off from the lakeside scenery and brings my former murderer into view. We're tearing down a strip of valley road that hasn't been paved in too long and rocks the size of jumbo marbles are kicking up into the Cadillac's underside, big thwacks of old asphalt on steel. I'm just hanging on for the ride as I flick the switch that injects nitrous into the Caddy's big engine.
The beast beneath me growls a battle challenge as I take on Eurotrash-boy for the second time. I give him both barrels in retribution.
Off we go again, colliding like a mountain rises up to meet a tumbling boulder. This time I turn the full brunt of the Caddy to bear on him, four thousand pounds of American engineering just creaming his smaller, zippier Aston-Benz-or-whatever-the-hell. I've got him rubbed up against the wall now, corrugated metal carving off that shitty custom flame-job like a cheese grater on a regretted drunken tattoo. He's sandwiched between metal and metal and though the horrid harpy-screech lays siege to my eardrums I swear I can hear his fearful, panicked gasps as he starts to realize the shift of power, the sudden change in the game plan. Just survive.
It's too late for him now but I'm in control, I've got the Caddy purring beneath me now. We're working together in perfect synchronicity, assuring each other of our victory. I'm whispering to my mount, tell it to just keep up the pressure a little longer, keep this guy sweating for a couple more seconds and we can make him history, just a red smear on a country road locked in a scrap-metal grave as we roar off into the night like we've done a thousand times before.
I sense my opponent's fear above the horrid white noise of sparking, cutting metal, but I never pull my attention away long enough to see the big semi, horn honking and driver saucer-eyed and white-knuckled as he tries to steer his Titanic away from the iceberg ahead.
When the blackness recedes I notice neither the Caddy nor the semi is moving any more and the valley road is silent as a grave. The next thing I notice is a complete lack of any feeling below my shoulders. I dazedly think that it's for the best as every square inch of my head is alive with a thousand fire ants, pissed-off and biting like it's the end of the world and there's a buffet in my cerebrum. Then I'm wondering how long was I out for and I realize it doesn't matter, realize if it wasn't for the reset I'd be a goner for sure, realize my spine probably looks like the folded accordion of a Cadillac I'm trapped in. The next thing that comes to my mind is that I'm actually looking at the back of the car, and I wonder how it's possible before it occurs to me that my neck is twisted completely backwards, and my stomach turns to jelly and I find myself silently begging for the reset.
But it doesn't come. At least, not yet. For five eternities I sit there, head screaming and swimming at the same time, stomach churning with the pain and the fear, what the hell was that semi driver doing that he couldn't see me soon enough and where's the goddamn reset already? I realize I'm delirious, and then I realize that if I die here, that's it. Game over. Well, that gets my blood running, and I don't think that's a good thing because I may not be able to feel anything below my shoulders but I know from experience that I'm probably sucking extra air from any number of gaping wounds on my torso.
I know I'm going to die faster if I don't try to relax. I know that I need to calm down, give myself time, I can't bleed out yet because there are so many races I still need to win.
I think of Cadillacs. I think of cold dark winter nights with the stereo turned up and a girl hanging around my neck, a freezing passionate sweat on delicate skin, and she's telling me she loves me but she'll be gone in the morning, she just has to get up so early and her work is so rough... a lifetime ago. I remember caring about these things so long ago and I think how stupid they seem now, how for so long all that's mattered is the smell of the road and the roaring sound of my Caddy's engine.
Sometimes I think that's all I'll never know.
There's a blinding flash of light, a painless jolt - more like a jerk around my spine, and I'm on the road again, breathing deep the sweat smell and vulcanized rubber in my helmet, eyes searching for the guy who took me out.
User Reviews
Submitted by czwij (user info) at 2008-10-01 09:12:05 EDT (#)
Ranking: 0
Submitted by Paddles (user info) at 2008-10-01 07:48:17 EDT (#)
Ranking: 0
Yeah... I know shit all about cars, and I'm from Canada. Doesn't help the narration but I was mainly just writing. Glad you liked it.
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so your grandma drove a beaumont and not a nova...
me too, that cdn thang.
but i no longer live there
Submitted by Paddles (user info) at 2008-10-01 07:48:57 EDT (#)
Ranking: 0
Submitted by sexualchocolate1984 (user info) at 2008-09-30 04:24:26 EDT (#)
Ranking: 2
So, you were playing Burnout last night too then?
This was really cool, shame they cut the mutilated bodies out of Burnout.
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Guilty as charged.
Thanks for the kind words everyone.
Submitted by Paddles (user info) at 2008-10-01 07:48:17 EDT (#)
Ranking: 0
Submitted by czwij (user info) at 2008-10-01 05:05:32 EDT (#)
Ranking: 1
stuff about cars
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Yeah... I know shit all about cars, and I'm from Canada. Doesn't help the narration but I was mainly just writing. Glad you liked it.
Submitted by kaos-king (user info) at 2008-10-01 06:58:53 EDT (#)
Ranking: 2
No Comment
Submitted by czwij (user info) at 2008-10-01 05:05:32 EDT (#)
Ranking: 1
american engineering?
in a car? hahahaha!
that's funny.
any. ANY, powerful euroheap can drive the doors off any american car.
its an unfortunate fact.
i drive only american cars, but i will freely admit that in a turn, im dead against most tuned four bangers be it shite roads or autobahn, and i don't have dogs - chrysler 300m, 3.5l hi-o and a jeep cherokee 5.9l, mildy tuned.
maybe this has changed with the 2008 challenger(my dream), but a caddy! come on.
sorry, that statement alone made me cringe. any bmw, merc or renault sports model will kill anything from the states except maybe the challenger and the new vette
fun story in any case
Submitted by Lib (user info) at 2008-09-30 18:30:51 EDT (#)
Ranking: 2
No Comment
Submitted by Replen (user info) at 2008-09-30 13:33:09 EDT (#)
Ranking: 2
No Comment
Submitted by Pentameter (user info) at 2008-09-30 13:10:45 EDT (#)
Ranking: 2
This was pretty goddamn fantastic.
Submitted by F.J.Bell (user info) at 2008-09-30 06:39:41 EDT (#)
Ranking: 2
WTF? INRAT!
But I love your username.
Submitted by sexualchocolate1984 (user info) at 2008-09-30 04:24:26 EDT (#)
Ranking: 2
So, you were playing Burnout last night too then?
This was really cool, shame they cut the mutilated bodies out of Burnout.
Submitted by Bubba2341 (user info) at 2008-09-30 01:51:45 EDT (#)
Ranking: 2
No Comment