DRIVE!
Preliminary Lap
The Great Pretender
Jed yawned. There was nothing but the sleepy murmur of morning traffic and the distant glare of headlights that shimmered misty through the rain. Torrents blustered against the windows of an old 1990 BMW 318iS E30 in red, masking the wheeze of an engine ready to croak, and obscuring the smolder of a shaky cigarette. Down the sides and across the doors ran the faded, appropriately cheesy slogan of a local pizzeria, "Quick Dick’s Pizza: We'll always arrive early!" Tissue paper did what it could to stave off the drip from a sunroof, while a bobblehead of a once popularised video game protagonist, named Hard Serpent, wobbled away with an unlit cigarette squished into its mouth filter first. The wet weather had been on and off for the past week, and it looked to be at its worst, when Jed eased on the brake, and crawled to a stop at a red light.
In the pooled reflection of rain, a huddle of pink scarfs and hats and laughter fluttered along the road, lifting his gaze out of the gutter. There was always an estranged uplifting spirit around the attitudes that followed charity events and those strangers who partook, and this wasn't the first pink group he'd passed on his way here.
A Ford Fiesta pulled up beside him, and from it a hand reached out and rapped at Jed’s window. He raised an eyebrow then let the cold in through a slit. The moment he did he heard their mockery. ‘What’s up?’, he said.
'The fuck are you riding, bro’, the man jeered ‘does granddad know his car’s been swiped?'
Jed scowled and revved his engine, planting the lad back in his seat with his right sneeker, then the lad said ‘wanna race, ey?!’, revving his engine right back.
Jed scoffed ‘Nice botch job, dickhead. Exhaust sounds like a wet fart’ then he stuck it in first gear and kept his revs high. His hand tightened around the handbrake while he waited for the amber lights. Then a hesitance ran down his leg and lifted his foot from the accelerator for just a moment, when the lights changed. The driver shouted ‘no chance, boy!’, and screeched away smelly with the fumes from a custom exhaust. The car sped off into the distance, then Jed remembered to exhale. His revs fell, then he pinched the brow of his nose.
A moment of brooding held him on green, before a phone jingle caught him unsuspecting. He swooped it up and read it.
6:14 |Elly: bring back milk
6:19 |Jed: ok
6:27 |Elly: dont forget milk
6:28 |Elly: pickles
6:29 |Elly: actually coke and a kitkat
6:38 |Elly: forget pickles bring coke and a kitkat instead
6:47 |Elly: and cheese
6:49 |Jed: ok
6:55 |Elly: do u love me
In his rear mirror a plastic shopping bag swung from a passenger handrail. He shook his head, then met his own sombre gaze murky in the sheen of his driver’s cluster.
‘We could’ve taken him, dad’
He flipped on his indicators, then turned into the front entrance of his local driving test center.
He reversed into a bay adjacent to the front door, then with closed eyes he took a deep breath. His knuckles creaked white around the wheel, and his heart fluttered with the passing of every visible minute. ‘Please’, he sighed, ‘anyone but him’.
Jed was young but didn’t know it. He peered through the ruddering swipes of his window wipers upon the test center door with a weariness that betrayed a lifetime beyond his years, like there was no wonder left in the world. More alone of late and in the absence of others, he would exude the aura of a troubled man with an anxious, wandering eye. An eye that widened in alarm at something that protruded from his passenger door well. Then, before he could react, a familiar hunched figure - that held tight to both a brolly and his head - leaned into the gale and plodded straight towards him. Jed took a surprised puff from his cigarette then flicked it near the wheelie bins adjacent the test centre before straightening himself up.
‘He’s five minutes early!’ he said, just as a pink-jacketed dog woofed, and chased a cat tinkling out from under parked vehicles towards the approaching stranger. The man sprung up onto one leg before the beast’s owner yanked it’s collar back and away.
Jed shook his head and almost sniggered.
His front passenger door yielded with a high-pitched creak, then in slumped a man patting himself down without even so much as a nod of greeting.
‘Phwoah', said Jed, ‘it’s raining cats and dogs out there!’ He grinned, but there was no eye contact. Only the slink of an oversized gold watch loose around the wrist of a withered man that tissued away at paw prints down one leg. Then the man responded.
'Cats, dogs, and Jed’s shit jokes. Let’s see which one kills us first, shall we? Speaking of jokes, I'd like to see your provisional licence, please' Jed noticed a pink badge on the man’s shirt. The man sniffed at the air, then winced in disgust. It was a pompous display of passive aggression from a man who could only see straight if he looked down his nose. ‘Let’s hope your driving isn’t as poor as your habits’.
‘Ahh, it’s just a bit of harmless nicotine to calm my nerves. Won’t bring the roof down, will it Mr, Kimberly!’
‘...or this test could all go up in smoke? Well,’ said Mr. Kimberly, ‘have you laced it?’
‘e-excuse me?’ said Jed, getting more flustered by the second.
‘Your shoe’
Jed’s head swiveled, and below his knees, around his ankle, his shoelace had caught on an exposed police location tag. Jed’s face flushed red. ‘Ohhh’, he said, his emotions on his sleeve, ‘my shoe! Right...’
He fastened his lace with a deliberate and painful awkwardness, then pulled down his trouser leg. For a moment he lost the nerve to meet his test examiner eye to eye. Not that Jed couldn’t feel the sneering judgement breathing down his neck anyway.
Mr. Kimberly said ‘Yes, Jed, your shoe. Lord knows the only thing you wouldn’t lace for a driving test are your bloody shoes’. He spluttered into a cough, wafting his hand about the air, ‘thought I wouldn’t notice? There’s enough marijuana in here to bring back the sixties. If I start feeling good this test is over’
Jed scratched at his messy mop of hair and simpered with a nervous energy up one side of his face. ‘well, we wouldn’t want that!’
Mr. Kimberly’s eyes narrowed with uncertainty. He studied Jed’s face for traces of sarcasm, unsure of what he meant by that, but Jed didn’t seem clued-in enough to set the record straight. That, or his poker game was legendary.
Besides,‘ said Jed, ‘it’s Medical. For my anxiety’.
‘Stow it, Jed. I’m not your probation officer anymore, remember? Let’s get this farce on the road. I think we both know the result’
He bumbled his way through a slew of dodgy questions with dodgier answers, then twisted his key into the ignition. The engine argued back, but after a minor tiff it spluttered to a grumble, perhaps fatefully, as lightning struck a nearby tree causing him to stall. The weather seemed to worsen as the examiner ticked a box on his paper and shook his head.
‘I suppose you have a good reason for not wearing your seatbelt?’
Jed raised his eyebrows in fright, where they wobbled away with mental gymnastics, then he blurted out, ‘o-of course! I just thought that if we crash it’s safer outside the car than in’
The examiner smirked, and ticked another box on his scorecard.
Jed buckled up, then said ‘don’t worry Mr. Kimberly. I’ll get you back here safe and sound. That’s a promise!’
‘...if you could take a right at the gates, please’
#
After an uneventful while of mundane traffic and awkward, wry humour, Jed’s thumb began to tap at his steering wheel. Mr. Kimberly’s eyes slunk back and forth between Jed’s face and Jed’s hands, until he very nearly asked him to pack it in, then Jed spoke. ‘Mr. Kimberly, look, there’s something you should know about Elly--’
But the examiner interrupted him, sour faced and stern, ‘Take a right at the lights’, which put Jed on the backfoot with a message loud and clear.
The road taken was a known route examiners exploited to fail unprepared testees and expedite government quotas which, to Jed’s advantage, he already knew about and had practiced for beforehand. They just reached the crest of the hill to gaze upon a rundown, industrialised townscape below them. It was the kind of place from which all roads lead away. Where all whispers lead astray. Where the down and out found themselves looking up from the bottom of the well; miserable and murky in every conceivable way. It was a depressed, sodden place. Yet somewhere beneath the bones lay an acquired charm. Or maybe not. Jed nudged Mr. Kimberly’s elbow, and said ‘home sweet home, ey?’ His grin wasn’t received. Instead he caught Mr. Kimberly’s eyes lost towards the sky for a moment, before he blinked them towards Jed, then back towards the traffic ahead.
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‘Hey, erm, about my ankle bracelet…’
‘You’re not clever enough to lie to me, Jed. I know what it is’
Jed frowned and shook his head. ‘My street racing days are over. I’m on the straight and narrow’
‘Spare me your squirming. The only straight and narrow you know is ninety nine through traffic. Now, I’d like you to follow the signs for Manchester, please.’
The storm stirred above them into a whirlpool seemingly possessed with a haunted glow, like they peered into an ocean rather than a sky, and even Jed became distracted. He switched on his main beams, sighed, then said, ‘y-you know, about Elly. I’d just feel like a right prick if I didn’t tell you’
‘Jed, you’re really not a clever man. So I’m warning you. I’m here to test your driving. You’re not here to test my patience’.
Jed ruffled more and more into irritation, his intentions seemingly misunderstood, when a disturbance ahead slowed their pace into a crawl. Vehicles, more than a few now and counting, had beached themselves up curbs and even in the middle of the road; figures smudged pink under parasols silhouetted through the glare of hazard lights; traffic procedure had all but been thrown out the window and even Mr. Kimberly looked confused.
‘...what’s going on?’ muttered Mr. Kimberly under his breath. He was more distracted now than Jed - who was just looking for an opportunity to get something off his chest - Mr. Kimberly lurched forward, then stared straight up towards the clouds. The clicking of his pen against his clipboard sped up with each lightning flash. Then a cat bolted from behind a parked car, and straight under Jed’s wheel with a thud. He braked sharp, then Mr. Kimberly’s face slammed into the window with a whopping great clunk. Mr. Kimberly yelled out in pain and flung his pen into the air, then squawked through his nose, ‘what are you doing?!’
Jed held his breath in shock. His windscreen wiper was snagged on a grimy, lacerated cat’s collar, complete with a little tinkling bell. He said, ‘there was a cat!’ He pointed to the offence, but just before Mr. Kimberly looked, it blew away. Then a car horn beeped both their attention towards a redlight crossing, just as Jed blew right through it. ‘Oi!’, said Mr. Kimberly who nursed his nose, ‘that was a red light!’
‘Are you sure?’
‘Excuse me?!’
‘I’m colourblind. y-you wouldn’t discriminate against someone disabled, would you?
‘Mentally disabled doesn’t count, Jed’
Before Jed could respond, he noticed his side passenger door. He’d hoped to conceal it better, but now fully exposed was a large slip stuffed with drugs, and his eyes lit up.
‘Where’s my pen’ said Mr. Kimberly, who’d leaned to his left and was just about to look in Jed’s passenger door pocket, before Jed swerved even harder to stop him, which threw Mr. Kimberly’s head into the passenger window with a rattle and a yowl!
He hissed through clenched teeth, ‘What the bloody hell are you doing?!’
‘t-t-there was a… a cat’
‘Another one?!’
Jed shrugged. ‘I guess it really is raining cats and dogs’
‘Are you having a bloody laugh?!’ Mr. Kimberly groaned with laboured fury, holding a creak in his neck and nipping his nose. He pulled another pen from his shirt pocket and clicked it upon, furiously ticking away on his scoreboard, when thunder guttered once again. The gaps between seemed to shorten by the minute, then Jed scratched at his head and said, ‘look. I know you don’t like me, I get it’. He shook his head and sighed. Mr. Kimberly sat back and clenched shut his eyes. A vein across his temple throbbed a bead of sweat down his cheek, while his hand squeezed into a shaky fist around his pen, as Jed yammered on, ‘It’s just... If you just visited her once, or just sent a birthday card, it wouldn’t half cheer her up’
Mr. Kimberly’s pen snapped. ‘Pullover!’
Startled, Jed pulled up without indicating, but his examiner was beyond caring. He was livid. Mr. Kimberly hurried to unbuckle a stuck seatbelt, before it popped apart, then he said, ‘right. Outside, now!’ He unlocked his door, then opened an umbrella into torrential weather. Jed froze for a moment, grim and uncertain, half a mind to just drive away, before he unbuckled too. He took an empty pizza box from under his seat, then apprehensively opened his door stiff against the gale and into the thick of it, with nothing but a worn tshirt to stave off the bite. He trudged around the front of his car with tucked arms and stifled breaths, then halted just out of Mr. Kimberly’s reach and looked down. The man looked up and scowled with vengeful intentions from under a large brolly while Jed shivered underneath a soggy cardboard box. A distant flash illuminated the rage hidden under Mr. Kimberly’s umbrella while the rain cascaded down, then he spoke.
‘You’d feel a right prick? A bloody birthday card?!’ He stepped closer, as Jed took a tentative step away. ‘Four years I wiped crap from that girl’s arse. I went without sleep for six. For who knows how many years I stood outside her bedroom door while she fell to sleep, so..’ he hesitated for a moment, then continued, ‘..so the Cookiemonster didn’t get her. She was bullied all through highschool, you know that? You know how many other girls dads twice my size I had beef with getting her through therapy?’ He pushed up the side of his face with a finger to reveal several missing teeth, while Jed just nodded to everything. ‘When she turned sixteen she was assaulted.’ Jed’s fingers flinched, while Mr. Kimberly drew even closer, his expression ever more intense as Jed’s face paled. ‘I beat that bastard until my arms gave in. Then the cheeky git pressed charges and got me fired, didn’t he? Ey? Then I was the one thrown in jail, of all the insults, and for bloody well nearly a year!’
Then Mr. Kimberly came undone. His resentment had all but washed away into a spiritless sadness. He was a broken man that wallowed in misery, the mere shadow of his former self - half the size Jed remembered him yet no less imposing. Bitter embers smoldered within him, fleeting in the hollows of his eyes; too burned to fade away yet too faded to burn. His chin scrunched, then he slumped with the weight of regret. A moment passed while Jed said nothing, drenched to the bone, before Mr. Kimberly departed from the quiet and snapped back towards him. ‘Then I get out of jail and head home, only to find her assaulter with his legs up in my bed eating pizza’. He took a step towards Jed, who couldn’t help but turn his head away, before he continued; ‘in my bathrobe. Drinking from my mug’. He took a final step, almost face to face, ‘In my...bloody underpants! Then I find out he’s also dealing drugs to kids, from MY home?!’ Jed spun with a snarl and took a more threatening posture. They crossed eyes like swords, before Mr. Kimberly finally backed off. Jed reined himself in with a hand on his forehead and sighed.
‘Mike, will you please just listen? I didn’t do any of that! We were--’ Mr. Kimberly's lips wrinkled raser tight, silencing Jed into submission with a single raised finger. Then Mike said, ‘then she runs away with you...’
The moment he said that last line, Jed’s mouth zipped shut. His cardboard box caved in, exposing his frustration, his guilty conscience.
‘I lost my career. I lost my wife. I lost my daughter. I lost everything. All because of you. Feel a right prick? Jed, you are the biggest prick I have ever known, and I graduated in liberal arts!’ Mike shook his head, ‘don’t you dare imply any of this is my doing--’
‘She’s bloody pregnant!’
Mike’s sharp gaze melted. His whole outward demeanour softened immediately; even his voice cracked ‘y-you what?’
‘Six months’
Mike exhaled. Repressed emotions floated to the surface under thick skin, cutting through the tension as a variety of expressions cycled across his face.
‘..been workin’ to buy bits ‘n’ bobs for the baby, you know? Finally got unbanned from driving, as of this morning. That’s why I booked my test for today, and, well, why I need to pass. ...so I can drive the wee one home after she pops’
They were enemies of circumstance. They shared a minute of prickly celebration, like hedgehogs enticed by warmth in the cold embrace of winter, then Mike broke the silence.
‘..straight and narrow, ey?’
Jed smiled forlorn with the roughness of hardship, ‘Aye, straight and narrow. Once I pass, I won’t have to scrounge on the side. Can get a proper job. Move us somewhere nice, and leave it all behind...’
‘Please, Mike. We’re down and out. We haven’t got aught. We have a baby on the way. It’s not just me who suffers if I fail this test. And Elly, well… You can do more for her than I can.'
Something resembling relief overcame Mike, then he shook it off, and contemplated the situation for a moment. ‘j-just get in the car for now, or the weather really will kill us’
Thunder rasped along the rooftops and echoed dark down alleyways, when one of them finally noticed it. Mr. Kimberly turned, then gasped, his face twisted in horror. He took a step back, then shrieked. ‘W-what the hell is that?!’ Jed’s head spun like a wide-eyed owl, his pizza box flat on the floor at his feet.
‘No, not again’, whispered Jed, then he fell to his knees under an ominous sky. Mr. Kimberly grabbed Jed’s arm and shook him ‘what are you doing?! Hurry up! Get in the car!’ For a moment Jed slumped vacant and traumatised, before he slowly stood and remembered to breathe.
Jed climbed into his car and slammed his door shut, wringing wet, and not altogether present. He turned slowly to Mr. Kimberly, who towelled himself off while Squinting from under jar-bottom glasses with his face against the front screen.
A right traffic jam had formed along the mainroad connected to the side street they were on. Car horns blasted away until the very last horn fell quiet. All had spotted it now. Their eyes were pinned wide and not a word was spoken between them. The clouds above swelled with retribution, and from it - imposing and heavenly - thundered giant rings of dark light through a ferocious crackling sky. Buildings and vehicle alarms wailed. Street lights became erratic. Radios sparked to life playing a haunted, horrendous noise - like the anguished plight of the river Styx - and Jed’s head of hair began to rise up straight with static. Several more rings crackled and lightning-whipped their way into the domain of mortals - suspended by invisible hands all - until the very last ring emerged, then they plummeted synchronized towards the ground as if it was the end of days.
Everything in the vehicle zapped them to the touch and caused a panic. Mike tried to open his door but found it locked, and Jed tried his best to start the engine to no avail. Then they suspended their terror to fixate on the impending doom, that was six rings of energy moments away from impacting into the Earth amidst the rundown shanty council estates and far away, then, finally, like a dud firework, like a whimper, the rain snuffed everything into silence.
Their hearts raced, and moisture ran down Jed’s forehead and dripped shaky from his brow, then finally, after all of it was done with, Jed blustered:
‘You wanna try explaining that to me?!’
The examiner’s head rotated jittery towards Jed, both their breathing in debt, then said, 'Why am I not surprised. Why follow the bloody news when you can watch the footie all day’
'Rather play video games'
Mike tutted. ‘It’s a bloody lightfall’
‘A..what?’
‘...the first fell in South Africa. That one was the biggest. It was estimated to be roughly fifty kilometers in diameter.’ he said, still shook up, ‘they evacuated the whole city to deal with it’
‘wh-why?’
Mr. Kimberly shook his head, ‘not sure. Supposedly they blocked off all roads in and out. Brought in the military, and switched off the grid. Complete blackout. They’ve been appearing all over the world since.. Never heard of more than one ring though. Six rings. Six bloody rings!’
Mike realised something then choked. ‘Oh God, no..! ’ Jed clung to his chair in suspense.
‘What? What’s up?’ he blurted out, hanging on Mr. Kimberly’s every word.
‘...supposedly, anyone caught inside when they hit the ground either disappears, or goes insane’ then he turned slowly towards Jed. ‘...no exceptions’
‘a-anyway’, said Jed, thoroughly spooked, and keen to change the subject, ‘I’m still following signs for Manchester, right?’
You could have used the deadpan on Mike's face to fry an egg. Then, as if sod overheard, the immediate area around his car began to get brighter.
They both held their breath and turned to each other. The radio distortion got louder, and Jed’s hand moved towards the car key in the ignition, before they saw the seventh ring, too little too late; they were dead center of it. They became weightless, almost lifting from their seats, then all he heard was a miserable outcry from Mike, before Jed’s head became pure chaos.
Through the blinding insanity of what felt like countless hands and voices that ripped him apart and screamed for help grim in his skull, his garbled radio found a frequency, and from it came a voice that drowned the many into one, a voice he would come to both love and utterly despise:
[Welcome to DRIVE!]
[Buckle up, and start your engines!]