by Unknown
A cackle from the backseat.
“Every second is a gift, wouldn’t you agreeee?” The cackle became laughter, and soon Mr. Lucky was having a fit. Jared imagined him choking to death, but the pleasure it brought was fleeting. It was Jared’s head on the chopping block.
Ol’ King Cole was crooning about “The Happiest Christmas Tree.” “Ho ho ho, hee hee hee, look how happy I can be, oh lucky, lucky me!” Jared wanted to punch the tape deck.
He took another swig instead. Tasted like Hell. A Hell in which four kids judged him with angry faces. He could hear them in his head. He should have taken a bullet before a drink. Jared ignored their voices as best he could. What he was, was alive. How to stay that way posed a significant conundrum. If stopping earned him a lead lobotomy, getting out of the Marie Antoinette headgear was going to be damn difficult. Eyes shifted from side to side, taking in the whole of the interior. Tequila bottle the only available weapon. Too bad he couldn’t use it without turning round and cutting his throat. Brute force wasn’t going to help him out of this predicament; he’d have to think his way out. Best he could hope for was to attract attention and pray Mr. Lucky folded.
HONK!
A VW bug roared up behind the slowpoke Buick. Horn howling, headlights flashing. It whipped alongside, and Jared’s heart leapt. He began to shout, turning as much as he could without injuring himself. “Help! I’ve been kidnapped!”
“Windows are tinted,” Mr. Lucky gloated. “They’ll never see you…” He was right. The driver shot them the bird, bellowing something incomprehensible. “No, no…” Jared reached for the window crank. It came off in his hand. A snicker from the backseat, Mr. Lucky pleased with his ingenuity. Jared strobed his brights at the retreating vehicle to little effect. He sped up to try and keep pace, but the bug was soon lost to the night.
Jared eased off the gas and coasted to a less dangerous velocity. “You’re not drinking,” said the Devil on his shoulder. Jared slammed the bottle back. No hesitation. Shoveling coal into the furnace of his hate. Hate would keep him going. Jared made up his mind; then and there: no way on God’s Green Earth was Mr. Lucky going to get away with this shit. He had to pay. Jared’s mind raced through a series of unlikely scenarios, each more absurd than the last, until a more plausible option occurred to him.
Officer Harris.
Harris kept his police cruiser parked behind a rotting Kay’s Pancakes billboard beside an onramp to the two-lane 115 Interstate, lying in wait for unsuspecting road racers. It had to be the most predictable speed trap in the state. Jared often passed him en route into Takoma Valley. Locals suspected he just liked his peace and quiet. It was the only explanation that made sense of his stubborn refusal to relocate to a less obvious hiding place. Harris wasn’t much of a cop, but he had a gun and a radio, and it wouldn’t be hard to get his attention. He was Jared’s best chance, maybe his only chance.
Jared carefully turned the car around.
“Where are wwe going, Daaddy?” Mr. Lucky sounded different, affected. If he was trying to sound like a kid, he came off more like Elmo with a scalpel in his larynx. The caricature in no way convinced, but it was damned unsettling.
“Home,” Jared said, playing along. No sense in giving Mr. Lucky an excuse to open up the back of his head.
“You need to stop drrrrinking, Daddy,” Mr. Lucky cooed. “Mommmmmy said you havvvvve a problem. Mommy says you have soooooo many problems since the warrr.”
Jared did the math. Somewhere between the Stars-and-Stripes dash cover and the boozy ride into an apple tree, Daddy probably got more than he bargained for serving his beloved country and turned to the bottle for comfort. “I don’t have a problem, son,” Jared replied. The words came easy to him, though the “son” would’ve been tough without the hooch. He’d said the others before. Too many times, especially before the accident. He’d made more of himself afterward, but the damage had been done. Four dead, the oldest only seventeen. Kids.
Jared had blacked out on impact. He’d gone out to watch a game, but by the time he’d left the bar he couldn’t remember who was playing. He took the scenic route through Takoma Valley. Not because he liked the view. It was the quickest way home. He’d felt fine at first, hadn’t even noticed he’d drifted out of his lane. The kids were coming home from a late-night bash in Mom’s Chrysler. She was mad as hell her daughter took it without asking. It would soon be the least of her worries.
Jared’s Lincoln punched them through a guardrail as they came round a corner, sending them over a cliff and into the canyon below. Jared vomited when he came to and saw the wreckage battered against the rocks. He cried, found a shard of glass on the blacktop, and slashed his throat.
Somehow, he survived.
Judge looked at the suicide attempt as evidence of genuine remorse and sentenced Jared to only two years. It was his first offense, and he got out early on good behavior. Eight months jail time, two for each kid. The families were outraged, but there was nothing they could do. Time passed and everyone moved away, hoping to start over in places far, far removed from the tragedies of Takoma Valley.
Probation bound Jared to the land, but he wouldn’t have left even if the option were open to him. Living in the shadow of what he’d done kept him on the straight and narrow. If he ever felt tempted to knock a couple back, one look in the mirror was enough to dissuade him, the ear-to-ear scar under his chin a flesh-and-blood reminder of that terrible night.
Late every Thursday, the night of the accident, he’d drive out to Takoma Valley. Even years later, the shiny new section of guardrail stood out from its more weather-beaten counterparts. Once a week, a new bouquet for his victims. There would never be enough. This place haunted him. He dreamt about it every night. In the dream Jared stood at the edge of the cliff where the Chrysler had gone over. It was always the same.
First, the scar across his throat would begin to itch. Soon the irritation spread, and he was scratching all over, like a dog with ticks. Jared would convulse as something glided beneath his skin. His throat bulged impossibly huge until the scar split open, a face peering through the gash, pushing its way out like a baby leaving the birth canal. The old Jared gurgled as a new Jared emerged from within, naked and bloody as a newborn. This new Jared was immune to the laws of gravity, floating skyward as he slid from the shell of his former body as casually as a snake sheds its skin. The burden of the past was replaced by the exhilaration of weightlessness, of limitless possibility.
He was flying. Soaring over the valley. The vista that had before held only pain became wondrous, magical. Then would come the tug of consciousness. The dream would fade, and there was only the reality of the stuccoed bedroom ceiling, the smile across his throat, the breathalyzer he’d have to suck on if he wanted to get to work, and the kids he’d killed.
The scar now seemed less like a grim reminder of the past and more like an invitation, the dotted line drawn by a surgeon that begs “cut here.” It was the sort of perfect coincidence only fate could engineer. Perhaps, Jared wondered, this was meant to be. The universe dishing out a little poetic justice.
Perhaps not. On the horizon, Kay’s Pancakes beckoned. The double yellow line between the Buick and the billboard swayed like the larva adrift in the bottle of tequila. The half-emptied bottle of Tequila. Lost in the trance of recall, Jared hadn’t realized how hard he’d hit it. Like riding a bike. The thought set Jared’s soul on fire. Forty-five, read the speedometer. He’d have to get moving if he hoped to spur Harris into action. He wasn’t likely to bother with anything under seventy-five. Jared blinked until the road turned from shifting pixels to black mud. In the old days, a few self-inflicted slaps to the face would get the ball rolling toward clarity, but the logistics of the guillotine rendered that old technique inapplicable.
“Did you really killllll people, Daaaddy?” The asshole had done his homework, Jared thought as he leaned on the gas. How long had he been watching him? Jared felt the back of his skull sink into the headrest as the
Buick gained momentum. “Mommy sssaid they were baaaaaad guys,” Mr. Lucky continued. In his drunken stupor, it took Jared a second to realize Mr. Lucky had not been referencing him, but Daddy. The Soldier. Or maybe, Jared thought, he was lumping them together. They had some things in common, after all. Hell, maybe he was talking about every last sonofabitch he ever put behind the wheel of one of his custom-rigged Buicks.
The speedometer crept past fifty-five, bumps in the road becoming more pronounced. Jared was hyper-alert to every last one of them, each new tremor conspiring to jostle him into the deadly halo enclosed around his throat. He grimaced and stiffened his spine, an imaginary iron bar running from scalp to ass crack. A tab of melting butter shifted into view as the pancakes drew closer. Eggs smothered with a square of processed cheese, bacon glistening with grease. Jared sensed his supper rising and pushed it back down.
Sixty-two, sixty-three, sixty-four…
“Daaaddy, you’re going too fffffast!” Mr. Lucky was smiling when he said it, half in the moment and half not, enjoying the rush of heightened jeopardy. Nat King Cole was going on like he knew something they didn’t, crooning about a world of sin, the thrill of hope, and weary souls rejoicing. Jared read it as a sign in his favor.
The Buick blew past the billboard.
Jared glanced into the rearview. Nothing. Down at the speedometer. Eighty-two mph. The air went out of him as Kay’s pancakes receded into the distance. Back in the mirror, only darkness…
Then, light.
Whirling red and blue shafts caught in a cloud of dust, the police cruiser materializing out of the void, siren screaming as radials rumbled onto the interstate.
Jared allowed himself a glimmer of self-satisfaction as Mr. Lucky rose from the backseat, waving the gun around. Gotcha, fuckface. Through the rear window, the police cruiser nipping at their heels. Mr. Lucky turned to the front, more excited than concerned.
“Only one rrrrrrule,” he said, beaming.
It wasn’t the reaction Jared had hoped for. “Open your eyes, asshole, there’s no way out of this!” Silence from the backseat. “We stop, we crash, I live, I die, you walk or crawl out of this car, you’re done!”
Still no response. “They can help you, man!”
The stench of mildew shot through Jared’s nostrils as Mr. Lucky lurched over the seat, hot breath on his cheek. “You’re ruining it, Daaaaaadddy!!!” He was twice as revolting out of the shadows as he was in, eyes bulging from seared sockets. Instinct told Jared to pull away. The shining silver halo kept him rooted to the spot. By the time Jared thought to swing the bottle of tequila up into Mr. Lucky’s face, he had shrunk back out of range, wailing to himself over and over again, “One rule, one rule, one rule, one rule…”
He whipped the gun up. “Hey, hey!!!” Jared protested as he took a pull off the bottle. This one went straight to his head, like a needle in the nape of his neck. Jared bit his tongue, pain bringing the world back into focus. He turned his attention to the cruiser, and saw Harris mouthing off into a handset. Jared scored one for himself. Maybe a few more black-and-whites would make Mr. Lucky rethink the one rule.
“We stop the car right now, you give up the gun.” Jared took an uneasy breath before the capper. “I don’t want you to get hurt, son.”
“I should have died,” Mr. Lucky said. “I want to die.”
“Not like this you don’t,” Jared countered. “You wanna die in the crash. With me. You wanna keep doing it over and over again till you get it right. Well, it ain’t gonna happen. ’Cause I’m gonna pull over. I’m gonna pull over and if you crack that cannon the cops are gonna swiss cheese this boat and everyone in it. You’re gonna die like a common criminal.”
“No, Daddy, dooooooon’t sssay that!!!”
“Now put down the gun, you little shit, and let Daddy help—”
Jared stopped talking and punched the gas as he caught sight of Harris swerving toward their back bumper. The cruiser went out of control as it turned into empty space, weaving to and fro. All that downtime hadn’t done a lot for Harris’s driving skills. The cruiser righted itself and bore down on them. Jared gritted his teeth. Harris was showing uncharacteristic ambition. He meant to bump them off the road. One solid knock would send the car spinning and throw Jared sideways into the circular blade. It might not be enough to take his head off, but it would definitely put him down. Harris had given the advantage back to Mr. Lucky, and Mr. Lucky knew it. He was mugging confidently in the rearview. Jared met his gaze, desperate but determined. No way on God’s Green Earth…
He sped up, weighing his options. Even if he could lose Harris without wiping out, he’d be back to square one. Harris was armed and therefore the only real hope against Mr. Lucky’s big-bore revolver. Stopping was a given, but how to do so without killing himself? Slowing down wouldn’t work. If Mr. Lucky didn’t blow his face off, Harris would sideswipe him into oblivion. He’d have to catch them both off guard. It would have to be abrupt, unexpected, but such a sudden stop would surely pitch Jared onto the blade, no matter how he steeled himself against it. Maybe he could shove the tequila bottle between the blade and his throat. One glance at the bottle dispelled that notion. The body was too wide, and the neck wasn’t thick enough. He’d just wind up with a face full of broken glass on his way through the guillotine.
A more gruesome option occurred to him. His hand would fit into the gap. The blade would pass through flesh like Jell-O but bones were another matter. They might not prove resistant enough to keep Jared’s head on his shoulders, but it was a better bet than glass. Better maimed than dead, Jared thought. According to Mr. Lucky, he’d only have fifteen seconds to regret it if he got it wrong.
Screw it.
The rest fell into place. Mr. Lucky would be thrown forward. He’d be disoriented. Jared would have a few precious milliseconds to brain him with the tequila bottle. Or snatch his gun away if possible. Harris would need time to stop, get out, and draw—
“Daaaaaaaddy!!!” Mr. Lucky was pointing and laughing.
A fork in the road lay ahead.
Construction. It hadn’t been there last Thursday.
No time to think. Jared jerked the wheel. The Buick drifted into the curve, smoke curling from squealing tires. His neck muscles tightened, veins bulging with effort. One hand braced against the armrest, the other on the wheel. He felt his body sliding, the edge of the blade sinking into him. The Buick banked onto the straightaway and gravity yanked Jared in the opposite direction. His throat nicked the adjoining arc of the circular blade. The cuts weren’t serious. Blood trickled down either side of his neck, but a Pez dispenser he was not.
The junkyard crunch of stressed steel and smashed glass drew his attention back to the rearview. There he saw Harris’s police cruiser cartwheeling round the bend, flipping end over end. He could only watch, horrified, as the car rolled onto its side and lay still. Jared forgot himself. His foot slipped off the gas, and Mr. Lucky leveled the revolver at him. Jared scowled, put the pedal down, and took the detour, a back road winding up into Takoma Valley.
“He’ll be okay, I thinkkkkk.” Mr. Lucky glared, triumphant. Jared wanted to believe he would be, that the airbag and seat belt had done their job, but there was no way to know for sure. He tried to push Harris out of his mind but he wouldn’t budge.
“Is thissssssss where it happened, Daddy? Where you killed thosssse people?” Jared didn’t respond. He didn’t want to think about it. He didn’t want to think, period. He tilted the bottle all the way back, frustration eating at his insides. Mr. Lucky was still babbling, but Jared wasn’t listening anymore. He concentrated on the road, the bottle. So much time between then and now, yet here he was, driving drunk through Takoma Valley in the middle of the night, another accident in his wake. Should have let Harris run us off the road, he thought, imagining Mr. Lucky either shot full of holes or rotting in jail.
“I wanna know one thing.” Jared asked. “Why guys like me? Guys tryin’ to turn it around. Laying in wait outside an
AA meeting, why not wait outside a bar till you see some liquored-up piece of shit headed out with keys in hand?”
“Daddy thought heeeee turned it arrrrround!” Mr. Lucky snapped. “Mooooore than once…” His voice trailed away, tinged with melancholy. Then, as if to reassure himself, “Everything musssssst be as it wassss—”
Jared cut him off. “I’m not your daddy.” Mr. Lucky glared an objection but said nothing. “Besides,” Jared added, “no one gets to turn back the clock.” It was as much confession as confirmation. Jared smiled and gulped tequila. His insides grew warm. For the first time, he let himself enjoy the sensation.
He skidded the Buick through a series of hairpin turns. Mr. Lucky squeaked out a nervous giggle, delighted by the bravura display of recklessness but still troubled by Jared’s outburst.
“Thisss is fun. Don’t ssspoil it.”
Yeah, Jared thought, just wait.
He finally felt like he understood the pitiful thing in the back seat. Mr. Lucky loved and hated his father. Wished he’d died with him, but wanted to kill him over and over again for what he’d done. A contradiction that perhaps only made sense to those whose scars ran deeper than most. It made sense to Jared. He’d felt like that about himself from time to time. Jared tipped the bottle higher, and the road went distorted through the caramel glass. The squirming larva slid into his mouth as he chugged the last of the tequila. The bottle fell from his hand as the road spun, oils running down a canted canvas.
Mr. Lucky’s enthusiasm became uncertainty.
“What are you doooooing, Daaaddy?”
The Buick slammed into the railing. This particular section a little shinier than its more weather-beaten counterparts.
Jared felt the small of his back leave the upholstery. A lightning bolt pulsed through his body, every nerve ending alive and shrieking for one terrible instant. Something warm gushed against his cheeks, and he was surprised how good it felt. He seemed to float out of his body and over the dash, passing through the empty rectangle where the windshield once was. It was as if he were sitting in a movie theater and found himself catapulted into the screen.