Damn.
MATILDA DIES
What is your mental currency? The most vocal objector to an assertion of insanity is often the craziest person. Sanity can’t be bought or borrowed, but it surely can be spent.
Here are some pics of what a 1972 Toyota Celica looked like. Imagine them painted in a desert dust color, and you will see Matilda in your mind.
The headlamp from the motorcycle flooded Matilda’s interior with the heat of a hundred suns.
There came a gentle tapping at the passenger window, from a crow bar.
Then a hoarse, scratchy voice said,
“Stacy. Get out.”
Stacy climbed into the driver seat, and I dug around on the floor for my pants. She was all dressed and ready to go up there in the front seat, like she had done this before or someshit.
Like they had done this before.
A shadow passed around to the driver’s side, and then this ugly old face appeared in her window, lit on one side from the headlamp. Being lit from one side only emphasized the many lines, wrinkles and scars all over his face. He looked like he had been carved out of old desert wood.
“Open the door Stacy. We need to talk.”
I almost puked. What the fuck? Why was I led into this trap? Who had done this to me?
Of course, you know that I had done this to myself. It was inevitable, that along this sort of sordid path I had been traveling, one must eventually end up at the crossroads.
TAP TAP TAP. The crow bar glinted with sparkly dents in the light of his motorcycle. It had been used many times for whatever work he did.
I had a dry mouth. “Uh, sir? I had nothing to do with this.”
Yeah, great. Now he knew my mettle. Or lack thereof. He could tell that he held the upper hand. Now he knew that I prolly wouldn’t be jumping out with guns a-blazing.
Damn.
Stacy slid over to the passenger seat, opened the door and jumped out.
Two shadows faced each other over Matilda from each side, and I clambered into the driver’s seat completely naked.
I locked the door.
Biker Boyfriend looked down and shouted at my window.
“Get The Fuck Out Now!”
Yeah, OK, of course I would.
Be right there dude, just let me put on my drawers first, cool?
The hood of my little rocket ship slammed down, and Biker Dude disappeared. Stacy had bought me time. I saw two shadows wrestling with the crow bar and then one of them ran off to the right. The other one swung around and grew larger. He was coming for me.
I cranked her over, and Matilda caught her breath, amazing little girl with the great big heart.
I sped bass-ackwards down the hill of that driveway with that big bastard chasing after me and he fell face down in the shadowed dip of the hill. I hoped he was knocked out.
At the street I spun my steering wheel to swing her around to the left, then threw her into first gear and punched her accelerator. She slowly chugged up to twenty miles an hour. He ran after me in the street, growing smaller and smaller in the rearview mirror.
I found the highway and opened her up. 40 was all that I had. I was chugging along for a bit, and then a tiny headlamp in the rearview mirror appeared.
Shit.
Go back home and deal with your cheating girlfriend, you ugly fucker. Forget about me. You thought this was intentional against you? Fuck you.
I meant, Please leave me alone dude.
I was driving naked in a slowly moving car that was about to finally give up the ghost if I let her overheat.
Then I remembered that I had not brought any water along for the ride. There was no point in pulling over now. This was it. I would have to run her into the ground to escape the mental case following me.
The Asshole Biker caught up to me. I looked over at him on my right, and he was shouting something at me. His bloody face was all scowled up and what few teeth he had were flashing as he recited his love poem to me. I guess he had indeed planted his face on his own driveway. But I suspected that he had lost his teeth years ago.
I swung a bit to the right and his eyes went huge, and then his face got red. He came up against the window and smashed it with a tire iron in his left hand. “Try it again you fucking coward!”
Then he beat at Matilda’s side over and over again, from the tail light to the head lamp.
I braked hard and he went on ahead, then swung around up ahead and started back towards me. Was this a came of chicken? Who the hell was this crazy guy anyways?
He passed by on my side and the windshield exploded. Glass flew everywhere, but none got in my eyes. I spat out bits of popcorn glass, and saw that the imprint of the tire iron showed that it met the window lengthwise. The plastic sheeting between the two glass panes held most of it in place. I could still see through it, if I looked through the clear parts here and there.
Fucker had swung it, and not heaved it like a javelin at my head. Thank Gawd for that bruthas and sistahs.
The tinkle of the tire iron tumbling down the road behind me came in through the open window.
Damn.
I needed to get the hell off this straightaway. I needed me some curves and some dips.
No, not Stacy. Fuck that bitch hard.
I needed the winding streets and drainage ditches of Clovis.
And there it was, the first exit to Clovis. Fuck yeah.
These northern streets were sparsely populated, but they had been recently constructed for the ongoing and unending conversion of the hard-gotten farmland into bedroom communities, suburbia, and inevitable urban sprawl.
Hard pan begat farms through the use of dynamite, and farms relented to million dollar McMansion gated-neighborhoods through the use of greed.
To the south were the relatively older parts of Clovis, now lit in the orange glow of mercury vapor lamp posts, which cast the daytime pastels of painted stucco into a monochromatic similar orange. Only the house numbers and weird angles to which they faced the curvy streets indicated whose house was whose.
If you didn’t know your way around, if this was your first time through the quiet side streets blatting on your stinky, loud hog, then you most certainly would be getting fucking lost.
He kept up a bit at first, but the deep, cement drainage ditches that lined each intersection slowed him down. Many a low-rider had lost an oil pan by going too fast across them. If you drove too fast, you would first bottom out on the rise out of them, and then go air borne, like on a ramp.
I kept my eye on him. He kept getting right up on my ass and then his shocks would bottom out on his forks as we came into each intersection. It was hilarious to see his front wheel flip sideways and he went skydiving over the handlebars.
Matilda began to blow steam quite hard, and I saw that her oil light was on, and her temp was topping out. I chugged her along, taking turns here and there, avoiding the cul-de-sacs, and staying off the thoroughfares here and there, which were themselves straight ways.
Dude must have folded his front rim. Or he was taking a nice tar nap.
I knew I was near the Clovis Police Station. I was going to grab my pants and run in there and seek protection.
The steam stopped roiling out from under the hood. Matilda was dry. Her engine began to make weird squealing noises, which became grinding rumbles. I was going on at a good 20 when she suddenly stopped, on a dime.
I woke up, forehead throbbing, to the smell of burning rubber, plastic, and paint. Her hood glowed red and smoke seeped out from under it.
Matilda was smoldering.
I grabbed my clothes from the rear foot well and jumped out. I put on my pants and shoes and heard glass tinkling.
Looking up, I saw that she was on fire.
I had killed Matilda.
END.
God Help You.
God Bless Matilda.
---willies out.
God Help You.
God Help Us All.
---willies out
