Cages and Those Who Hold the Keys

It could have been a scene from any drive-in B-feature from the 1950s or early 60s featuring juvenile delinquents as Everyman and drag racing as heavy-handed social metaphor:

FADE IN: a seemingly endless stretch of smooth two-lane blacktop emptying into shadows. Crowds of people line both sides of the road, the men looking tough while clutching at their bottles of beer, the women looking anxious while clutching at the filtered tips of their cigarettes, and the kids—especially the really young ones—looking like they aren’t sure how they should be feeling while they clutch at the hands or coats of the tough beer drinkers and anxious cigarette smokers.

There are dozens of cars parked at haphazard angles off to the side, their headlights illuminating two vehicles that crouch rumbling in the center of the strip, rabid animals straining at the leash. A YOUNG GIRL, early twenties (if that), dressed in a skirt and tight short-sleeved sweater, blonde hair pulled back into a ponytail, a scarf tied around her neck, stands a few dozen feet from the front of the cars, raising her arms above her head with a slow dramatic relish, a bright red kerchief clutched in each of her hands…

I was trying very hard to imagine all of this as being a scene from a movie that I was watching, half-expecting one of the SUPPORTING CHARACTERS to scream something profound like, “Burn rubber, Daddy-O!” so I could smile at all the clichés being firmly in place. If I could achieve some kind of half-assed Zen state, if I could convince myself that I wasn’t really a part of all this, if I could delude myself into believing that I was just viewing it from a safe distance, then I might be able to survive the next two minutes with mind and body in one piece—providing I could force myself to overlook the physical appearance of most of the spectators, or the thing that was driving the car I was about to race against. I could try focusing on the blonde girl who was about to signal the start of the race, but that would mean looking at her arms, both of which were easily a foot longer than a normal arm is supposed to be, her elbows having been replaced by the type of steel hinges used to fasten car hoods to their vehicles; what sinew, veins, and muscle remained to connect her forearms to her biceps wound through and around the hinges like vines, all of it kept functional with a combination of machine grease and petroleum jelly.

And she was one of the more normal-looking spectators here tonight. Those who were still alive and mobile, anyway.

“On your marks,” she shouted, her arms now raised to their full height, the crowd silent, wide-eyed, leaning forward.

The other vehicle gunned its engine, its driver letting fly with a phlegm-clogged laugh from a throat equal parts metal and meat.

Tightening my grip on the steering wheel, I wondered if I squeezed hard enough, would my knuckles just rip through my skin. Maybe they’d postpone the race if I were injured.

One quick look at my opponent answered that question in short order.

The blonde girl was smiling a smile that might have been radiant in any other place, under any other circumstances. “Get set…”

Her grip tightened on the kerchiefs in her hands. In a moment, she’d swing down those impossible arms in a swift, decisive arc, and off we’d go.

I closed my eyes and took a deep breath, wondering how long I’d be missing and dead before anyone took serious notice of my absence. It was quite the revelation, it was, to realize that out of all my friends…I didn’t really have any.

Have to move that to the top of your “To Do” list right away, I thought. Numero uno: make some friends…and try to keep them this time. Abso-freakin-lutely.

Oh, yeah—I was so boned.

The other vehicle gunned its engine once more, snapping me out of my maudlin reverie with an earsplitting glasspac reminder that very likely I would be dead one-hundred-and-thirty seconds from now.

The blonde-haired girl stood frozen, ready to snap down her arms.

The spectators leaned farther forward, still and silent.

I took a deep breath and without consciously trying achieved the elusive faux-Zen state I’d been hoping for, only I wasn’t watching this scene from a distance, no; I was watching the me of roughly forty hours ago, the me who’d been safe and sound in the world he knew well enough to take for granted, the me who was about to learn that