The black earth sizzles. The air burns. You roll up the windows and crank up the air conditioning. You turn the car around and stick close to the concrete wall that was once the lowly curb. You don't dare try to cross the road. Any vehicle could come racing along and crush your tiny car flat, splayed out like an aluminum can. Going back against traffic at least let's you see them coming.
Your heart beats. The engine runs and the wheels turn. Everything works as it should despite the shrinking. The rubber bounces and the shocks groan over every crack and bump in the craggy asphalt. You find yourself not in a car, but in a paint-mixer. Every nut and bolt in this tuna can could shake themselves loose any minute now. How many miles was it back to the lab - multiplied by how much bigger the world outside is? How many marbles will you have left when you get there?
On the road ahead, leaves and pine needles are brushed aside and rolled over. Every so often a twig or branch blocks your path, but you carefully duck and dodge under the bent debris. Wet, matted heaps of foliage clump up against the curb, creeping uncomfortably from the wall and forcing you to veer wide, closer to the white stripe marking the oncoming lane. And every turn of the wheels, you shake left and right, up and down in your seat until the world ahead is no longer made of coherent shapes but an impressionist painting of a path and a wall and the sky.
You curse every inch of this awful trek until a new sensation builds under your seat. Something isn't right. Something is shaking your car more than it's shaking itself. Another rumbling force grows louder. A huge metal mountain rises, roaring its engine and tearing rubber down the road. Despite its immense size, you could never have seen this behemoth coming sooner.
You can't hear yourself shout as the beast approaches a hundred times your speed. Every loose piece of metal and everything that wasn't loose before now rattles and shakes itself to terror around you. Something slams into the car. Your passenger windows shatter and metal crunches. Another impact cracks your windshield. A rock! A boulder! You slam your brakes and hide your head between your knees. Goliath has kicked up a storm of pebbles to send David cowering in a pitiful metal casket. Only when the stones stop falling and the giant's roaring laughter has quieted do you lift your head. Your heart firmly shares space in your skull.
Gasps turn to breaths, gradually, of course. The engine is still running. You're down two windows and half the windshield is badly cracked. There are certainly some exterior dents to hammer out, but you survived and can continue forward. Should you? You mutter aloud how stupid and dangerous this whole idea is, and how truly fucked you are like this. How far have you gone? Half a mile? And one truck passing by could have ended it all with a tread full of pebbles. There would be more where that came from.
Copyright 2000 - 2024 21 x 20 Media All rights reserved. This site is property of 21 x 20 Media
All Writing.Com images are copyrighted and may not be copied / modified in any way. All other brand names & trademarks are owned by their respective companies.
Generated in 0.18 seconds at 3:28pm on Nov 28, 2024 via server WEBX1.
View Portfolio
Visit Notebook
Send Gift Points
Awards
Badges
Send Email
Community Newsfeed
General Discussion
Sponsored Items
Book of Trinkets
Static Items
Books
Groups
Interactive Stories
Audio
Campfire Creatives
Community Notes
Crossword Puzzles
Documents
Folders
Images
In & Outs
Madlibs
Photo Albums
Polls
Product Reviews
Quizzes
Survey Forms
Web Pages
Word Searches
More by this author