The Red Car
By Patrick Whittaker
My one infidelity was a car, blood-red and beautiful. A vehicle for all occasions; it was Nemesis and redemption; a metal messiah, a stealer of souls.
Marjorie saw the potential. She spent the summer redesigning the car, sculpting obscure shapes on paper, transforming love into geometry.
Before I could even begin to share her vision of the future, she had already mapped our destination.
I close my eyes.
There is a movie playing in my head, a diorama of old memories, faded hopes. Marjorie is resting her head on the steering wheel. She should be crying but she will not allow emotion to dictate her course.
The radio is at full volume. Gene Vincent is singing. And she is thinking how it would be to walk across the sky with this cripple, this sad-eyed genius whose voice eased the pain of her adolescence.
I see them dancing. With broken glass, she is marking his skin, leaving scars that remind her of tyre tracks.
After they make love, they drive in the red car towards an exquisite destiny which will break Gene's heart and leave Marjorie unfulfilled.
She promised me the future.
The answers, she said, lie within the geometry of the red car. Chrome, plastic and steel define all possibilities. A new architecture is called for, a meeting of flesh and technology to bridge the gap between mind and machine.
I loved that car. Marjorie loved it more.
She gave me a photograph of it. On the back she wrote : Where Space becomes Time.
Our love-making was an impulse, a last desperate attempt to reach one another.
Marjorie filled the room with the odour of sex but was unable to relate to her own desires.
She was frigid.
She was the unbearable stars, the murmur of distant traffic, the subliminal music of vibrant pulsars, the sad soulsong of a dying universe.
So brilliant, so beautiful, she was everything I feared and wanted.
Then there was war.
That was the night her aloofness crumbled and her nails scored my cheeks and we surrendered to our hunger.
Marjorie screamed. When the world screamed back, she was alone.
Flesh erupted. Emotions exploded in bursts of white-hot glitter as I entered her and loved her with an acid paranoia. Embracing her catastrophe, I could at last perceive her hidden neurosis. Somewhere in the borderland between the mundane and the sublime, mouths foamed in a nuclear heat. Mangled corpses danced a slow choreography of decay.
The red car was our only hope of escape.
48 hours later, as we reached orgasm, World War III was over.
Her first cry of release split the sky, became a swansong for a world she had never known.
She did not speak as she took the car keys and left.
In my dreams I have seen her - lying naked and bruised on the bonnet of a burning car. The fire reflects in gentle pastels on the backdrop of her thigh.
And in the aftermath, she limps away, wounded and vulnerable, secretly rejoicing the multiple orgasm that propelled her through the windscreen...
After the war, I found the red car beside the ruins of a small cathedral. Its engine had been transformed.
I kissed the steering wheel. The taste of Marjorie lingered on my lips, reminding me of her promise.
A drop of blood fell from the dashboard as I turned the ignition key. Tears froze on the windscreen.
It was time to move on.
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Biography: Patrick Whittaker is the proud winner of the 2009 British Fantasy Society Short Story Competition. He currently resides in Blackpool where he works a a government-paid nerd.
By Patrick Whittaker
My one infidelity was a car, blood-red and beautiful. A vehicle for all occasions; it was Nemesis and redemption; a metal messiah, a stealer of souls.
Marjorie saw the potential. She spent the summer redesigning the car, sculpting obscure shapes on paper, transforming love into geometry.
Before I could even begin to share her vision of the future, she had already mapped our destination.
I close my eyes.
There is a movie playing in my head, a diorama of old memories, faded hopes. Marjorie is resting her head on the steering wheel. She should be crying but she will not allow emotion to dictate her course.
The radio is at full volume. Gene Vincent is singing. And she is thinking how it would be to walk across the sky with this cripple, this sad-eyed genius whose voice eased the pain of her adolescence.
I see them dancing. With broken glass, she is marking his skin, leaving scars that remind her of tyre tracks.
After they make love, they drive in the red car towards an exquisite destiny which will break Gene's heart and leave Marjorie unfulfilled.
She promised me the future.
The answers, she said, lie within the geometry of the red car. Chrome, plastic and steel define all possibilities. A new architecture is called for, a meeting of flesh and technology to bridge the gap between mind and machine.
I loved that car. Marjorie loved it more.
She gave me a photograph of it. On the back she wrote : Where Space becomes Time.
Our love-making was an impulse, a last desperate attempt to reach one another.
Marjorie filled the room with the odour of sex but was unable to relate to her own desires.
She was frigid.
She was the unbearable stars, the murmur of distant traffic, the subliminal music of vibrant pulsars, the sad soulsong of a dying universe.
So brilliant, so beautiful, she was everything I feared and wanted.
Then there was war.
That was the night her aloofness crumbled and her nails scored my cheeks and we surrendered to our hunger.
Marjorie screamed. When the world screamed back, she was alone.
Flesh erupted. Emotions exploded in bursts of white-hot glitter as I entered her and loved her with an acid paranoia. Embracing her catastrophe, I could at last perceive her hidden neurosis. Somewhere in the borderland between the mundane and the sublime, mouths foamed in a nuclear heat. Mangled corpses danced a slow choreography of decay.
The red car was our only hope of escape.
48 hours later, as we reached orgasm, World War III was over.
Her first cry of release split the sky, became a swansong for a world she had never known.
She did not speak as she took the car keys and left.
In my dreams I have seen her - lying naked and bruised on the bonnet of a burning car. The fire reflects in gentle pastels on the backdrop of her thigh.
And in the aftermath, she limps away, wounded and vulnerable, secretly rejoicing the multiple orgasm that propelled her through the windscreen...
After the war, I found the red car beside the ruins of a small cathedral. Its engine had been transformed.
I kissed the steering wheel. The taste of Marjorie lingered on my lips, reminding me of her promise.
A drop of blood fell from the dashboard as I turned the ignition key. Tears froze on the windscreen.
It was time to move on.
- - -
Biography: Patrick Whittaker is the proud winner of the 2009 British Fantasy Society Short Story Competition. He currently resides in Blackpool where he works a a government-paid nerd.
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