PDA

View Full Version : Sanity's last ride



SQJ
02-02-2010, 11:43 AM
Seth Humphreys had never done a kilometre per hour over 125 in the entirety of his life. Right now he was doing 240km per hour on the down hill on the slope of Rubenstein street. Seth felt his heart jump into his throat. He held his breath when the road the bottom of the sharp down hill slope levelled out and changed into an even sharper uphill slope.

His Nissan TT roadster hit the bottom with a completely unnatural crunch. Seth had never gone over 1245kmph. Right now he was striking tar at 3000kmph. Sparks flew everywhere before the tyres screeched in agony as the axis was pushed to its breaking point. The roadster seemed to jump and hover in midair where the tyres screamed against the damp floor before launching the roadster forwards.

Seth was flung back into his seat the car and rattling his brain. The shock of the impact only lasted a second before he got over it and his foot had never once released its pressure on the accelerator. The forth vehicle he’d ever owned in his life which, exactly like the previous vehicles, had never crossed 125kmph was pushing 200 on a wet uphill. Seth flashed his hazards as he reached the top of the hill.

The light at the end of the road was red, and at 20:30 on a Saturday night, there was a continuous line of cars crisscrossing across the path leading to Lois avenue. Seth didn’t slow, he couldn’t slow, he would never slow. The roadster swerved away from a powder blue Citi Golf waiting at the traffic stop and the whole roadster slide before his tyres caught the road once more. Determined and strong he swerved into the passing traffic. Luck wasn’t on his side. Almost instantly his car clipped a white Mazda on his rear and the car spun as it slide forwards across the busy intersection. The pressure from the high speed spin was tremendous. Seth could feel an unknown force pushing on his whole body forcing his eyes off the road. Seth forced his head up and found himself staring into of blonde women. Each one couldn’t have been a day over 22. The blonde in the driver’s soft features with thick pouty lips and sapphire blue eyes which stared widely as him as if she understood everything which had happened and was appalled at him for his incredible failures. IT was as if she understood exactly why he was driving so fast and why slowing down was the equivalent to murder and suicide in one. The car’s skid nearly clipped a nearby lime green Toyota Yaris, sending out of control. Still the moment between himself and the blonde driver lingered. The sapphire double orbs bore into him cutting him deep. Paranoia and fear made his arms limp.

He crashed into the pavement and the car veered straight into Lois street like an arrow. Seth didn’t need to look to know that the sides of his roadster was a disaster. He didn’t care, not for a second. The car was moving, and in a straight line. That was what mattered.

He was on another slope leading down. The vehicle which had never gone above 125 was doing 3000 once more. His hazards flashing, he sailed past another red light. This time it was others cars who swerved out the way as he barrelled through them. Seth’s heart sank into his stomach when he heard a siren blare behind him.

His eyes darted to the back and silver suit case which was supported to the passenger seat like an infant. There was blood all over it but it wasn’t his blood and that fact brought grim satisfaction to him. They’d to take it from him and then they’d tried to kill him. But he’d won out in the end. He’d gotten the case back. They hadn’t expected the car to be able to barrel through the steel electric garage, let alone with such force.

The garage doors had bucked with such childish ease against the powerful force of the custom modified TT roadster. The Car was his baby, which he looked after like a child. The car ploughed into the woman who had the bag. She was hit hard and rolled up the car only the roll off and roll out of sight when the car stopped half way out the drive way. It happened so fast that it caught her by complete surprise along with her muscular companion.

Though to call him muscular seemed to be an understatement of epic proportions, he had to be twice as thick as Seth. The woman rolled off the roadster Seth had already started reversing to catch him but he was out of sight. Luck favoured Seth and at that moment he stepped away from the wall with his gun cocked and aimed only to step into the car’s path. The car shook with the heavy slamming of man and car. Car won. He let off two gun shots which missed completely.

In the spur of the moment Seth had jumped out the car and aimed his own, store bought Glock 20 with 10mm rounds, one of Seth’s favourite guns in his gun collection, which he’d never fired in life. Seth at the male companion until the clip emptied. Seth, at some point, had his eyes closed but opened them when the clip emptied. The large companion lay on his back with blood and chunks of meat and guts lay strewn on around him. Seth stared for what felt like the longest time, unsure of exactly what had just happened. They’d caught him off guard just as he was about to leave with the case and tied him up next to his gas stove in hopes of blowing him up and making it look like an accident. But they hadn’t killed him. No, he’d made it out of his home alive on his own. Grim satisfaction filled his lungs as he stared hard at the dead body in front of him. Seth got to his feet only to be dropped on his stomach by the flat wieght of his steel and leather case. The woman, a brunette with deep hazel eyes, let out an animal roar of fury as she dropped the case onto his back again and again.

Without any conscious though Seth Reached for the partially closed door next to him and yanked it back. She screamed and dropped and on his back before slinking backwards to the ground, clutching her leg. There was blood spouting out of both knees. Seth could actually see the bone stick out her left shin. Seth scrambled like a soldier crawling under barbed wire up to the car seat and pulled himself up as high as his almost rigid back would allow. He clung onto the steering wheel for support.
The brunette had finally stopped screaming. An act which scared him more than it relieved him. The driver seat door squeaked unnaturally and the low riding TT roadster sunk lower than it already was. A second later the door slammed on his back making him scream. Seth screamed loudly as the door bounced backwards only to be slammed bodily into his back again. His back arched and a solid white burning fire form on his back setting his whole body on fire. The door slammed into him three more times and with every one she yelled out in animalistic fury. Seth kicked his legs into the ground, throwing his whole body backwards at the door as it came down on him once more. The impact was harder that all the previous hits combined. Seth let out a gargling scream but so did the brunette. Her scream fell like knives in Seth’ brain. The impact hit both ways. Seth’s wieght trumped her attack and the door flung her backwards. The side winder cracked as the back of Seth’s head slammed against it. Both parties lost consciousness.

To Seth’s surprise and to his great relief he wasn’t dead. Unfortunately the woman who was trying to kill him was still alive too. He could hear her every breath which seemed to come out in dry sobs, it reminded him of a steam train coming to a halt. But it wasn’t her sobs which had woken him up. It had been the steady beeping of her cell phone, which in the quiet Moreleta Park suburb was quite loud in his ears.

Desperation hit him harder than it had ever hit him before. He stood up and slammed the door shut so he could find her. She currently lay on her side folded into the foetal position. The eerie glow of her cell phone, some sort of Sony Ericson, reflected off her, showing her face. There was something about it. Seth didn’t know what. He dove for the phone getting a few of his fingers around it before she pulled at it. She managed to get it free from his grip but Seth jumped at her once more. They both struggled for the device with Seth using his wieght as leverage on her while she pressed the phone close to her body and used her head as a weapon to beat him off.

Unfortunately she was winning this fight. He was losing is grip. She lifted her head and sunk her teeth deep into his shoulder. It was at this moment that head butting her occurred to him, right after it stopped being an option.
Seth screamed as her teeth scrapped and dragged across the bone of shoulder. Suddenly the phone was forgotten by both parties. Seth bit back and punched her in the chest constantly but he could feel his own strength bleeding out of him. /she punched back, she was a hard hitter. Either that or he’d finally gone soft and weak in his old age, not that he considered 40 to be very old at all. Seth pushed himself off of her at great cost to his own health as she managed to pull flesh before letting go. The cell phone was hit away in the struggle and landed on the edge of the pavement. She sent after it instantly and Seth turned and went after the car. He scramble for the door and pulled it open with his sore shoulder screaming out. He scrambled for the car’s hand brake. Seth pulled on the steering wheel and threw his whole body against the roadster’s door frame, ignoring his back and shoulder for as long as he could.

At that moment she had just picked up the phone and finished dialling. The second there was a ring tone she dropped the phone and screamed. Her powerful cry cut through the air before the roadsters front connected with her body with force. The whole car shook and rose before it dropped. There was a sickening crunch and blood splattered across his driveway and onto his shoes.

The cell phone covered in blood but Seth picked it up anyway. There was something about the phone that forced him to stare at it. He could barely take his eyes off of it. Right then he remembered that he was late.
The blue siren behind Seth brought him back to reality quickly. The police van was right behind him. Seth slammed hard on the accelerator. He knew the area. He’d rented a home for a year and a half in Erasmuskloof while working as head surgeon at the Fearie Glen hospital. He threw his whole body into twisting his steering wheel to the right before pulling on his hand brake. The tyres locked and skidded before Seth took control once more and entered into Bill street. The road son met a T junction where Seth took a sharp left turn and entered Wendy Street. Seth took the first turn left entering Joy street. The street much like Bill street was short and crossed into a long winding street that, if he turned left once more, would take him back to Lois street and back to finish what he needed to finish.
Seth didn’t turn on the corner, instead he turned earlier into a driveway leading to a cream coloured house at least two stories high. The drive leading to the electric doors had a concrete wall surrounding it. Seth swung around the cream wall and killed the engine. His heart was drumming unmercifully against his chest. She cruelly his chest ached, it felt as though his ribs would crack and break at any moment.

The police van, a white two seater bukkie with a white canopy and blue decals with the word police plastered over the sides. Each flash of the glaring blue light seemed to pound into him. Stabbing at his eyes. The bukkie stopped and Seth’s heart stopped. He put his hand on the key ready to plough into the van should it stop for too long or start to reverse.
To Seth’s relief the bukkie turned right with its light and siren still blaring. Seth hesitated before turning the key. Something about the phone he’d taken struck him. He picked it up. The screen was cracked heavily, covered in blood and therefore of no use but what he wanted to see wasn’t on the phone’s memory, it was inside the phone itself.

Seth opened the back flap and took three breathes before turning it and showing the phones guts. The battery was silver and black, a standard for that exact make and model. Relief, dread and desperation hit Seth all at once. It wasn’t the phone his wife had said had been stolen from her those three months ago. His hand held the keys once more and he started to turn it just before his hand stopped again. Batteries could be changed, entire back flaps could be changed. They could have changed his wife’s old pink battery if they’d had the hindsight for it. But they couldn’t have changes that back cover. They couldn’t have gotten ride of the gold sparkles at the back of the phone, not without buying a whole new inside for the phone.
Seth pulled out the silver and black battery and looked for the gold sparkles. He screamed.

The pain in his shoulder was forgotten, the pain in his back was forgotten the loss of blood, the mental fatigue, the desperation, the dread was completely forgotten. There was nothing now. Only him and his silver and black suit case.

An hour passed and his own Sony Ericson started ringing. He let it ring. He knew who was calling. He could remember the first time he’d gotten the call. It was only two days ago, when they had taken his wife away. Only had they? Had they really?

The phone stopped ringing and Seth’s whole body started trembling. Tears rolled down his cheeks and he buried his face into his steering wheel. He thought he could see blue light against the kin of his eye lids. He ignored it. His phone beeped three times. Seth pulled it under the steering wheel to see what it said. He had a voicemail. No doubt another clip of her screams for help. No doubt another clip of her pleading for help. How convincing it all sounded.

Seth looked up and found the van waiting on the corner street once again. The siren had turned off and whole world was suddenly too quiet for Seth’s liking. He had never realised this before but he hated the suburbs. His whole life he’d lived in the city. He’d studied in Rezes too. He’d lived it, he really had. His first suburban home had offered him the horrific pain of two miscarriages that had torn him apart in way he didn’t think possible, in ways that he could never forget. And now the second home…

The mature, life good life. The miserable life would have been a better term. It drove him up the wall how it all looked from an outside perspective, it was all driving him crazy and he couldn’t stop himself. No, that was a lie. Crazy suggested that he was confused, out of sync, two waves short of a full tide, one sandwich short of a picnic basket, one screw short of a full nut case. God forgive them for they know not what they do and that bullshit. Seth didn’t need forgiveness, he knew exactly what he was would do, he knew exactly what he was, angry. Very fucking angry.

Just a the police started to turn to turn left. A blinding light appeared on their left. The light was so bright both police men couldn’t see what car it was. Though the bright light was incredibly annoying there was still a mad driver moving through the suburbs. Choosing to give the car a break, they carried on turning. The cop on the passenger’s side raised his eyebrow the light was getting bigger and brighter. The cop frowned. The light was staying on next to him all through the turn as if it were following him.

One and one finally connected and the cop screamed grabbing his seat belt. It was the car they were looking for and it was headed right for him. The light lifted everything burning into his pupils. Then the light disappeared sinking below his door The searing pain of the bright light lingered but was soon forgotten.

There was crash then another. The door of the police van crumpled and caved before breaking off its hinges. The low gravity of the TT roadster just as it landed on the tar easily trumped the heavier high suspension police van. The van over turned and then rolled twice before laying on its side silent and dark.

Seth was still roaring at the top of his lungs when he Lois street once more. All of his windows were either broken or rolled open and wind buzzed through the car pressing heavily but therapeutically on his ears and black shirt which flapped constantly beating on his chest. It was surprising. His cuts and bruises were nothing more than needle pricks against his body. Only his back could gave him a problem but he could live with it.

Lois tuned on a Y junction and Seth followed Lois down the right. He expected the pain to come back when he turned but it didn’t. He expected his back to hurt so badly that it would bed with such severity that he’d look like he was doing Yoga, or maybe he’d look more like the MacDonald’s arches. He flipped on his radio. Music. Seth immediately started singing at the top of his voice. “Whoa black betty! Bam belam! Whoa black betty! Bam belam! Black betty got a job! Bam belam! ” Seth lip synced the next few words before catching them again.

“She’s always ready! Bam belam!

‘She all rock steady! Bam belam!”

Seth turned up Atterbury Road with a heavy heart. Three more stops and he’d be at the meeting point.

First stop. The anger was slowly fading and slowly it was being replaced by fear. Where was he going? What was he doing? They’d already tried to kill him. What if they tried again? They’d kill him for sure this time.

Second stop. He’d force it but the anger was coming back steadily. They’d kill him? Him? As if he’d ever let that happen! He wasn’t wrong. They were the bastards. The anger started to bubble up inside of him. Fury controlled his every move without an inch of restriction.

Final stop. There was no future for him. He was being childish. They had planned to kill him from the start. There had been no planned exchange. No real meeting point. Seth slammed on his brakes and the roadster screamed to a stop. A pale yellow Yaris swerved heavily and slammed his own brakes stopping the Yaris right next to Seth’s Roadster. Both cars were only cent meters away. him. The driver, who looked furious, opened his passenger window with a determined anger of a man looking for a fight and a readiness for war. He soon found the barrel of Seth’s reloaded black and silver pistol inside of his own car and pointed at the centre of his head.

Seth looked at the man and looked away. He flicked the barrel ahead and the Yaris screeched away. Seth’s back was already acting up again. He didn’t ignore it so much as endure it. He didn’t have the time for such trivial shit.
The TT roaster slowed and turned into the grassy field on his left. It was a pretty shitty field as far as fields went. The grass and weeds grew unchecked, even small trees had started to grow in areas, a sign that the local municipalities weren’t living up to their requirements.

Up ahead a Mercedes Benz Compressor, not doubt stolen, no one would be so dumb as to bring their own car, Seth thought, or no one who expected to leave witnesses. Instinct told him it was the latter that was true. They’d tried to kill him in his home. Why not kill him here too?

Seth stopped his roadster less than three meters from the Compressor. For a moment both cars faced each other, their headlights obscuring the sights of the opposite driver. Both cars revved, were facing each other down. Then everything fell silent. Both cars had killed their engines and darkness took over their own little suburban territory.

Seth was the first person to step out of his car. It was a painful process, his back had seized up very severely and the pain had doubled when he shoved his gun into the back of jeans. Seth tried his damndest not to limp, slouch or grimace as he move forwards. They didn’t have the right to see how hurt he was or how badly they’d broken him. They didn’t’ get to see that. If Seth couldn’t help it they wouldn’t get the right to speak.

The door of the compressor opened and the kidnapper stepped out. It was no one he knew, he wasn’t sure he could handle that, if it had been someone he knew. He was younger than Seth. He was most likely in his thirties with a square jaw and stubble which covered half his face. His pale face was a strange contract to his own tanned and less angular features. His hair looked allot like Seth’s before he’d cut it for the more professional look. It was a rugged and unstyled look or rather a styled to look unstyled judging by the gel that was visible in the dark.

He wore a blue polo neck jersey and baggy jeans, a weird combination if Seth had ever seen one. He looked happy. Happy to be there, happy to be alive. Smug.

It set Seth off. He didn’t have the right to be happy. He didn’t have the right to be so completely smug.

Bang!

Seth’s gun went off.
Bang! Bang!

The driver fell back landing on his compressor’s bonnet. The Driver screamed clutching his shoulder.
Bang! Bang!

The next two shots missed. One didn’t hit anything and the other completely destroyed the side mirror. Seth fired again.

Bang!

Blood exploded out the driver’s leg and the driver pulled his head back and screamed but his scream was drown out by another scream. Seth’s own.
Bang! Bang! Bang!

The driver rolled up and then off the bonnet and landed in a bloody heap on the floor. It took everything Seth had not to empty the whole clip on him.
Seth dropped the gun, it felt heavy in his trembling hands. It weighted a little too heavily on his body. Everything weighted too heavily on him. He wiped his fact but there was nothing there to wipe.