What’s left is not always right…
The sun rose behind clouds this morning, the city still struggling to awaken after a hard partying Saturday night for most of the population. Rain being forecast for this particular Sunday prompted most to get their yardwork and outside social events done the day before. Most chose to sleep late today, having spent a lot of energy the day before doing things from nothing to everything. Lots of oil was changed out, lots of spark plugs were pulled and replaced, and several grills were fired up and wafted the smell of polish sausage, steaks, chops or burgers over the neighborhoods of Minora. Volleyball games were played, families sat and visited and only the unfortunate who had to work the weekends (like the young people at all the restaurants and gas stations, or those struggling to make ends meet by working two or more jobs at Wal-Mart and Meijers) saw little of the sunny Saturday afternoon.
Megan, however, didn’t see much of the sun at all. She and Sarah spent most of the afternoon beneath the hood of the Maruader with Tom, a mechanic at the local Ford/Mercury Dealer who had a serious crush on Sarah. Tom had met Sarah when Megan bought her car and never gave a thought to what many saw as a very ‘close’ relationship between the two girls. If he did, he never mentioned it to anyone, instead always falling over himself to get close to Sarah whenever she came to the service bay. Sarah thought he was cute but that was where it ended. Sort of like a dog chasing a car – had he even ‘caught’ Sarah (which was not going to happen, but he didn’t know it), he wouldn’t have known what to do with her. So instead, he was helping Megan change out the wastegate and controller on the passenger side Turbo and then install a new Liquid cooled, front-mount intercooler.
Megan was very proficient at watching the gauges in her cars and had noticed a problem with boost creep on the right turbo. After discussing it with Tom, they agreed that a changeout was needed. Thus the Saturday morning wrench session which went late into the evening - because of other complications that came up as they always with a ‘Five-minute’ project. And now, Sarah and Megan were sleeping in this morning.
Well, at least Sarah was. Megan was laying there awake, thinking...
About Dan.
She couldn’t put her finger on it for some reason. Why this interest in Dan, anyway? After all, they had divorced a long time ago and she knew Dan was happy from what she had heard. Still, she couldn’t stop thinking about him, and lately even when she was in Sarah’s arms. To top it all off, she had started dreaming about him too. But not ‘nice’ dreams… not at all. Naughty, indecent dreams. Dreams of decadence and debasement. Even dreams that were bad and horrible. And that one dream… it was just downright creepy…
She shook her head trying to clear the fog… fog – that was it, wasn’t it? Part of the bizarre dream about Dan had fog in it. A strange, heavy, dank-smelling fog that you could taste and smell without even breathing… like decaying vegetation or rotting flesh. And while in the dream she couldn’t actually see Dan, she knew he was close. Yet oddly in the dream, it seemed like Dan was scared of her. Was it because he couldn’t see her either? She heard his voice in the dream… she heard him asking “Who’s there? Is anyone out there? I know you’re there! Show yourself!!!. But all she could do was get close to him. And when she did, she felt something heavy and pressing… what was it that she felt? Was it… fear? Dan’s fear?
Sarah stirred just then and turned toward Megan, her eyes heavy and dreamy yet open enough to see.
‘What time is it?’ she asked, her voice soft and sleepy sounding.
Megan glanced at the alarm clock to her right on the stand.
‘A little after 10. I woke up a little bit ago but just laid here… it felt good to rest after all the work we did yesterday.’
Sarah smiled.
‘Wasn’t Tom cute?’ she murmured. ‘I just don’t get why he can’t get it through his head I’m not interested in him. At least not now?’
Megan didn’t answer at first, the weird emotion of jealousy stirring deep within her. Maybe it was the way that Sarah had said ‘At least not now’?
‘Sarah, I think that’s precisely why he keeps hanging on… you haven’t made it clear you aren’t interested. Today or tomorrow or whenever…’. Her voice trailed off, hoping for reassurance from Sarah.
Sarah just grinned, her eyes closed once more.
‘Well, it is fun to tease him. Did you see the way he kept looking at me but then looking away when I looked his way?’
Megan was frustrated now… ‘You should just tell him straight up that you’re not interested.’
Still, no reassurance. Now Megan was really an emotional turmoil… all those weird feelings about Dan and now this with Sarah. ‘What the hell is wrong with me?’ she thought to herself.
But then Sarah came through.
‘Ah, Megan… you know that we are a team. Ain’t no man gonna mess that up!’
Now the skies were sunny once more in Megan-land. She leaned over and kissed Sarah deeply while pulling her close, glad that Sarah was like her in another respect – that it was best when you slept with nothing between your body and the sheets. Sarah’s skin felt like velvet beneath her touch…
‘Now that’s my girl’ was all she could say, kissing Sarah's lips while her free hand slid down deeper beneath the covers...
*********************
‘What did you say??!!’ asked Dan, his mind racing wildly while trying to hear once more, not even believing what Jen had just told him. Sally came up next to him, grasping his arm while standing at his side.
“Megan is back in town. And ANNIL8R is her car.”
Sally’s grip tightened on Dan’s arm and she moved in closer to him. She felt a shudder in Dan’s body.
“I thought she was living in Chicago or Minneapolis or something like that?” Dan half asked, half stated. Actually, he was part right on both counts since Megan has moved away a few years back and had pretty much dropped out of contact with other than just a few. Jen’s sister-in-law was one of the few. Lisa and Megan had kept in touch via the internet and Megan had actually came back to town long before she even told Lisa.
She didn’t want to spoil the surprise was the reason she gave.
“But Dan, there’s even worse news too. Forget about Megan…”
She struggled to continue…
Jen had tears in her eyes and began looking at the ground nervously, blinking hard and trying so desperately hard not to cry. A tear rolled down her cheek and fell upon her white sneaker as she kept trying to speak...
She began to sob… “Joe is dead, Dan. He died in a bad wreck at the track last night. Actually, he lived till this morning but they said he had suffered too much brain damage… everything just stopped.’ She was crying harder now and Carl was wiping his eyes too, his body trembling.
Dan felt like he wasn't there; like maybe he was watching some sad TV show and it wasn't his friend he just heard about... This couldn't be true... could it?
All the hugs and hello’s were long forgotten with the devastating news just spoken. Everyone now stood close and silent; even though Carl and Jen had had some time for it to sink in, they still didn’t believe it themselves.
Especially Carl. And he had even seen what happened…
Joe and Carl had gone to the track the night before. It was a perfect Saturday night, clear and starfilled with the sun going down slowly, almost as if it never wanted to set. The conditions were perfect for bracket racing and Joe was trying to perfect his launch in the SS. He had gotten his times down into the very low 11’s with poor traction and with the cooler air he felt sure that this run was going to be a solid high 10. He had bolted on a new set of slicks after the last run and felt really good about getting hooked.
His last run was against a heavily modded Supra in the left lane running a 10.88 dial. Joe had dialed a 11.0 thinking that, hey, if I do break out, no problem – at least I still had my best time so far.
The SS rumbled to the line, staging first. He had a paltry .12 handicap on the lights. The SS launched and hooked solid, the M&H’s wrinkling and holding – much better than any launch he had with the big Donovan’d motor. He launched at the stall speed and was g-o-n-e, the Big Block unwavering as the heavily built auto banged Joe’s head off the seat back with each shift . The slip would later show an impressive 1.56 60’ time, the best he had gotten to that point. Joe had a huge grin plastered on his face if one could have seen it beneath the full-face helmet - the run was that good and he knew it.
But at the 1/8th mile mark, his right front tire hit a sheet metal screw that no one saw and that had fallen from beneath a Civic that had ran that lane right before him. It was a screw that the guy had dropped down into the motor compartment and thought that had fallen on through to the ground somewhere back in his pit area; a screw he was using for a cable tiedown to his power supply for the Amps in the hatch area, and when he dropped it, he just grabbed another from the multi-pack on the floor in the back seat.
However, somehow Joe’s tire found that same screw - at speed. The investigation would later show that his tire didn’t go flat right then. What happened was that as he approached 95 mph, the friction of the tire rotation forced the screw into the tire just at the edge of the sidewall/tread area and immediately caused a catastrophic failure of the tire. All from a tiny #8 phillips sheet metal screw. The sudden depressurization and explosion of the right front tire, which immediately shredded, caused Joe’s SS to veer violently to the right, smacking hard into the wall and then careen wildly off of it. Still, it was survivable at that point due to the cage and Joe's safety gear. But fate would play a strange and unfortunate hand in the accident.
Carl was coming down the return lane in his Mach I and saw Joe’s car suddenly veer into the wall. He felt his heart leap into his throat and a scream escape his lips.
“NOOOOOOO!!!!!”
The Supra driver had launched exactly .12 seconds behind Joe with a rare identical reaction time and was trying hard to reel in the SS when he saw a puff of dust from the right front of the car and a sudden, violent movement of the F-Body to the right, glancing HARD off the wall and spinning even harder yet - twirling…
BACK ACROSS THE TRACK INTO HIS LANE!
He stomped on his brakes but in spite of having one of the best aftermarket brake setups possible, it still wasn’t enough. He locked the tires up as almost in slow motion he saw the black Camaro spinning slowly in a clockwise fashion back across the right lane… he saw the tail lights, the right rear fender, the door and front fender that was crushed pretty good from the contact with the concrete barrier, the tire beneath it just a tangled mass of smoking rubber… he saw the driver – a guy he didn’t know but now would never forget - trying desperately to steer into the skid but having no luck at all, as the car was backing now toward the divider line between the two lanes, the laws of physics cruelly following through…
He saw the car continue to rotate as his foot was trying to go through the floorboard of the Silver Mark IV, appearing now that their paths were going to at the very least cross at a very inopportune time… he saw the nose of the SS now, it’s huge hood scoop with the white letters DONOVAN clearly visible as the rotation continued… all the while coming into his lane…
He pitched the Supra hard to the left, trying to avoid contact, the driver’s door of the SS now squarely in front of him.
He couldn’t go anywhere because he had nowhere to go… he hit the side of Joe’s Camaro at over 80 mph, the right front fender of the Mark IV T-boning the door of the SS. He saw the driver’s head snap and roll sickly into the A-pillar and then suddenly snap back, the impact crushing Joe's door into the cage and on into his side, his helmet smashed on the edge of the A-Pillar and the Cage...
The two tangled cars were scrubbing speed off now as if in some macabre dance of death, the metal grinding and tearing along the wall, human and metallic screams filling the air, all of it finally coming to a halt about a 80 feet from the finish line in a cloud of smoke, mist, and dust. The people in the stands stood hushed and watched in silence as the EMS squad raced down the tarmac, lemergency lights flashing while the EMT's and Paramedics inside were trying to prepare mentally what they never wanted to see. Couples held hands, babies cried, but the announcer was speechless. Everyone just knew it was a bad one….
The cars at the lines were turned off now, the staging lanes slowly dying down as people rushed to the fence to look and see who was involved in what.
Carl sat stunned, his car stopped in the return lane as he twisted and turned within his car, trying to look back at the wreckage. Inside he felt sick and nausea raced through his body… he knew it was not good…
It wasn’t…
Carl’s eyes were filled with tears as he finished telling them what happened. No one spoke... they just sort of stood there together, everyone crying and numb... Joe had been one of them, not just another guy. They had gone back a long way. From even before his Viper and long before the Cuda.
And now, Joe was dead… how could that be????
The rain began to fall softly outside the garage door... steadily at first then harder, the sky sullen and gray. In the distance, thunder could be heard while life continued on for those who lived in the world beneath the rain.
To be continued…
The sun rose behind clouds this morning, the city still struggling to awaken after a hard partying Saturday night for most of the population. Rain being forecast for this particular Sunday prompted most to get their yardwork and outside social events done the day before. Most chose to sleep late today, having spent a lot of energy the day before doing things from nothing to everything. Lots of oil was changed out, lots of spark plugs were pulled and replaced, and several grills were fired up and wafted the smell of polish sausage, steaks, chops or burgers over the neighborhoods of Minora. Volleyball games were played, families sat and visited and only the unfortunate who had to work the weekends (like the young people at all the restaurants and gas stations, or those struggling to make ends meet by working two or more jobs at Wal-Mart and Meijers) saw little of the sunny Saturday afternoon.
Megan, however, didn’t see much of the sun at all. She and Sarah spent most of the afternoon beneath the hood of the Maruader with Tom, a mechanic at the local Ford/Mercury Dealer who had a serious crush on Sarah. Tom had met Sarah when Megan bought her car and never gave a thought to what many saw as a very ‘close’ relationship between the two girls. If he did, he never mentioned it to anyone, instead always falling over himself to get close to Sarah whenever she came to the service bay. Sarah thought he was cute but that was where it ended. Sort of like a dog chasing a car – had he even ‘caught’ Sarah (which was not going to happen, but he didn’t know it), he wouldn’t have known what to do with her. So instead, he was helping Megan change out the wastegate and controller on the passenger side Turbo and then install a new Liquid cooled, front-mount intercooler.
Megan was very proficient at watching the gauges in her cars and had noticed a problem with boost creep on the right turbo. After discussing it with Tom, they agreed that a changeout was needed. Thus the Saturday morning wrench session which went late into the evening - because of other complications that came up as they always with a ‘Five-minute’ project. And now, Sarah and Megan were sleeping in this morning.
Well, at least Sarah was. Megan was laying there awake, thinking...
About Dan.
She couldn’t put her finger on it for some reason. Why this interest in Dan, anyway? After all, they had divorced a long time ago and she knew Dan was happy from what she had heard. Still, she couldn’t stop thinking about him, and lately even when she was in Sarah’s arms. To top it all off, she had started dreaming about him too. But not ‘nice’ dreams… not at all. Naughty, indecent dreams. Dreams of decadence and debasement. Even dreams that were bad and horrible. And that one dream… it was just downright creepy…
She shook her head trying to clear the fog… fog – that was it, wasn’t it? Part of the bizarre dream about Dan had fog in it. A strange, heavy, dank-smelling fog that you could taste and smell without even breathing… like decaying vegetation or rotting flesh. And while in the dream she couldn’t actually see Dan, she knew he was close. Yet oddly in the dream, it seemed like Dan was scared of her. Was it because he couldn’t see her either? She heard his voice in the dream… she heard him asking “Who’s there? Is anyone out there? I know you’re there! Show yourself!!!. But all she could do was get close to him. And when she did, she felt something heavy and pressing… what was it that she felt? Was it… fear? Dan’s fear?
Sarah stirred just then and turned toward Megan, her eyes heavy and dreamy yet open enough to see.
‘What time is it?’ she asked, her voice soft and sleepy sounding.
Megan glanced at the alarm clock to her right on the stand.
‘A little after 10. I woke up a little bit ago but just laid here… it felt good to rest after all the work we did yesterday.’
Sarah smiled.
‘Wasn’t Tom cute?’ she murmured. ‘I just don’t get why he can’t get it through his head I’m not interested in him. At least not now?’
Megan didn’t answer at first, the weird emotion of jealousy stirring deep within her. Maybe it was the way that Sarah had said ‘At least not now’?
‘Sarah, I think that’s precisely why he keeps hanging on… you haven’t made it clear you aren’t interested. Today or tomorrow or whenever…’. Her voice trailed off, hoping for reassurance from Sarah.
Sarah just grinned, her eyes closed once more.
‘Well, it is fun to tease him. Did you see the way he kept looking at me but then looking away when I looked his way?’
Megan was frustrated now… ‘You should just tell him straight up that you’re not interested.’
Still, no reassurance. Now Megan was really an emotional turmoil… all those weird feelings about Dan and now this with Sarah. ‘What the hell is wrong with me?’ she thought to herself.
But then Sarah came through.
‘Ah, Megan… you know that we are a team. Ain’t no man gonna mess that up!’
Now the skies were sunny once more in Megan-land. She leaned over and kissed Sarah deeply while pulling her close, glad that Sarah was like her in another respect – that it was best when you slept with nothing between your body and the sheets. Sarah’s skin felt like velvet beneath her touch…
‘Now that’s my girl’ was all she could say, kissing Sarah's lips while her free hand slid down deeper beneath the covers...
*********************
‘What did you say??!!’ asked Dan, his mind racing wildly while trying to hear once more, not even believing what Jen had just told him. Sally came up next to him, grasping his arm while standing at his side.
“Megan is back in town. And ANNIL8R is her car.”
Sally’s grip tightened on Dan’s arm and she moved in closer to him. She felt a shudder in Dan’s body.
“I thought she was living in Chicago or Minneapolis or something like that?” Dan half asked, half stated. Actually, he was part right on both counts since Megan has moved away a few years back and had pretty much dropped out of contact with other than just a few. Jen’s sister-in-law was one of the few. Lisa and Megan had kept in touch via the internet and Megan had actually came back to town long before she even told Lisa.
She didn’t want to spoil the surprise was the reason she gave.
“But Dan, there’s even worse news too. Forget about Megan…”
She struggled to continue…
Jen had tears in her eyes and began looking at the ground nervously, blinking hard and trying so desperately hard not to cry. A tear rolled down her cheek and fell upon her white sneaker as she kept trying to speak...
She began to sob… “Joe is dead, Dan. He died in a bad wreck at the track last night. Actually, he lived till this morning but they said he had suffered too much brain damage… everything just stopped.’ She was crying harder now and Carl was wiping his eyes too, his body trembling.
Dan felt like he wasn't there; like maybe he was watching some sad TV show and it wasn't his friend he just heard about... This couldn't be true... could it?
All the hugs and hello’s were long forgotten with the devastating news just spoken. Everyone now stood close and silent; even though Carl and Jen had had some time for it to sink in, they still didn’t believe it themselves.
Especially Carl. And he had even seen what happened…
Joe and Carl had gone to the track the night before. It was a perfect Saturday night, clear and starfilled with the sun going down slowly, almost as if it never wanted to set. The conditions were perfect for bracket racing and Joe was trying to perfect his launch in the SS. He had gotten his times down into the very low 11’s with poor traction and with the cooler air he felt sure that this run was going to be a solid high 10. He had bolted on a new set of slicks after the last run and felt really good about getting hooked.
His last run was against a heavily modded Supra in the left lane running a 10.88 dial. Joe had dialed a 11.0 thinking that, hey, if I do break out, no problem – at least I still had my best time so far.
The SS rumbled to the line, staging first. He had a paltry .12 handicap on the lights. The SS launched and hooked solid, the M&H’s wrinkling and holding – much better than any launch he had with the big Donovan’d motor. He launched at the stall speed and was g-o-n-e, the Big Block unwavering as the heavily built auto banged Joe’s head off the seat back with each shift . The slip would later show an impressive 1.56 60’ time, the best he had gotten to that point. Joe had a huge grin plastered on his face if one could have seen it beneath the full-face helmet - the run was that good and he knew it.
But at the 1/8th mile mark, his right front tire hit a sheet metal screw that no one saw and that had fallen from beneath a Civic that had ran that lane right before him. It was a screw that the guy had dropped down into the motor compartment and thought that had fallen on through to the ground somewhere back in his pit area; a screw he was using for a cable tiedown to his power supply for the Amps in the hatch area, and when he dropped it, he just grabbed another from the multi-pack on the floor in the back seat.
However, somehow Joe’s tire found that same screw - at speed. The investigation would later show that his tire didn’t go flat right then. What happened was that as he approached 95 mph, the friction of the tire rotation forced the screw into the tire just at the edge of the sidewall/tread area and immediately caused a catastrophic failure of the tire. All from a tiny #8 phillips sheet metal screw. The sudden depressurization and explosion of the right front tire, which immediately shredded, caused Joe’s SS to veer violently to the right, smacking hard into the wall and then careen wildly off of it. Still, it was survivable at that point due to the cage and Joe's safety gear. But fate would play a strange and unfortunate hand in the accident.
Carl was coming down the return lane in his Mach I and saw Joe’s car suddenly veer into the wall. He felt his heart leap into his throat and a scream escape his lips.
“NOOOOOOO!!!!!”
The Supra driver had launched exactly .12 seconds behind Joe with a rare identical reaction time and was trying hard to reel in the SS when he saw a puff of dust from the right front of the car and a sudden, violent movement of the F-Body to the right, glancing HARD off the wall and spinning even harder yet - twirling…
BACK ACROSS THE TRACK INTO HIS LANE!
He stomped on his brakes but in spite of having one of the best aftermarket brake setups possible, it still wasn’t enough. He locked the tires up as almost in slow motion he saw the black Camaro spinning slowly in a clockwise fashion back across the right lane… he saw the tail lights, the right rear fender, the door and front fender that was crushed pretty good from the contact with the concrete barrier, the tire beneath it just a tangled mass of smoking rubber… he saw the driver – a guy he didn’t know but now would never forget - trying desperately to steer into the skid but having no luck at all, as the car was backing now toward the divider line between the two lanes, the laws of physics cruelly following through…
He saw the car continue to rotate as his foot was trying to go through the floorboard of the Silver Mark IV, appearing now that their paths were going to at the very least cross at a very inopportune time… he saw the nose of the SS now, it’s huge hood scoop with the white letters DONOVAN clearly visible as the rotation continued… all the while coming into his lane…
He pitched the Supra hard to the left, trying to avoid contact, the driver’s door of the SS now squarely in front of him.
He couldn’t go anywhere because he had nowhere to go… he hit the side of Joe’s Camaro at over 80 mph, the right front fender of the Mark IV T-boning the door of the SS. He saw the driver’s head snap and roll sickly into the A-pillar and then suddenly snap back, the impact crushing Joe's door into the cage and on into his side, his helmet smashed on the edge of the A-Pillar and the Cage...
The two tangled cars were scrubbing speed off now as if in some macabre dance of death, the metal grinding and tearing along the wall, human and metallic screams filling the air, all of it finally coming to a halt about a 80 feet from the finish line in a cloud of smoke, mist, and dust. The people in the stands stood hushed and watched in silence as the EMS squad raced down the tarmac, lemergency lights flashing while the EMT's and Paramedics inside were trying to prepare mentally what they never wanted to see. Couples held hands, babies cried, but the announcer was speechless. Everyone just knew it was a bad one….
The cars at the lines were turned off now, the staging lanes slowly dying down as people rushed to the fence to look and see who was involved in what.
Carl sat stunned, his car stopped in the return lane as he twisted and turned within his car, trying to look back at the wreckage. Inside he felt sick and nausea raced through his body… he knew it was not good…
It wasn’t…
Carl’s eyes were filled with tears as he finished telling them what happened. No one spoke... they just sort of stood there together, everyone crying and numb... Joe had been one of them, not just another guy. They had gone back a long way. From even before his Viper and long before the Cuda.
And now, Joe was dead… how could that be????
The rain began to fall softly outside the garage door... steadily at first then harder, the sky sullen and gray. In the distance, thunder could be heard while life continued on for those who lived in the world beneath the rain.
To be continued…
(thats a joke!)
