“By three methods we may learn wisdom: First, by reflection, which is noblest; Second, by imitation, which is easiest; and third by experience, which is the bitterest.”
― Confucious
Stuck in Traffic Behind a Philosophy Fan
Tag Archives: car
Dreams Within Dreams
“Dreams feel real while we’re in them. It’s only when we wake up that we realize something was actually strange.”
—- Inception
The worst kind of dream is when you dream that you wake up in your own bed. I mean, if you are dreaming you are in a submarine on Mars – if things go wonky, you can say to yourself, “Well, there are no submarines on Mars, and if there were, I wouldn’t be in one.” You know you are dreaming and can relax, knowing you will be awake sometime soon.
I rarely remember my dreams (There is that weird, just awoke, feeling where you feel the dream memories draining away like water down a drain) and when I do, they are very mundane and frustrating, like my real life.
Sometimes, though, I remember vividly.
The other night I dreamed that I was at Starbucks for a while, when it was time to go I discovered my car had been stolen. I walked around the parking lot, looking at the vacant space where my car used to be. Understandably, I was pretty upset and wondering how I was going to get home until I realized I was dreaming.
Right after that, I woke up in my bed… the sun was rising and I could see gray through the windows. I sat up, parted the curtains and looked out. My car was gone. Not a good way to start the day.
Then… I woke up again. I had been dreaming that I was in bed. This time, looking out at the street, I was relieved to see my car.
Unfortunately, there was an inch of ice all over it. There would be scraping before I made it to work.
Sunday Snippet, Flash Fiction, Hot Rod On Mars by Bill Chance
“We earth men have a talent for ruining big, beautiful things.”
― Ray Bradbury, The Martian Chronicles
Hot Rod On Mars
After a hundred years of terraforming the air on Mars was finally breathable. The colonists had developed their own culture – often seen as odd and ridiculous from the point of view of their friends and relatives left on earth.
One of the most inexplicable cultural oddities was the popularity of hot rods on the red planet. All kinds of replica American muscle cars from the fifties, sixties, and seventies became the ride of choice across Mars.
Craig was very proud of his replica 1970 Dodge Challenger. I was white, like the car in the ancient film, Vanishing Point – one of the few classics that survived the great purge. Craig couldn’t resist though, and had a garish red and blue lightning bolt painted on the room.
But Craig’s testosterone was more powerful than his driving skills – plus he never understood that late-20th century muscle cars were designed for pavement and were dangerous and unstable on cross-country jaunts. The designers never intended their cars to be driven across the rocky plains of Mars.
It was inevitable that he would find a steep ditch and plunge the front end down into the gap, bury it in the dust that filled and hid the furrow. Craig climbed up onto the elevated back end to get a bit better satellite cell reception and decided to stay there as he waited for the star-shaped tow drone to fly to where he was. It was going to be an expensive accident… Maybe he would learn from this.
Probably not.
Set the Controls for the Heart of the Sun
Little by little the night turns around
Counting the leaves which tremble at dawn
Lotus’s lean on each other in yearning
Over the hills a swallow is resting
Set the controls for the heart of the sun—-Pink Floyd, Set the Controls For the Heart Of the Sun
I am not a car person. To me a car is a metal box – you get in it at some location, listen to the radio for awhile, and then get out at another location. That is pretty amazing, I’ll admit, but anything else isn’t a big deal for me. I don’t really care for going fast, or looking good, or even excessive comfort (although here in Texas functional air conditioning is a life necessity, not comfort). Reliability and good gas mileage are the most important aspects of an auto.
Because I’m not a car person I’ve never been a fan of the television show Top Gear. Though (the original version at least) has some cool ideas and a very talented and entertaining cast, I was never really into it. A friend of mine was extolling the virtues of the show and I said, “I know it looks cool, but I’ve never been able to get into it.” He said, “Oh, that’s because you are not a car person.”
So that’s that.
However, I was surfing around the ‘net, wasting some of the tiny bit of precious time I have left, and I stumbled across a YouTube video of a Top Gear review of a Ferrari Enzo owned by Nick Mason, the drummer of Pink Floyd… and it is genius on a number of levels (the obscene beauty of the car itself, the enthusiasm, the plugging of Mason’s book, the way Mason leaves the set [watch ’till the end]), so I thought I’d share it with you.
The only sad thing is the article that lead me to watch a Youtube video on the Ferrari Enzo (remember, I’m not a car person). If you feel that you are having too much fun, are having too good of a day, need something to bring your life down a notch:
It’s awful, even if you are not a car person.
Flash Fiction of the day, Driver by Frederick Barthelme
“The car has become an article of dress without which we feel uncertain, unclad, and incomplete in the urban compound.”
― Marshall McLuhan
My son bought a car online, unseen. He filled out a form and a truck with a trailer drove up out front and dropped it off. I like that. I never liked dealing with car salesman.
I have never been a car person – to me a car is a box… I get in the box, manipulate some levers and a wheel, push some pedals… for a short time or a long time. Then I get out and I’m somewhere else – hopefully somewhere that I preferred to the place I used to be at when I got in the box.
That’s what a car is to me.
So I value reliability, gas mileage, and low cost. That’s pretty much it. It’s not surprising that I’m like that now, a spent old worn out man, but I was always like that. I always wanted a reliable, low cost, high mileage car.
One time when I was in my mid-twenties I went to buy a car. It was in a small city. The salesman kept taking me to hot souped-up crappy cars. There was a custom Mustang II Cobra, like the one Charlie’s Angels drove. He couldn’t believe I didn’t like that car. I finally found one that I was halfway interested in. We sat in the car and turned the key and it wouldn’t start. It ground and groaned but wouldn’t turn over for more than a couple seconds.
“So do you like the car?” he asked.
“It won’t start.”
“Well, it’s been sitting here for a long time.”
“Do you really think I’m going to buy a car that won’t start?”
I left.
Since I enjoyed yesterday’s story by Donald Barthelme, I thought I’d link to one by his brother, Frederick. It has a skeptical car salesman in it.
Driver by Frederick Barthelme
Short Story Of the Day (flash fiction) – Cephalopod From the Fifth Dimension by Bill Chance
“He was back in the water, not braving but frowning, synchronised swimming, not swimming but sinking, toward the godsquid he knew was there, tentacular fleshscape and the moon-sized eye that he never saw but knew, as if the core of the fucking planet was not searing metal but mollusc, as if what we fall toward when we fall, what the apple was heading for when Newton’s head got in the way, was kraken.”
― Kraken
Dallas Zoo
I have been feeling in a deep hopeless rut lately, and I’m sure a lot of you have too. After writing another Sunday Snippet I decided to set an ambitious goal for myself. I’ll write a short piece of fiction every day and put it up here. Obviously, quality will vary – you get what you get. Length too – I’ll have to write something short on busy days. They will be raw first drafts and full of errors.
I’m not sure how long I can keep it up… I do write quickly, but coming up with an idea every day will be a difficult challenge. So far so good. Maybe a hundred in a row might be a good, achievable, and tough goal.
Here’s another one for today (#93) Almost There! What do you think? Any comments, criticism, insults, ideas, prompts, abuse … anything is welcome. Feel free to comment or contact me.
Thanks for reading.
Cephalopod From the Fifth Dimension
Sam Barnburner strolled across the parking lot looking forward to the drive home in his new car. He was texting his girlfriend with one hand, trying to set up dinner for that night, as he thumbed the key fob and the silver door on the SX-3300 Tarkus hissed open. Sam bent to slide into the form-fitting front seat as the colorful instrument panels chirped and began to glow into life. As he settled in his phone suddenly squirted out of his hand like a wet watermelon seed on a hot summer day.
Sam pawed at the air as the phone tumbled through his fingers, arcing across in front of his face, and then it plunged, straight as an arrow, into the narrow gap between the driver’s seat and the center console.
The dealership had tried to sell him two foam cylinders that filled the gap – but the price was outrageous. He said no – he never imagined anything dropping in there. He had been mistaken.
Sam peered into the darkness but couldn’t see the phone. He jerked back as he thought he saw some sort of odd movement down there, something quick, something, somehow, moist.
He leaned in, elbows on the driver’s seat, preparing to go in and reach for the phone. At that moment, Sam heard his phone ring, playing an electronic version of La Cucaracha. Even though the phone could not be more than two feet away, it sounded tinny and distant, with some odd sort of echo.
“That’s weird,” Sam said to himself, “must be the insulation and padding down there.”
He stared into the opening, hoping to see the glow of his phone’s screen, but it was dark. Again, he saw a flicker of some sort of movement – so fast he couldn’t be sure. With a deep sigh, Sam braced himself and plunged his arm down beside the console.
He was shocked at how far he reached in. His arm went down way past his elbow, and by pushing hard, he was able to reach down until his shoulder was tight in the gap.
“The damn car isn’t even this high off the ground,” he muttered to himself as he began to move his hand around, fishing for the familiar phone. There seemed to be a lot of space… although his upper arm was pinned in the narrow gap, he was able to swing his hand around without hitting anything solid. When he felt something it was oddly smooth and almost… wet.
“What kind of crap has been pooling down there,” he shuddered at the thought.
Then, suddenly, something… bit him. It was an unexpected sharp pain, right on the fleshy part of his hand. It really hurt… and, worst of all, when he instinctively jerked his arm back, whatever it was, held on. He had to yank hard.
His paw came loose and he tumbled back, off the seat and out through the door into the parking lot. Sam sat up and stared at his still-throbbing hand. There were two roundish marks, each a little bigger than a quarter – like small circles of teeth marks – deep enough to pierce the skin and a steady flow of blood was running down his arm, dripping off his elbow.
He dug around the floor boards and gathered up a pile of old Taco Bell napkins. He used them to mop up the blood and wrapped the last few around his hand to try and staunch the flow.
“Enough of this crap!” he sputtered and started the car. “This car is practically brand new. The dealership will have to take care of this.”
As he pulled into the dealership one of the army of young men with bad haircuts and worse crimson blazers that were running around with clipboards approached his driver’s side and motioned for him to lower his window.
“Can I help you, sir?” the blazer spoke with a bored indifference.
“Yea, you sure as hell can! My phone – it fell,” Sam gestured at the center console.
“Were you bit?” the blazer asked with a nod at his bleeding hand.
“Yeah… how did you…?”
“That will be the Alternate Reality department. Follow the purple arrows,” the blazer said and quickly turned and walked away.
Looking at the pavement, Sam noticed a huge violet pointer painted on the concrete. It directed him between the showroom and the regular repair shop. Once he reached the back part of the lot, another arrow pointed through a gap cut in the fence, so Sam turned the wheel and moved through. A final arrow directed him to a shabby wooden structure. A hunk of plywood was nailed to the front of the shack with the words, “Alternate Reality Repairs” crudely stenciled on with dark green spray paint. Sam drove up to the front door and tapped his horn.
Two youngish men in dirty gray coveralls came out of the front door, followed by a tall woman in a tight dress. She was older… though her age was difficult to judge because of a thick layer of makeup. Her hair was an unnatural color and piled high on the top of her head, increasing her already intimidating height.
One of the men raised the creaking door on the single repair bay and gestured Sam in. Once inside, Sam climbed out of his car to find the three already there, staring at him. He realized that the two men in coveralls looked exactly the same. One name tag, Tim, the other, Jim. Sam turned to the woman, who was working her jaw and snapping a big wad of gum with every other chew. He had to tilt his head to read her name tag, which was pinned on at a haphazard angle. It said, Myrtle.
“Hey! She said, whatcha lose? Wallet? Keys? Lunch?”
“Umm… my phone.”
“Ahhh,” all three replied, nodding their heads in a knowing way.
“We’ll get you taken care of right away,” said the one with the name tag that said Jim. “I’m Tim,” he said, “and this here’s my brother, Jim. We’re twins.”
“But your name tags?”
“Oh, we never bother with ‘em. We put on what we find first ever’ morning.”
“Don’t worry ‘bout the two boys,” Myrtle spoke up. “They’ll get your car fixed in a jiffy. But first, let me take a look at you.”
She moved beside Sam and hooked a meaty arm over his shoulder. She roughly grabbed the wrist of his injured hand and pulled it up for a closer look.
“Looks like a nasty little Cephalopod he’s got down there,” she said, tracing the round wounds.
“That’s what I thought,” said Jim, or maybe Tim. “Better take a look-see though. Never hurts to be sure” Sam was startled when he saw him pulling on a helmet-like apparatus. It was made of a bird’s-nest of short metal tubes, welded together to fit over his head. On the front was a complex of round glass lenses. Wound through the entire thing was a maze of wires and tiny circuit boards. Jim began to fiddle with the lenses, turning dials and twisting pieces of glass until he found the combination he liked. He turned toward Sam and his eyes were magnified by the lenses until they loomed huge in front of his face. Sam could see the bloodshot lines snaking around the watery iris and murky pupil
Jim gave a little shrug and turned to lean inside Sam’s car. He began peering between the seat and console with the helmet and lenses.
“Yeah, sure enough, there’s the Cephalopod. A mean little one. He’s got your phone.”
“Good thing it’s your phone,” Tim, or maybe Jim, said. “Last guy in here lost his wallet and that little squid bastard run up twenty grand on his credit cards before we could get him out.”
“Alright now, let’s let the boys do their work,” Myrtle said to Sam. “Let me take care of that bite before it gets infected.”
She pulled him into the little office attached to the bay. Sam looked back to see the two twins starting to pick up various small pieces of complex machinery off of the bay floor, stare at them, and bolt them together.
“Never mind them, here, sit down and let Myrtle take care of that bite.”
She had a steel bowl on the desk, half full of some green liquid. She pulled the bits of Taco Bell napkin off of Sam’s still bleeding hand and then plunged it into the bowl. It stung. Sam jumped.
“Now settle down there. That didn’t hurt all that bad. Now that’ll stop the bleeding, but we need to make sure you don’t get nothing from all this.”
Sam’s eyes grew wide as he watched Myrtle open a worn leather case and extract a huge glass syringe and a pair of small bottles. One bottle contained some sort of sweet-smelling disinfectant and Myrtle dabbed some on a cloth and cleaned the syringe and needle. She then pierced the cap of the second bottle and drew up a full load of a bright orange liquid.
“Excuse me, are you a doctor?” asked Sam.
Myrtle snapped her gum louder in an irritated way. “Why no, honey, why would you think that?”
The room began to swim a little and Sam felt suddenly sick.
“Oh, you don’t look so good there honey. That bite’s startin’ to get to you a bit. This here shot’ll take care of everything, don’t you worry.”
Sam wasn’t sure why, but he almost believed her. He nodded.
“Okey dokey then. Let’s get this in you, OK?”
Sam started to pull up the sleeve of his left arm, but the bite was on the right. “Which arm? Does it matter?” he asked.
“Oh no honey. I’m afraid this only works if it goes in the other end. Stand up and drop your trousers like a good boy, and then bend yourself over this desk here.”
Sam was feeling more dizzy every second, he felt he was now past the point of no return, so he leaned against Myrtle and the desk to steady himself and fumbled with his pants. As he leaned with both hands on the desk he saw the green liquid flowing off his hand and noticed that, as Myrtle had promised, the bleeding had stopped and the round marks were fading. He felt Myrtle behind him, fumbling with something. Then she pushed on the back of his neck until he was flat on the desk.
His pants were already around his ankles and Myrtle grabbed his boxers and yanked them down to his knees. Her hands moved over him and he felt the cold sting of the antiseptic.
“Hey, boy, not too shabby,” Myrtle said, “Whatcha doing this Saturday anyway?”
As he turned to protest, she drove the syringe needle home and his left cheek felt like it had been stabbed with a hot poker. He let out a scream.
“Now, now honey,” Myrtle said. “That’ll fix you up good as new.” She gave him one last slap, which made Sam wince, then pulled up his pants for him. She reached around and held him close as she tightened his belt. “That’s it; now let’s go see what the boys are up to.”
A large apparatus, like a complicated engine hoist made of twisted bars of silvery metal had been assembled and one twin was leaning in the driver’s side door with it, grasping a pair of control sticks, wiggling away.
His brother, still wearing the helmet with the lenses, was leaning in the passenger side, looking down at the console, and shouting out orders.
“Left! Left! No! Your other left! Now down, down some more. Ok, wait, wait, Now! Now! Now!”
The brother with the machine yanked back on a stick and then the whole apparatus began to shake violently.
“We got it! Pull it out! Before it gets loose.”
The brother with the helmet ripped it off as he ran around the car to help with the machine. With a mighty tug, they pulled the machine back and out of the car. Attached to a vicious looking claw on the end of the arm was a red, wriggling… something. It had a body only about two feet long, but hanging from one end was a writhing mass of long tentacles, flinging themselves around desperately. In the center of the mass was a yellowish beak, snapping open and shut with obvious power.
It was roaring with an awful sound that belied its small size. The room was filled with a nasty stale, spoiled smell, like fish that had been left out too long.
One brother pushed a metal box on wheels over towards the Cephalopod, while the other began hitting it with a length of iron rebar. Something small and solid skittered away and clattered down on the floor. They dropped the thing into the box and slammed the lid.
One brother reached down to pick up the object that had fallen on the floor. He wiped it off with the shop towel he had tucked in this belt, and then handed it to Sam.
“Here’s your phone,” he said, “looks like the thing was calling your girlfriend. Conniving bastard. I think she sent it a naked selfie.”
“My God! What the hell was that?” cried Sam
“We told you, it’s a Cephalopod.”
“From Beyond.”
“What do you mean?”
“From Beyond. From somewhere else.”
“It’s all because of the car companies. Lighter cars, faster cars, better gas mileage. They had to do something.”
“So they did some work with string theory. Alternate dimensions and such. New materials, advanced production techniques, amazing designs. I’m sure you’ve noticed how reliable and attractive, what amazing performance – in all these new cars.”
“But there was a flipside. They had to be careful. Tolerances were very tight. The slightest mistake and…”
“Things slip through.”
“Things?” asked Sam. “Things like that?”
“Yeah, the Cephalopods are probably the most common. There’s lots others though. There’s the snakefish, the wiggling urchins, the sucking bees.”
“Them are nasty, them are.”
“Why doesn’t anyone know about this?”
“Are you kidding? Who would buy a new car if they thought a biting, poisonous squid might be lurking in an alternate reality, a fifth dimension… between the seat and the center console?”
“Nobody.”
“Nobody.”
“Now, there, Sam, Honey. It’s time to talk about the bill,” said Myrtle.
“Bill? The car is new. Isn’t it under warranty?”
All three let out a hearty laugh.
“Take a good look at your agreement, sweety. I’m afraid that nowhere in there does it state that you are warranted against infection from monsters from another universe. Just get out your little card and pay me. Or else…”
“Or else what?”
“Or else we open the box.”
Sam shuddered. He pulled his wallet out and handed over a card.
“Now there’s the bill for the repair, and the bill for the medical care.”
“I have to pay for that? You’re not a doctor. Plus, shouldn’t my health insurance pay…”
“Are you covered? Do you have a rider that covers bites from a creature from another dimension? Did you get a specialist referral?”
“I see what you mean.”
“So you pay for the repair, pay for the medical… and finally, you have to pay for these.” Myrtle held up a plastic package with two long foam tubes. “They don’t let customers with creature removal go home without them installed.”
“What are those?”
“These go in the space between your seat and console.”
“I should have bought those in the first place.”
“You sure should.”
Short Story Of the Day (flash fiction), Brain Teaser by Bill Chance
Spring Snow,
Richardson, Texas
I have been feeling in a deep hopeless rut lately, and I’m sure a lot of you have too. After writing another Sunday Snippet I decided to set an ambitious goal for myself. I’ll write a short piece of fiction every day and put it up here. Obviously, quality will vary – you get what you get. Length too – I’ll have to write something short on busy days. They will be raw first drafts and full of errors.
I’m not sure how long I can keep it up… I do write quickly, but coming up with an idea every day will be a difficult challenge. So far so good. Maybe a hundred in a row might be a good, achievable, and tough goal.
Here’s another one for today (#35). What do you think? Any comments, criticism, insults, ideas, prompts, abuse … anything is welcome. Feel free to comment or contact me.
Thanks for reading.
Brain Teaser
John Berryman realized that his two seater MGB wasn’t a very practical car, but he didn’t give a damn. It was old and it was sharp and it was cool. But the convertible roof leaked and the heater didn’t work very well. The windshield was constantly fogged in the cold wet spitting rain.
The nighttime city was shattered into iridescent jewels of waterdrops around his view, red brakes, yellow beams and the multicolored neon advertisements like harbingers of an unknown outer world. The cramped car gave off the smell of old canvas and rust, released by the moist stream seeping through from outside. John’s teeth chattered against the cold – though he knew how much better off he was in the car, no matter how freezing, than the poor souls stuck out in the elements.
He thought of Chuck and how miserable he sounded on the phone. John squinted through the fog and rain, looking for the bus stop.
A decade ago Chuck had been there when John needed him. John was broke, homeless and without hope. Chuck took him in, cleaned him up and introduced him around. That was the start of the long climb to where he was now – where he could buy impractical old sports cars when he wanted to.
Chuck hadn’t been so lucky. Now John was ready to return the favor. He had been calling Chuck and offering help. Chuck had been too proud to accept, until now.
He had answered John’s call sounding near death. Chuck was taking public transit, waiting for the bus, when this awful wet windy blue norther cold front invaded. The transit system had collapsed with the weather, and Chuck had no idea when a bus would get to his stop and take him home.
So John gladly jumped in the car ready to speed to the rescue, but Chuck’s phone battery had died before the directions were clear. Now John was looking, for his friend freezing on a bus stop bench. He was stuck in a terrible part of town, miles from anyplace worth being.
And there, suddenly, he was. In the middle of a block, lit by a nearby streetlight, John spotted the familiar form of his friend, recognizable even under the hood of a shabby and very wet jacket. He drove by slowly, smiling at his buddy. There were two other people sitting on the bench beside Chuck, which was sheltered beneath a slanted corrugated roof. It wasn’t doing any good, though, the rain screaming in the wind – hitting them almost horizontally. He parked and headed into the storm.
“John, you found it,” said Chuck “I didn’t give you very good directions.”
“No problem dude, clear as crystal, drove right here,” John lied.
Chuck stood and grabbed his old friend, turning him slightly.
“Oh, let me introduce my fellow bus waiters,” he said. “First, this is Mabel.”
An emaciated, ancient hand emerged from what looked like a pile of rags on the bench next to where Chuck had been sitting. It was shaking and John felt a weak grip as he took it. Looking closely at the rags he saw a thin lined face. She said something so weak that John couldn’t make it out. Chuck turned John with a subtle but strong gesture so that they were away from the bench.
“Hey John,” Chuck said, “I know you drove a long way to get me and I appreciate it, but I’ll tell you, I think we need to give Mabel a ride. She’s freezing in this weather and I’m not sure she can survive if it takes the bus more than an hour to get here… and it probably will.”
“Forget it,” said John, “You are my oldest and best friend and I am going to take you out of here.”
“Well, then, take us both.”
“I can’t, you know the MGB only holds two.”
“Jeez, that’s right,” Chuck looked at the tiny car across the street. It looked like a toy. “No way can we squeeze three into that thing.”
“It’s all right, dear,” a strong voice piped up behind them. “I’ll stay with you until the bus comes. I’ll make sure you get home all right.”
It was a woman’s voice. To John it was a sudden shock to hear something so melodious in the middle of the rainstorm. The two men turned around.
“Oh, hey John, I forgot to introduce the third member of our miserable company. This is Nancy.”
John felt his stomach jump and his pulse race as he looked down at Nancy. She turned from Mabel and a shower of watery gems fell from her hair. Her hand was warm and strong as she shook his and stabbed him with her eyes.
All he could do was mumble a greeting. Caught completely off guard, John hadn’t felt like this since he was a teenager.
“So you’re going to drive Chuck?” Nancy asked. “Good, at least someone can have a warm evening.”
Chuck turned to John, “Now listen….” But John cut him off. He had made a quick decision.
John said, “Walk with me to my car,” and shook off Chuck’s objection.
The MGB had a tiny boot in the back. John unlocked it and opened the cargo door. Then he handed his keys to Chuck.
“Here, you take my keys,” he said. “Take my car.”
“What? Why?”
“I want you to drive Mabel home, make sure she’s all right and warmed up, get her something to eat, then you go home with my car. We’ll sort it out later.”
“But… what about…”
“I’ll wait here for the bus. In your place. The route goes by my condo…. Eventually…. I think.”
“I can’t…”
John cut him off again. “Of course you can. This is what I want. Trust me.”
He looked down into the boot of the car. He kept a warm wool stadium blanket down there, for emergencies. He pulled it out and nodded to Chuck, who seemed to suddenly understand. The two walked back across the road.
“Mabel, John’s giving me his car, I can take you home,” Chuck said.
The old woman could barely reply as the two men helped her up and across the street. She felt like she was made of paper as they folded her in the passenger seat. John felt suddenly warmer as he watched the tiny car move away.
He walked back to the bench with his stadium blanket and was very happy to see Nancy smiling at him as he approached.
“Well, it looks like it’s the two of us waiting now. Do you want to share my blanket? It’s warm and dry,” he said.
Short Story Of the Day, Nouvelle Vague by Bill Chance
They would take a purposeful minute of silence every now and then. “If there’s nothing to say, let’s have a minute of silence” was their motto.
—-Bill Chance, Nouvelle Vague
I have been feeling in a deep hopeless rut lately, and I’m sure a lot of you have too. After writing another Sunday Snippet I decided to set an ambitious goal for myself. I’ll write a short piece of fiction every day and put it up here. Obviously, quality will vary – you get what you get. Length too – I’ll have to write something short on busy days. They will be raw first drafts and full of errors.
I’m not sure how long I can keep it up… I do write quickly, but coming up with an idea every day will be a difficult challenge. So far so good. Maybe a hundred in a row might be a good, achievable, and tough goal.
Here’s another one for today (#15). What do you think? Any comments, criticism, insults, ideas, prompts, abuse … anything is welcome. Feel free to comment or contact me.
Thanks for reading.
Nouvelle Vague
Armando loved cars. And his girlfriend Cecile had a great one. Her father had a bit of cash stashed away and bought her a vintage light blue ’65 Mustang Convertible to drive around while she was at school. She used to say, “I live the top down life.”
The two of them also loved film… or more precisely, movies, because they mostly watched them on tape. The VHS format had recently defeated its deathly adversary, the Betamax, and a rental store for the hard-core movie aficionado had opened up near his apartment. The two of them were renting stacks of tapes and working their way through the French New Wave.
Though they lived in a tumbleweed-blown college town in the middle of the great plains they liked to pretend they were in Paris. A greasy spoon was a pale but workable substitute for a Parisian Cafe – one even had sidewalk tables for those few days where the weather wasn’t blowing ice or baking heat. They watched Godard and talked politics over meals and she cut her hair like Anna Karina.
Like all Nouvelle Vague couples they saved their important, passionate conversations for the times they were driving in the car. She named the Mustang Metal Hurlant. They would drive with the top down, sometimes slowly or sometimes sliding around the gravely corners. They would take turns driving and would imagine a camera on the hood shooting through the windshield as they talked about their dreams, argued, or the passenger would lean against the driver and they would cruise in silence.
They would take a purposeful minute of silence every now and then. “If there’s nothing to say, let’s have a minute of silence” was their motto. A minute of silence can be a long time. A real minute of silence takes forever. But they took pride in being able to pull it off.
It took some effort but they learned to dance The Madison. Never found a place in public they could show off.
There was nothing better than driving around with the top down in the twilight evening after a hot day. The convertible made its own breeze and the world was awash in magical colors once the sun set until it became too dark. They kept a little cooler of iced beer cans under the dash and would sneak sips when they knew the cops weren’t watching. Even the condensation on the curved aluminum was beautiful and delicious.
At the end of one of these perfect evenings the night crept down the sky until they had to think of something else to do.
“I know!” Armando said, “Look over there.”
It was the last drive in theater. The VHS tapes had killed the drive in – but there was one last one, hanging on, out there on the edge of town, at the end of time.
They didn’t even look to see what movie was playing, but paid their money and drove in. They were the only customers – the space vast and empty.
“At least we’ll be able to see close,” said Cecile. She drove down right to the front, with the towering white screen rising above them like a fortification. Cecile looked over the door, confused.
“Hey! Where are all the little speakers on poles?”
“Oh, those are long gone,” said Armando, “People kept stealing them. You just tune in on the radio for the sound.”
“This car doesn’t have a radio.”
They drove all the way back to the one spot, right beside the snack bar that still had a speaker. The single employee (who owned the theater and had taken their money earlier) popping corn and filling sodas could keep an eye on that one. They watched the movie on the tiny, distant screen, with nothing but space between.
Still it was nice. And sitting there in that specific instant in that vintage car with the top down watching the last drive in alone (except for the snack bar guy) in that peculiar slice of time they were happy, content and in the moment – blissful and unaware of the tumult and pandemonium that was bearing down on them… on everybody… like a tsunami of insanity – only a few short decades away.
It Still Freaks Me Out a Little
“I come to a red light, tempted to go through it, then stop once I see a billboard sign that I don’t remember seeing and I look up at it. All it says is ‘Disappear Here’ and even though it’s probably an ad for some resort, it still freaks me out a little and I step on the gas really hard and the car screeches as I leave the light.”
― Less Than Zero
Pinstripe Skull, Car Show, Denton, Texas
Somebody Had a Bad Day
“The ambiguous role of the car crash needs no elaboration—apart from our own deaths, the car crash is probably the most dramatic event in our lives, and in many cases the two will coincide. Aside from the fact that we generally own or are at the controls of the crashing vehicle, the car crash differs from other disasters in that it involves the most powerfully advertised commercial product of this century, an iconic entity that combines the elements of speed, power, dream and freedom within a highly stylized format that defuses any fears we may have of the inherent dangers of these violent and unstable machines.”
― The Atrocity Exhibition
Lyndon Baines Johnson Freeway and Texas Instruments Boulevard, Dallas, Texas
Bill Chance 