Just Kristin

After the jump, the final (for now) draft of a kun­st­märchen I wrote for Com­pLit 561. Any worth therein has been brought to you by the let­ters S and J, and the num­ber (IS)300. As with every­thing else on this blog, “Smoop’s Ride” is (cc) licensed. If you can make it bet­ter, please do so, but share nicely and leave a link. :)

“Smoop’s Ride”

Long ago or yes­ter­day, depend­ing upon your age, a girl named Smoop lived with her mother and step-father in a ram­shackle yel­low house in the city of Mares Aim. Both mother and step-father worked long hours to make cer­tain that worry born of need never chased the joy from their wild-gardened home, but, while the fam­ily always had enough to eat and love to spare, there was lit­tle money left after their daily three square, bed­time snacks and the occa­sional movie rental.

Smoop’s 16th birth­day came and went, her wal­let thick­ened ever so slightly by a newly-minted driver’s license. The photo on the license showed Smoop’s black hair, her large brown eyes, her ski-jump nose and the same thought­ful down-turn of mouth that she wore inces­santly since the photo was taken. It wasn’t that she was not happy, for she had all that she needed. It wasn’t that she felt unloved, for her par­ents loved her to dis­trac­tion. The source of Smoop’s pen­sive­ness was, instead, a strong long­ing, much the same as the pin­ing of a hun­gry stom­ach for a big bowl of ramen.

What Smoop really wanted was a car. The Car. A 2002 Lexus IS300, the sil­ver of a newly-minted coin, with a tail like a racked katana, win­dows tinted as black as the hair on her head, rims like blue irises that shim­mered and swirled, and a muf­fler that roared like a cor­nered lioness. The day of her 16th birth­day, on her way home from school, The Car had hand­ily sped around and past her bus, enchant­ing her instantly. The very sound of it rum­bled in her chest as if to change the beat­ing of her heart… and it did. From that point onward she could think of noth­ing more. How­ever, Smoop was a sen­si­ble, rea­son­able child. She knew that, while she lived at home, all the money she earned at after-school jobs would be put toward col­lege and a bet­ter, brighter future.

Just before the first day of fall, how­ever, while all the rest of her house­hold was muf­fled in sleep and Smoop lay drift­ing off to the only lul­laby she had ever known out­side the coo­ing of her mother–the sounds of the nightly street races on the out­skirts of Mares Aim—she sud­denly she heard The Car, solo­ing above the cho­rus of racers!

In min­utes she was off, a small bag slung over her shoul­der packed with Pop Tarts and surume and change scrounged from under sofa cush­ions and, most impor­tantly, her wal­let bear­ing her dri­vers license. She walked to the near­est 7/11 where she intended to buy a cof­fee before catch­ing the bus. As she walked up to the doors of the shop, a scrambled-rainbow lump of home­less man stirred and stretched and spoke, and as no one else was around, he must have been speak­ing to her. “Got some change?” he croaked, his eyes reg­is­ter­ing both hope and hunger as he looked up at her. Smoop knew that he prob­a­bly needed what­ever he needed more than she needed a cof­fee, so she fished out what she had and, sav­ing just enough for one-way bus fare (for what is youth if not hope­ful?), she gave the man the rest of her cash. He let the coins fall through his fin­gers into one of his bags and smiled a two-toothed grin at her.

She had barely taken one step through the store entrance when he grunted loudly, beck­oned and began to rum­mage among his pos­ses­sions. She turned back toward him just in time to meet the up-stretched claw of his hand offer­ing her, by way of reward, a tat­tered, woven army belt, a “del” key from an old ter­mi­nal key­board, and a pair of horn-rimmed glasses with no lenses. He rat­tled them at her and scowled until she took them, thank­ing him politely, to which he replied, “yer mother’s eyes,” and changed almost instantly back into a col­or­ful lump of uncon­scious snor­ing and odor. She paused long enough to un-flummox her­self, after which she grabbed one of the dog waste bags from the dis­penser, put his gifts into it and shoved it into her own bag. Then, coffee-less, she boarded a bus that slowly wound its way toward where the races were being held, the vol­ume of her thun­der­ing Siren get­ting louder and closer and louder…

The fre­netic activ­ity at the race site had her spell­bound as soon as she got off the bus. The only light was that of street-lights and head-lights, leav­ing the world a patch­work of shim­mer and Bondo gray. Engines were still revving but grad­u­ally idling to a low hum as peo­ple arranged them­selves in a line. She joined the end of the queue and waited, lis­ten­ing for clues. Slowly, and with much moan­ing and jeer­ing from what seemed the front of the line, she seemed to inch for­ward. Around her, peo­ple talked of both los­ing and win­ning the car (The Car?), and one by one, men walked past and into the night, hunched in their sor­row. Her con­fu­sion was not less­ened by these sights.

Finally, she was able to see two faces: one was that of The Car, its head lamp eyes and black-grilled mouth beam­ing at her, and the other was that of its owner, a sour-faced, droopy-mustached man with slicked-back hair and the wring­ing hands of some­one who knows his luck must soon run out but can­not give up the game. Antic­i­pa­tion made her heart beat with the reg­u­lar­ity of pis­tons and her blood flowed oily through her veins, roar­ing in her ears and mak­ing her dizzy until she was at the front of the line.

The Car’s owner seemed almost ready to dis­miss this young, small­ish girl, but some primeval source of greed forced from him a gri­mace and a greet­ing. “Nee-chan,” he leered. “What kind of wheels you putting up against mine?” “Oh!” she thought, “I am to bet a car against his in some game!” This real­iza­tion only made her sad, and she had to answer, “I have no car.” The man snorted deri­sively and then, after a pause, looked her up and down in a way that would make even the most peace-loving moth­ers arm them­selves. “Ok. How ‘bout then we wager my auto’s body against your body body,” he oozed, draw­ing the last words out for effect. The crowd, up until now rau­cous, grew hushed. Smoop looked deep into the eyes of The Car and replied, tersely, “Fine.” The mus­tached man pointed toward the first of three tables and explained, “You com­plete three tasks, the car is yours. You screw even one up, and your car– I mean, your body is mine.”

The table to which the man now ges­tured held a com­puter, its mon­i­tor con­sumed by an email client filled with new mail. “Every piece of mail in there is a chain spam that requires ten for­wards,” Mus­tache hissed. “You gotta take care of them all with a sin­gle key stroke. You have fif­teen sec­onds, starting.…now!” Smoop stood for five, com­pletely blank until the great black grin of The Car reminded her of the home­less man, and she dug in her bag for his gifts. Pulling the “del” key from the dog-poop sack, she quickly pried the “delete” key from the computer’s key­board, replaced it with the “del” key and then pressed it with all her might. The email list cleared instantly, and the final cadence sig­ni­fy­ing eTrash being emp­tied was drowned out by the cheers of the crowd.

Mus­tache scowled and jabbed a fin­ger in the air in front of the sec­ond table, filled with cans of pork ‘n’ beans. “One out of three you got,” he grum­bled, “but the sec­ond isn’t as easy. Tell me, with­out open­ing them, which can has the cut-off fin­ger tip of a bean can­nery worker.” He smiled and leaned back, check­ing her out from behind as he added, “Like before. Fif­teen sec­onds from now!” This time, with­out hes­i­tat­ing, Smoop dug out the lens­less glasses and put them on. She rooted through the pile of cans, fling­ing those she’d already rejected to the ground until she found one that seemed to glow a mor­bid pink. She chucked it at him and grinned. Har­rumph­ing, he opened the can with an opener that hung, along with the keys he’d won, from a chain on his belt and dumped its con­tents slowly out onto the ground. From the mid­dle of the mess appeared a pink fin­ger tip that landed point­ing up at Mus­tache almost accus­ingly. Mus­tache paled a bit and yelled, “The third test!” He grabbed Smoop’s shoul­ders and shoved her toward the third table.

This third table was long and sturdy, and on it was a magician’s box in which an assis­tant might get sawed in half. As she stum­bled toward the table, Smoop almost instinc­tively fas­tened the ratty old belt around her waist. “You get in here and I dig in with this knife stolen from Korean kid­ney har­vesters.” He lifted her and crammed her into the box, pos­si­ble partly because of his anger-born strength, and partly because she did not strug­gle. He started jab­bing his knife through the sides and top of the box as soon as it was shut, sweat­ing and curs­ing all the while. When he had suf­fi­ciently tired him­self, he stopped and leaned back, only to watch her spring from the box unharmed, the belt falling away in ribbons.

In a rage, Mus­tache raced to The Car and jumped in, but despite how he tried, the engine would not turn over. Smoop stepped over to the side of the car and ordered him to “Hand over the keys, imme­di­ately!” but he locked the doors from the inside, and cracked the win­dows only enough to make his voice heard. Froth­ing at the mouth, he asked her what made her think The Car was hers.

“Besides hav­ing right­fully won it, I have known that it was mine from the moment I saw it, the moment I felt it beat my heart for me.”

“Then tell me,” he seethed, “what color is that on the rims!? I had it spe­cially mixed, and no one can know the source of the tint! Tell me!”

Smoop whis­pered into the win­dow, just inches from his ear, “It is the color of your mother’s eyes.”

Upon hear­ing this, the man with the droopy mus­tache, slicked-back hair and evil leer com­busted into a hot cloud of char­treuse smoke that shot from The Car’s win­dows and dis­si­pated into the night.

Buoyed by the deaf­en­ing ova­tion of the onlook­ers, Smoop slid her thin arm down into a win­dow and unlocked the car. The rac­ing seat seemed to shape around her as she gen­tly turned the key and smiled as the engine purred at her. The ride home through the streets of Mares Aim was a joy­ous one, though only min­utes long — a short begin­ning to a long life behind the wheel of The Car.