“Smoop’s Ride”
| March 26th, 2008After 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.
