Just a Drive



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       It was a rusty tank. It rattled slightly as it veered onto the beltway exit and I worried if it would be able to speed up fast enough to merge with traffic.

Not for the first time I wondered, What the hell was I doing in Nathaniel Strange’s car?

“You look like I’ve kidnapped you,” he laughed, glancing at me from the driver’s seat.

“Keep your eyes on the road,” I ordered. “Do the brakes in this thing even work?”

His smile faded. “The brakes work just fine, Becca. The car’s in pretty good condition for being twenty-five years old.”

I gripped the dashboard in fear. “Twenty-five?!”

He smiled proudly and pet the steering wheel as if it were a prize-winning barnyard animal. “Yep. Nineteen Eighty-three Buick Century. I bought it from an old woman who only drove it to the shops and back for twenty years.”

I sat back in the seat, transferring my iron grip to my seatbelt. “Twenty-five years…” I glanced around the car with eyes wide in horror, just waiting for it to fall to pieces. My money was on the rearview mirror. Those always fall off first.

“Relax, Becca. Rusty is made of solid steel. Even if we did crash, I’d be more afraid for the other car. Modern cars are made of aluminium. It’d be like hitting a row boat with an aircraft carrier.”

“Rusty?”

“That’s his name.”

“It’s a he?”

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Here we have some dead text from my book. The scene became completely irrelevant a few drafts back, but it's still one of my favorites. I'm going to miss this scene the most.

text © me, of course.