Petrol Therapy

Short fiction

Frustrated, sad and angry all at once, Lucas put down his phone, still displaying its last received message; left his room at his parents’ house and opened the internal access door to the garage where his pride and joy, a silver 1987 Toyota Supra, was stored. 

This was a common occurrence. People and their associated problems were a confusing mystery to Lucas.  Cars and mechanical objects were rational, unemotional and judgement free.  Right now, he needed some time behind the wheel to clear his head.

As he took a moment to collect himself, Lucas became lost in his thoughts.

When another person was upset, angry or behaving erratically Lucas was always at a loss for words.  And whenever he did say something, he somehow usually managed to make the situation worse, even though he was trying his best to do the right thing. If only he could figure out how other human beings worked the same way he could figure out devices he’d never have to suffer the pain of being misunderstood again.  Then maybe he wouldn’t be such an outsider and be able to enjoy human interactions in the same way everyone else he knew seemed to.

Even from childhood his rapport with machinery was instant. If something wasn’t working, all he had to do was pull it apart and study how it worked and why it stopped working, then before long he would be able to repair it.  If it still didn’t work after putting it together, then no one got angry or had their feelings hurt.  It simply meant he must have made a mistake during reassembly, or not fully understood the problem in the first place.  All he had to do was pull it apart again and look for whatever it was that he missed the first time.

Mechanical things never disappeared without telling him what was wrong, finding out was simply a matter of perseverance. There was no time limit, Lucas was free to take as long as he needed to figure the problem out without pressure. And they always gave him a second chance if he screwed up.

Starting with his bicycles and later leading up to cars, he found solace by immersing himself in his hobby, away from his socially manipulative, but mechanically inept father.  And immerse himself he did, with every moving part on his car being perfectly cleaned, tested, measured and checked to be within specification or replaced and upgraded as far as his budget would allow.

The car’s engine suffered a poor reputation for reliability, thanks mostly to an easily remedied oversight by the manufacturer.  Perhaps this was part of why Lucas felt such an affinity for this car in particular - how could he not? Both were routinely dismissed despite all their great features, when it wasn’t their fault that their heads just weren’t quite screwed on properly.  If only the fix for Lucas was as simple as the one for the car.

Long, spirited drives up and down the local hill roads always helped soothe Lucas’s mind. The escape that drives like these provided was therapeutic in that he could exercise full confidence in his car to react to his inputs predictably, the way he couldn’t with any person.

The contrast between the catharsis of this bubble, where he and his car seemed to have perfect faith in each other, routinely testing their mutual ability, and the real world of isolation, disappointment and feelings of ineptitude was never more obvious.

Lucas opened the door, sat down and heard the slight rattle as the frameless glass shut against the door aperture seal. Like everything on the car, the window was perfectly adjusted, just some unavailable parts were a touch worn.  That was ok.  Lucas knew it was as good as it could get and didn’t ask for anything more.

The interior was a little dusty, but otherwise clean.  It had to be kept free of litter, as Lucas drove the same way he lived his life - with maximum intensity.  Just as when he met a new romantic interest he almost immediately gushed with waves of pent-up emotion when it would be more prudent to hold back, whenever Lucas drove in the back roads of his small town he buried the accelerator on every straight, braked at the last possible moment and cornered at the limits of adhesion.

So far, this approach had yielded minor scrapes on the car and a series of broken relationships with women he didn’t understand, who stopped replying to his messages for reasons he never knew - mostly. Some of these girls became so enamoured with the Lucas they thought they knew that they harassed him long after his own interest had waned.  In a way these ones bothered Lucas even more.  The feeling of wounding someone else gnawed at his conscience more than his own scars ever could.

As he turned the key to “START” and the deep, syncopated beat of the engine filled the cabin, its siren song already pouring oil over the turbulent waters of his psyche, it occurred to Lucas that perhaps there might be some benefit in warming up slowly in relationships too.  Probably too late to start working on that now, he mused, as he scanned the row of pressure and temperature gauges.

While Lucas waited for the oil and coolant temperatures to rise, he opened the centre console to retrieve the other thing that was always there for him. Weed.

Marijuana calmed him down too, but on its own also led to deep and wandering thoughts.  Driving fast while stoned was quite easy for Lucas. Curiously, in that setting the drug seemed to stave off any distracting thoughts, leaving Lucas in a Zen-like state of total concentration as he tore through the hills.

The warm-up period wasn’t really long enough to smoke a whole joint, and he preferred to be out of the garage and on the move while smoking, so he took his time breaking up his buds and rolling them evenly between the papers.  Smoking while driving also meant that the smell was away from his parents’ house, and he could roll the windows down on the way back.

Remembering that last text message he had received from his most recent paramour, Lucas decided this was to be his last joint.  "im sorry, its definitely yours. i want to keep it"   Trembling slightly, he lit the joint.  The fear of what was to come was overtaking him already. Was it time to go yet? The car was almost warm, why not? He pushed the clutch pedal in, pressed the garage door remote button and waited as he held the wheel with both hands, drifting into deep thought. 

Why did he fear fatherhood so much?  Loss of freedom? Yes, but it was more than that.  If giving up weed was all he needed to do, then fine, no great loss there. He re-lit the joint, remembering how his father was the first human to confuse him. 

He recalled being dragged along to a lot of social events with his parents as a child, where his father would be drinking and cracking jokes with his friends and workmates.  On every occasion, the boisterous, blue-collar teasing that the adults enjoyed flowed freely.  A sensitive child, Lucas always found it crass.  The confusion arose when his father or one of his colleagues would inevitably direct some verbal jab or other at Lucas, whether it be related to his weight, his introverted nature, or his lack of sporting prowess.

Incensed by their cruel laughter at his expense, the young Lucas, unfamiliar with the adult concept of trading friendly jibes amongst one another would respond defensively in kind, only with full sincerity.

To Lucas it followed that logically this should have made everyone even.  Often his father’s friends and colleagues would howl with laughter at his precocious comebacks. Sometimes it seemed like they even relished getting a rise out of the boy.  Yet inexplicably, this only raised his father’s ire further and led to a verbal browbeating either right there, or later at home in the more serious cases.

His father had had children too young also.  There was never a lot of money to put food on the table.  Lucas and his siblings weren’t explicitly told this, but they knew from the way their father would passive-aggressively comment about the “gannets feeding” at dinnertimes.  Often Lucas found comfort in over-eating, so this shaming led to further guilt, which led to more over-eating, and more comments about his weight.

When Lucas became upset about these things, he wanted nothing more than to sequester himself away.  He would run to his bed and hide under the covers crying, only for his father to appear and forcibly pull back the covers to attempt to engage Lucas again.

The joint was out again. It must have become blocked up with resin.  Lucas re-lit it without removing his eyes from their forward gaze, as he had many times before.  “No one likes a smart kid”, his father used to say.  And Lucas was an intelligent person, that much he knew.  But he wasn’t a people person.

What he did know about humans though, was that the apple never fell far from the tree.  Sometimes, Lucas sensed that something he said hurt someone unintentionally.  And he knew that although he wasn’t half as venomous as his father, he too could be short-tempered.

What he really feared, deep inside, was that he would repeat the same mistakes his own parents had. Long ago, he had realised these things and decided that he couldn’t bear the idea of being to a child what his own father was to him. He resolved never to have children of his own.

Now that this option wasn’t open to him anymore, he was forced to reassess his decision.  The baby was going to be born whether he liked it or not.  Regularly smoking weed made Lucas feel foggy and grumpy when he wasn’t on it. And grumpiness led to carelessly withering comments. So, there was no way he was going to be a stoner Dad.

Oh yeah, the joint.  It was out again. Lucas kept one hand on the wheel as he flicked the lighter unsuccessfully.  Must be out of gas. Still not breaking his forward gaze, he reached for the car’s cigarette lighter (rarely used, but of course perfectly functional) and held the smouldering end to the joint, even though he was feeling pretty stoned by now. It still didn’t properly light for some reason. Strange.  It didn’t matter though.

For once, Lucas was at peace.  His plan had succeeded.  As he slumped forward onto the wheel, eyes closed; and sank within himself, his blue lips curled into a smile as the horn sounded his swansong.

Author's Note

This is my first short story. I'm sure it sucks, but I think it's got legs. I'd like to make it not suck so much so I can enter it into a competition.

Reviews

[Robert Trakofler]

I thought I had reviewed this already not sure what happened. I have always been a tinkerer too I used to love to take things apart and fix them now I still do but often I end up turning them into something else I find many objects to have a soul to them a history a conversation can be found within:) if I would be so bold as to add a suggestion to the story you might want to include more emphasis on this in your story? I like it the foundation of it is very good but for the sake of relating to your reader a little more feeling for them to empathise with him would go a long way. I particularly like the part about being afraid to repeat the cycles of his parents to his own child

[Ambicatus]

Hi Robert,

Thanks for taking the time to review my story, and for your kind words. I understand what you're talking about with regard to tinkering, with Lucas I'm not sure I want a majority audience to be able to empathise with him. Sympathise maybe, but one would have to be a very damaged individual to elevate machines beyond humans the way he has!

Still, I get where you're coming from and that's why I touched on the symbiotic dance with man and machine as one carving up the local hill roads. Perhaps I could have elaborated more? In any case I'd like to progress my novel-length story ideas before I get old and lose my faculties, so I'll call it a lesson learnt for now.
-Ambicatus