Dead Wheels

A car project between high school friends is a past a lot of people share. Rob and Carl are two such people. During the car's maiden voyage, however, the two friends are met with a different fate.

Dead Wheels

By E. Cluff Elliott

 

Two years ago on a day in June, two freshmen from Charming, New Mexico High School, finished a joint project they’d both pitched on over the past twelve months. They named it, Dead Wheels.

            “TURN, CARL, TURN!” Rob yelled.

            Carl did.

The 1986 midnight-black Monte Carlo SS careened back across oncoming lanes of traffic. A big rig with the name Frank’s Fun Loving Tractor Pull stenciled on its side weaved around them, giving Rob time to read the word forming on the driver’s lips, “A******S.” Then they were skidding against the rail. Sparks flew as if Independence Day had come early, spraying molten slag through the window on Rob’s side, scaring the way all fireworks do if you don’t handle them with respect"efficiently.

Rob covered his face as best he could while thinking, If we go over the side, we’re dead for sure.

The craggy rocks beside them seemed to drop down into black mist that billowed and waved as if it were the surface of an ocean"though both boys knew the eerie way the mist moved only looked that way under a full moon. What really hid under the facade of blackness was the bottom of the valley and no matter how it looked it spelled death.

Somewhere beside him, Rob heard Carl let out an unnatural scream. Filled itself with cord clenching horror, grating against Rob’s eardrums as if he were standing next to the speakers at a death metal gig: Deicide maybe, or the Cannibal Corpse concert the two of them caught last fall; the kind of sound that’ll liquefy your insides with subsonic accuracy.  

A second later, the car shift to the right and both Rob and Carl felt their world summersault as the Monte began to rotate. Objects in the car flew and hovered. The inside of the car became a life-sized snow globe: papers from the glove box drift, and strips of wiring discarded in the back seat revolved. A Crescent Wrench on the floorboard sprang to life striking Rob between the eyes, smashing his pinky on his right hand and causing blood to flow from both points of impact.

Rob cried out in pain, and after an excruciating moment, sure he was about to see the afterlife, he passed out. When he awoke, the Monte was as still and as silent as Carl was in the seat next to him.

# # #

Carl woke in a cold sweat, the way he had on so many other nights, with a dream stuck in his head and his heart pounding in his chest. He always saw things from Rob’s point of view; even convincing himself, he was Rob to some degree, but that didn’t change anything. Rob was dead and it seemed"at least to Carl"that even two years was not enough time to forgive himself.

            “Don’t worry buddy, I almost got it done,” Carl whispered to the room around him. He knew his dead friend couldn’t be seen, but since the night of the wreck, Carl knew he was there. Call it intuition, a gut feeling, or a fortune-cookie fortune, but Carl knew his friend when he felt him.

# # #

While ripping out carpet still soaked with blood (if Carl’s father hadn’t been part of the city police department, he never would’ve been able to get even that far with Dead Wheels) and tucking the pieces into bio-hazard bags from the hospital, Carl heard his name called. It happened only once, but there was no mistaking the voice. Carl jumped, hit his shoulder on a jutting edge and jumped again, this time in pain rather than surprise. No one was there.

            Carl settled down, taking a break from the sudden mention of his name and sipping on a glass of water as he leaned against the wall in his garage. Then, contemplating what he’d just heard he got the craziest idea he’d ever had, and even better, he’d make good on his idea.

It would take him two years to do it, but in the end, Carl did it.

# # #

Now, with the blankets pulled back, the cold sweat equalizing with the temperature of the room, Carl thought about what he’d constructed down in the garage. He smiled, anxious to take it for a test drive despite the dreams, despite the fear, and fell back asleep in mere minutes.

# # #

The next day, on a day in June, one junior from Charming, New Mexico High School finished the car he’d finished once with a friend who died two years ago. The car’s name is still Dead Wheels, and according to Carl, it’s still the sweetest looking Monte around.

            The ride was peaceful, calming. It was for a little while, anyways.

            After passing the place where he’d wrecked two years ago with Rob in the passenger seat, Carl noticed someone in back. For a frightening moment, Carl thought it was Rob. “That’s impossible,” Carl embellished.

             Then to Carl’s horror, the figure in back straightened, held his gaze for a second, and answered. “No, it’s not impossible,” Rob said, smiling, “It’s just not what you’d think would happen…is it?”

            “You’re dead, Rob.”

            “I am, yes, but why aren’t you?”

            “Cause I made it out.”

            “Did you ever stop to think where you got your bright idea from? Or did you really think that one was all you?”

            “What are you talking about?”

            “Using car parts from fatal accidents; accidents where people have died as a result. Did you think it was you who thought of that,” Rob asked as he watched Carl through the rear view mirror.

            Carl froze. Now, instead of one person in the car with him, one dead person, there were four. Every seat in Dead Wheels occupied itself with another living corpse.

“Remember Carl,” Rob groaned. “There’s always room for one more.”

Carl knew his ride had just begun.

Reviews

[Cluff]

Glad you enjoyed it! I've been thinking of turning it into a longer piece, just haven't gotten around to it.

[CHRIS ANDES]

very wonderful flow of events!!!