The Red Mustang

It started with a car. It rolled off the factory line into a bright sunny world. A 1967 cherry red Ford Mustang. Perfect, glistening, sleek. It looked fast even when it was standing still. A young mans dream machine. Or it should have been. It had had many owners, all just a little in love with the car at first, then slowly a feeling that something was wrong. An uneasy feeling, like when you think you have seen something out of the corner of your eye, but when viewed full on, nothing is amiss. Nobody kept it for very long.

 

Many years after it first throbbed into life, the car was not quite so cherry red, however it was still the pride and joy of its latest owner. The owner, a young man of 26 had just graduated from university and was celebrating the start of the rest of his life with his second love. She was slightly younger, naive, almost otherworldly. Her beauty of face was only surpassed by her beauty of spirit. They were headed to the mountains for a weekend of romance and planning for their future. This young couple...This happy, carefree young couple, were so hopelessly and foolishly in love.

 

But their happiness was always destined to be short lived... if only he had not purchased that damned car. That cherry red demon of a car.

 

The road they travelled was dark, winding, and at times almost treacherous. Testament to the many accidents that had already occurred on its black tarmac ribbon. The sky usually lit with an incandescent array of stars, was, on this night, dark and foreboding. So dark it turned that cherry red into a colour that closer resembled blood. Blood that had sat and coagulated, leaving a pool on the ground at the scene of a gruesome murder. The trees lining each side of the road, seemed to lean towards the car, with outstretched branches, that at times looked like the aged fingers of a grasping old crone. But still the young couple, embraced by the buttery cream leather seats, chatted and laughed, anticipating their special time ahead.

 

The heavens opened, lashing them with cold unrelenting rain, turning the road ahead into a slippery path, hydroplaning them up the mountain. Still, man should be in charge of a machine. After all the controls to guide and steer them on were at his fingertips. And till now this was true, but this car, this hellion of metal and glass, seemed to say 'no more'.

 

One second. A lapse in judgement was all it took. As the boy took one look at his beloved, smiling at her. She smiled back lovingly, reaching her hand out to caress his face, a five o'clock shadow stretched itself across his cheeks and down over his chin.

 

The car took on a life of its own, almost pulling its wheels out of alignment to jerk the controls away from his hand and back into its own reach. Like a body possessed by some kind of maniacal presence, with the only chance of being rid of it, an exorcism of biblical proportions.

 

 Finally, a turn too sharp, a car too fast and a moment in time that seemed to hang in the air for eternity.

 

The girl's hand did not reach his face. She would never again experience the feeling of his beard, tickling at her lips as she leant in to kiss him. She would never get to say the three words she had always been too terrified to say to him. Those three impossible words. In the same instance the boy realised that he would never be able to wrap his arms around her and hold her close, resting his chin on top of her head. He would never again see her long, black hair, blowing in the breeze as she ran ahead of him. The last thing he would see of her was a look of terror distorting her beautiful face and a bloodcurdling scream escaping her perfect lips.

 

 Spinning out of control the wheels made a screeching sound that reverberated throughout the mountains that surrounded them. And then, as it so often happens in life, irony reared its head like a beady eyed, warty toad. The impending crash that was to take the promise embodied in this starry eyed young couple, would ultimately be the end of this cherry red mustang's seemingly limitless lives.

 

Finally this damned trio came to a halt in the embrace of two gigantic towering Oak Trees. Wedged, trapped. Its paint destroyed, the car settled with one last groan of mangled metal, beaten by its own twisted malevolence.

 

The boy was first to wake. He stared at his beloved's face, still considering it beautiful, despite the blood and dirt. He thanked the Gods, knowing she was merely unconscious, taking comfort that she may have the chance to live. Sadly he was sure of his own fate.  A large tear ripped into his chest by a thick shard of glass like a knife through butter. He could barely breathe, barely think, barely see as his vision became blurry. His last image, her beautiful face, he smiled and closed his eyes for the last time.

 

As the girl slowly came to, she looked up to see her partner limp in the driver's seat, head turned towards her and eyes closed. She reached out to him, placing her fingers on his neck praying that he would be alive. Unfortunately it was too late. Where she should have found a pulse, faint at least, she found nothing, not one sign of movement or life. She had lost her heart, her soul, her reason to live. She was being made to stare at him until she too was gone.

 

"I love you! Please hear me I love you!" She yelled out to him in desperation, screaming his name. She finally spoke those three words. If only they weren't a few minutes too late.

 

Her last image would be of her bloodied lover, taken from her too early. These thoughts ran through her head as she too drew one last painful breath.

 

The family decided to leave the car in place. No more unwitting owners, just a mangled shape being swallowed by the ever-growing Oak trees. Some do say though, on a rainy starless night a young couple can be seen walking hand in hand in the distance like a fairytale couple. But who believes in fairytales... or nightmare cars?

Reviews

[NinjaShadowWolf]

Truly powerful. It's how most muscle cars and experienced drivers be. Muscle cars are unlike, regular cars and can snatch someones life in 2.8 seconds. Most just take it for the looks without looking at the risk. Maybe in the future, humans can become smarter.
Made me feel sad.
Well done, great writing.

[Trisha Threason]

Haha I'm glad you liked it. and I'm hoping it was a good thing that it made you feel sad. I felt like while i could have just mentioned it was a car, choosing a specified year, make and model gave it a bit more effect and as you said it made it especially pointed because i chose an iconic muscle car. Glad you appreciated that as well. I'm usually one to write fantasy and horror so this is the furthest I've gone from the magical/supernatural genre without removing it completely, just implying that the reason is unknown so I'm glad it satisfied what i was trying to portray