This fine short-shorty story was written recently by Brenna Peterson in one of our Introduction to Creative Writing courses.
Getaway Car
Brenna Peterson
The face in the mirror was a gruesome stranger—the swollen eye beginning to bloom with purple, the split lip, the dried blood around each nostril. It was somehow both her and not her, a strange parallel-universe shade of herself. The harsh fluorescent light of the gas station restroom made her look even more like a corpse, made her feel more like a corpse, too, with how horribly sick she felt as the glare seemed to beat into her skull. She didn’t remember lights ever having this sort of power and she wished someone would take it away.
But it also seemed so much like the lights overhead when it happened, a streetlamp, maybe? Why had she been staring at a streetlamp? Her body recalled the feeling of the pavement against her back as she gazed into the sky, and there were scrapes all over to suggest it had happened, but why she had been there was still a frustrating puzzle.
She tried to piece together what had happened, only to find it was all too fragmented, like the glass of the windshield shattered on the road. Why had there been glass on the road? The shards had refracted back dots of brilliant red and yellow in the midst of nighttime shadows. Some were still embedded in her skin—little fire ants burning her from the inside out. Perhaps some were in her mind, too. That would explain why it felt so cracked and wretched. Each time she tried to think, her eyes reflexively squeezed shut. There was too much, too much. If she could just lay down for a bit—
A crisp rap at the door made her wince.
“Becks, you good? We really should go.”
She dragged herself away from the sink, the floor tilting with each step, her vision fuzzy around the edges. It was like being drunk, or drugged, or like she was in a dream. Maybe she was, maybe if she pinched herself she’d wake up from all this—
“Becks?”
Her hand finally found the doorknob, and, mustering all her concentration on this one task, she managed to turn it. The door squealed open on its rusty hinges and the vibrant colors of the gas station packaged snacks flooded her vision. Her head screamed in pain at all the new stimuli; she just wanted to hide in the corner, wanted to deal with all this tomorrow instead—
“Shit, Becks,” breathed Cade. “You look awful.” His eyes were like gaping headlights as he stared at her, taking in the mess that had been made of her. There was a small bruise on his cheek and a cut above his eyebrow, but he was an angel haloed by the lights of this dingy gas station—the only thing that didn’t make her brain recoil. She wanted to trace her fingers along his jaw but her hand wouldn’t obey. Tears choked at her throat over it and just made her more confused, because there was no reason to cry over this but why couldn’t she just touch him? She sucked in a breath and blinked for a long moment.
When she refocused on him, something clunked into place—she could vaguely remember him cursing and yanking the wheel to the right, him shouting as they skidded, him dragging her out of the car, him pulling her stumblingly to her feet and away from the wreck. Yet, even in those disturbing flashes of memory, he had a sort of heavenly radiance.
“What…?” The word felt like molasses on her tongue, sticky and heavy. Her eyelids closed and she swallowed, the sound amplified in her skull. Then she held herself against the doorframe, looked him in the face, and tried again. “What are we…”
She realized she had about fifty questions and they had all combined into a murky stew, leaving her with no way to sort each one out. Somewhere behind her forehead, it began to feel as though a tiny person was hammering away at her brains in an attempt to break out. The tile floor looked so cool and she wanted to melt into it, to have it ease away all her pains. It looked like it could do that if she tried. Her legs turned to jelly of their own accord—
“Easy!” Cade caught her arm in a pair of vice-like grips. There was real worry in his eyes, she thought, real concern for her, as he peered into her face. Then he licked his lips and looked over his shoulder before speaking again in a low voice. “D’you think you can walk if I help you? It’s just, we really gotta go before…” he trailed off and glanced behind him again. She could only see the rows of chips and pretzels, and the tired-looking cashier back there, but even that was enough to make her head spin and discourage her from any more searching.
“Mmmyeah,” she mumbled, leaning heavily into him as he slipped her arm around his shoulders. “Where we goin’?”
“I got us a ride, don’t worry ‘bout that,” he said soothingly. He gave her a light squeeze, and she felt her head fall against him. Her neck muscles had apparently given up after straining to hold her bowling ball of a head upright for so long.
“You kids need me to call an ambulance?” the man at the desk asked, his brows furrowed as he studied them. “She looks like she needs to get to the hospital.”
“That’s alright, I’m about to take her there,” said Cade. She felt his grip tighten around her as his pace quickened.
“Alright,” the man said, though he didn’t sound entirely convinced.
Cade maneuvered her through the doors with surprising grace, and the night air rushed to meet her feverish skin.
“Don’ need the hospital,” she protested as the bells on the door jingled hollowly behind them.
He looked down at her, something like relief in his expression. “You sure?”
“Yeah, ‘m fine.” The words were slow but they were out there, they had made it out into the real world, no longer merely running laps through her head. And she was fine, all she needed was to sleep it off. It would be better then, she was sure of it.
His lungs deflated in a great exhale, and his body was suddenly far less rigid than it had been. “Good, ‘cause I dunno how safe it’d be for us to go there.”
She felt her face scrunch together as she muddled through his response. It didn’t seem right, it didn’t add up with everything she thought she knew about hospitals. She didn’t have time to consider it, though, because they were approaching an old blue car a few parking lots away — when did they leave the gas station lot? — and he was opening the passenger door and buckling her in the seat, and then he was in the driver’s seat and fiddling with something — where were the keys? — and then the car was coming alive with a sputtering purr.
Cade offered her one of those lopsided smiles that her heart seemed to know and cherish, then he eased the car out of the lot. There was an unfamiliar scent, so unlike their old car — it had smelled like choking smoke and fire and gas and charred metal at the very end, the stench so vivid now that she was reminded of it — and her skin started to crawl.
“This… isn’t our car?”
“Hey, it’s okay,” he reached over and gently grabbed her hand, pulling it over so he could press a kiss to the palm. “We’re Becky and Cade, the modern-day Bonnie and Clyde, remember?”
The sound of their names together sent a thrill down her spine, like there was something scandalous and wonderful about it all at the same time. Becky and Cade. Bonnie and Clyde. Them against the world.
Then, the lazy smile that had formed on her lips began to slip as something interrupted the pleasant romantic thoughts. In the midst of all the holes in her mindscape, a documentary she’d watched for class years ago had somehow worked its way to the surface. Not just any documentary, but one about crime during the Great Depression.
Bonnie and Clyde hadn’t just been lovers on grand adventures across America — they’d been gangsters, murderers, and when the law finally caught them, they’d been shot down.
Cade kept looking in the rearview mirror, chewing on his lip, jumping ever so slightly if headlights appeared behind them.
Oh… oh hell.
Her stomach churned at the thought of the void in her memory and the things it contained. Something had happened, something dark, something that had to do with the crash, something that didn’t match up with her mental collection of past images of the angel beside her.
Oh, God, what did we do?
Ars Creative Writing 