The Frankenstein Car

The bickering escalated as they crossed the state line because Randy decided – without even consulting Melissa -- to take the scenic route, and that’s when their ‘94 Dodge van sputtered its final gasp of carbon monoxide. It seemed miraculous that out of nowhere in those Georgia backwoods that Louie’s Wheels & Trappins appeared.

Louie’s was a graveyard of car husks: burnt, smashed, rusted, ripped-at-the-seams-pickups and corroded truck cabs. Doors of all colors gawked alongside a chain-link fence that went on and on until it disappeared into a cavernous gully. There were front windshields with cranium-impacted spiderweb cracks that sniggered and laughed silently with diabolical purpose from the netherworld. At the center of it all was a hill of engines, tubes sticking out like amputated hydra heads, waving in anticipation for holy reincarnation.

They traded in Randy’s ‘94 Dodge and some cash for what Louie affectionately referred to as a Frankenstein car.

“Ain’t many like these ‘round,” Louie said. An old geezer, he had a scar stitched across his forehead, suggesting something essential had been extracted in the head region. When Louie talked the scar pulsated like it was about to erupt. “You got a gem, that’s fer sur. Carries the ghosts of hundreds of cars, screamin’ and cravin’ for person-el attention. Muscle memory in that thar ve-hic-kill.” Louie chuckled, and his skeletal shoulders shook beneath his greasy coveralls.

Melissa rolled her eyes.

“Just the car for you, ma’am.” The man’s eyes narrowed, and his oily grin expanded into a smirk of diseased teeth. “This car will understand your deepest desires. You ain’t believing it I kin tell.”

Melissa walked away from the crazy old man. As she waited for Randy to complete the transaction, she heard a saw grinding on something. It didn’t sound like metal. Bones? But it couldn’t be bones. Near the back of a slanting, ramshackle shed, an arc of sparks spun in the air. An animal cackled. There were howls, then yips of delight as if a coyote posse had stumbled upon an inattentive cat.

“You’ll get your money’s worth fer sur,” Louie said, giving her one last peek at his glorious teeth, tops sharp as tire spikes. As Randy drove away, Melissa glanced back at the lone wall scone that illuminated the nodding man, one sleeve of his foul Carhartt, hollow and loose.

∞

The car kept clattering as if speaking in tongues, calling together the faithful, the unfaithful, and the irreverent.

“There’s something abnormal about this car,” Melissa said. The car growled and spat and inhaled as if to constrict everything inside. Melissa’s red curls flopped over her forehead every time Randy hit a bump, and there was nothing she could do to stop it. That she couldn’t even control her own hair infuriated her, and that’s when a chill moved up her spine: Your mistakes need a reckoning, Honey.

They were on the highway, and it was almost midnight, no lights anywhere, the fog and drizzle and smoke from burning fields blinding them.

“Nothing’s ever good enough for you.” Randy’s long back hunched over the steering wheel and his eyes focused on the highway.

“I feel a migraine coming on,” Melissa said. The light inside the car was so weak that Melissa could barely read the map on her lap. They had no cell service, and the GPS kept going in and out. Then out of nowhere, it said, Make a left.

“Randy, keep going straight,” Melissa said.

Then the left blinker went on.

Randy squinted at the dashboard, then turned to Melissa.

“Randy! I said keep going straight. You got wax in your ears? The left will take us off the highway into another god-knows-what kind of deserted backroad with old creepy people.”

The steering wheel started wobbling, and wobbled so hard that a religious, robed figurine stuck to the dashboard shot off into the backseat.

“Randy, I said—”

They both stared as the steering wheel started turning sharply left. Even with both hands on the wheel and the full weight of his body, Randy could not control the car’s trajectory. He was thrown viciously against the door as the car exited onto a narrow, dirt road somewhere in the Blue Ridge Mountains. The road was even darker than the highway. The car’s headlights started blinking on-and-off, and the undercarriage groaned, as if the car had eaten something poisonous and was trying to expel it. The radio, which had been silent, was now crackling, as if a presence in the backseat was breaking up large sheets of peanut brittle and throwing them against the windows and doors. Then the doors locked with a sharp click. The windows rose up airtight.

“Randy!” Melissa said. “What the hell are you doing?”

Randy lifted his hands in the air.

The car kept gaining speed, and the rattling was so loud that they had to shout. Melissa felt the shaking in every bone of her body.

“Slow the damn car down! You’re gonna’ kill us! What the hell is the matter with you?”

His jaw dropped and he stared at her.

“For Christ’s sakes slow the car down!”

The car accelerated.

“Put your foot on the brake!”

“I am. There’s nothing there!”

They were speeding along a backcountry road, bouncing up and down so hard that even with seatbelts on, their heads hit the ceiling. The car shimmied side-to-side, banging Melissa against the door, then it swerved at high speed through the inside of a curve, past a creek, the passenger side grating against a guard rail and leaving a trail of sparks and the smell of cheap, burnt paint. Then moving into successively lower gears, the car began ascending a long, winding hill.

“Nothing’s working!” Randy said. “I don’t know how we got here.”

“Me either,” Melissa said. Tears gushed down her face, messing up her makeup that she had been too hungover to remove from the night before. She could taste those shrimp burritos that they’d eaten at the wedding of their best friends, back in Florida. What had she done to deserve this? Melissa went to work every day. She cooked meals most nights, and she volunteered with the town’s beautification committee. That’s where she’d met Randy seven years ago.

“It’s like we have to cut each other down all the time,” Randy said. “We didn’t start out like this.”

Melissa braced herself, and despite the car jostling her every-which-way, she felt a moment of peace. “You surprise me, Randy.”

“We woke up one day, and we were competitors. And enemies,” Randy said, his eyes wide.

“You never want to talk about us.”

“I never had to.” Then his head hit the ceiling particularly hard.

Melissa and Randy looked at one another, both blinking at the same time.

The car was gaining speed and the distressing noises inside had reached a crescendo when Randy said, “I’m sorry, Melissa, that I haven’t been the best person.”

Melissa reached out for his hand. “Me too.” Her curls flopped over her eyes again. She thought with indignation about what the creepy man had whispered to her, Readin’ yer mind, Honey, then bendin’ yer thoughts, this here car. Now that was insane.

“I’m sorry, Randy,” she said aloud, and it felt good. “For every time I screamed at you whenever you made a mess in the kitchen and left it for me to cleanup. Or just threw your coat on the floor. All this resentment – it just built up inside of me.”

Randy squeezed her hand. They closed their eyes as the car had reached the hilltop then gunned for the valley below. Melissa struggled to recall the man’s very last words, and that’s when it came to her: Ya ain’t smart enough to out-think this here Frankenstein car.

“Go faster,” Melissa suddenly said. “Faster. Faster, faster!”

The car slowed down.

“Keep going!” Melissa said. She looked sideways at Randy, tossing back her head of curls.

“Keep those damn doors locked,” Randy said. He smiled. First time all day.

The car stopped suddenly. The locks clicked and they both jumped out helter-skelter, as if expecting the vehicle’s seat belts to reach out and snap them back in. Steam rose from the engine which was still hammering away, hissing and whining as if desperate for karmic insight, but the rattling had stopped completely.

Randy maintained a safe distance as he surveyed the damaged vehicle, examining it with the light of his cell, warning Melissa to keep behind him. Melissa rubbed her bruised arms. Her brain vibrated, but with a pleasant tingling, as if the neurons and synapses were undergoing a massive reorganization.

“Will you look at that!” Randy pointed at the driver’s side view mirror, then at the passenger’s mirror. “I’ll be damned. Mirrors are on backward.”

“I didn’t know you could do that.”

“Surprise!” Then Randy grabbed Melissa and he hugged her tight, and tighter, and she hugged with all her soul. Releasing her, he grabbed his bag of tools sitting on the backseat, careful not to go inside the car too deeply. Melissa held out her cell’s flashlight as he removed both mirrors and switched them back, working as they were meant to.

They both looked into the driver’s mirror at the same time.

“You’re amazing,” Melissa said. Her heart fluttered and good feeling hormones pumped from her heart to her gut and all the way out to her toes and fingertips.

“Yeah, baby.” He cocked his head and grinned at her. “Think we can do this?”

They both looked at the old car, stitched and patched beyond what anyone would have considered safe, or drivable.

“I’m game if you are,” Melissa said.

“Did I ever tell you, you have the cutest dimples?”

Randy started up the car, and they rode with the windows wide open so they could smell the magnolias, which were just starting to bloom. Melissa glanced into her sideview mirror, and she thought she saw the crazy old man, loose Carhartt sleeve, bobbing his head, his fiery teeth glinting everywhere.