I went seriously over-budget on this week's #fridayflash short story, for which I can only apologise. But a self-imposed limit of 1000 words only takes you so far, and rules are there for breaking. This one's for anyone who doesn't remember their journey home from tonight... I hope you enjoy it.
They call it ‘highway hypnosis’. You’ve probably experienced it yourself. You set off driving on a route you’ve taken dozens if not hundreds of times before and before you know it you’ve arrived. Except you don’t remember a single thing about the journey. Not the people you’ve passed nor the landmarks, none of the shops, offices, parks, animals, billboard advertisements, not even the other motorists who make driving so unpleasant. Maybe one of the songs you heard on the radio is still tickling your mind, but you don’t recall listening to it or singing along, you certainly don’t remember hearing the DJ introduce it. It’s all just a blank.
You don’t even remember the people you killed along the way.
My journey home takes 45 minutes in rush hour. It’d be an hour if I took the main road, but I’ve learnt the back routes now. Rat runs, Rachel calls them. Rachel works five minutes from home, she isn’t trapped in her car surrounded by morons for two hours every day. Up past the scrap yard, left into the housing estate with the speed bumps, cut through the traffic lights at the supermarket, up the hill past the cemetery, left round the back of the Fox & Hound, then… you don’t need to know all this. All you need to know is where the bodies were found.
The first was last Tuesday. By the gasworks. Happened round ten to six, they said on the news. Hit and run. The police were appealing for witnesses because nobody‘d seen a thing. Some teenager in a hoodie and a baseball cap. Why would you wear both?
“They didn’t say anything about what he was wearing,” said Rachel. She was taking off her face in the mirror. “How did you…?”
“I must have seen him,” I said, scratching the back of my head. “Ten to six…? I probably passed him just before it happened.”
“Maybe you should call the police. If you saw something…”
“What? I don’t even remember. I mean, I have an idea what he was wearing – but I don’t know where I saw him or even if… it might have been somebody else entirely. It probably was. I certainly didn’t see him run over…”
What I did remember was that same kid throwing a snowball at my car three weeks earlier. Nearly smashed the windscreen. But how did I know it was the same kid? How was I so sure?
The following evening I snapped out of my trance long enough to register the portable POLICE: ACCIDENT sign standing on the pavement. I started thinking back, trying to remember something besides the hoodie and the baseball cap, and the next thing I knew I was pulling up outside the house.
“There’s been another one,” Rachel shouted down from the bedroom later. She was watching the portable telly while she worked out.
“Another what?” I shouted back. I was playing Halo on the X-box. I could have done without the interruption.
“Hit and run. Just round the corner, by the offie – ten past six. Some old bloke walking his dog. The dog was alright, but…” She came downstairs in her exercise gear, sweat shining her forehead. When I saw the look she gave me, I almost lost a life. “Just before you got home…”
“What?” I paused the game. “You think I did it? I’ve turned into some kill-crazy lunatic who’s cutting down pedestrians in my rush to get home and have my fish fingers? Really?”
“No,” she said, squeezing into the lazy boy and folding her legs over mine. “What I think is, maybe you ought to be careful – that’s all. If there’s some nutter out there…”
I didn’t hear the rest. I’d just remembered what sort of dog it was. A Red Setter. My old physics teacher, Mr. Beaumont, he’d had that dog since he retired. I hoped he treated it better than he did his pupils.
By Monday, I was starting to panic. I’d tried staying alert on Thursday and Friday, but it was impossible. You’ll know what I mean if you do the same journey every night. It was partly boredom, partly all the work shit swimming round in my head, partly the fact that I hadn’t got a wink of sleep. I kept thinking about the Audi driver who’d been forced off the bridge onto the railway tracks, and the traffic warden who’d been run down then reversed over repeatedly to finish the job. I could see their faces in my mind. I recognised them both from my past, but beyond that: nothing. Still no witnesses either – even though the traffic warden died on a crowded high street, right outside the chemists. Nobody saw or remembered a thing. That night, it happened again. Eddie Gibson walked out of The Red Lion and under a car that never even slowed. A gaggle of smokers outside the pub, yet none of them saw anything. Eddie Gibson was Rachel’s ex-husband. She was shocked when she heard, but couldn’t pretend she was sorry. The bruises might have faded, the memories never would.
So now it’s Tuesday, and while I’m topping up my wiper fluid after work, I notice the dents in my bumper. The cracks in my number plate. The scrapes of black and spots of crimson. I try rubbing them off with my sleeve. There’s a sticky patch with hair and little white chips… pebbles? They must be pebbles.
“Still here, Robert? Scared of driving home in case the Rat Run Exterminator gets you? Wooo!” Darren Armitage: works in accounts, biggest knob in the building, proud of it. “Follow me if you like – I’ll protect you!”
Normally I’d tell him exactly where to get off, but not tonight. Tonight I don’t even acknowledge him. I'm not aware of getting in my car. I'm not aware of starting the engine or screeching out of the car park. The next thing I know for sure is the roadblock. Four incidents in as many days, the police aren’t taking any more chances. They’re stopping every car. Questioning every driver. I see Darren pulled over up ahead, and I wind down my window to listen.
“Do you drive this route every night, sir? Have you noticed anything suspicious? Anyone driving erratically or even dangerously…? Think hard now, people’s lives are at stake.”
It was the questions they didn’t ask that worried me more. While one officer questioned Darren, another inspected his car. I knew exactly what they were looking for. Exactly what they’d find, soon as they got to me. Why hadn’t I turned round and gone back the other way while I still had the chance?
“Sir?” Suddenly I’m at the front of the queue and I don’t know how I got here. I’m waiting for the policeman to start with the questions when I realise he’s already finished. His colleague gives him another nod. It’s all over. “You can drive on now, sir.”
“Th… thank you, officer.” How could they be letting me go? How could they not have seen…?
I don’t stick around for answers. I floor the accelerator and I’m home before I know it. I get out of the car and dash into the house to fill a bucket in the sink. Wash the evidence away. I got lucky one time, there’s no way I’ll get away with it again. I run back out, slopping soapy water down my trouser leg, and that’s when I notice the damage. The front of the car's all smashed up. Radiator concertinaed into the engine block. Far worse than the scratches I'd seen earlier – amazing it would still drive. I try to think back, but all I remember is the roadblock. The police letting me go. After that… nothing till I arrived home. Not a thing…
“What’s wrong with you?” It’s Rachel. I hadn’t heard her. She’s parked in front of me. She stares down at where I’m sitting in the road.
“The car…” I try to say, “the car…”
“What’s wrong with it?”
I stare back. I can feel the tears running down my cheeks. Can’t she see?
“Well, I suppose it could use a wash, but it’s hardly worth getting upset about…”
And that’s when I finally twig. My highway hypnosis – it doesn’t just affect me. It affects everyone.
We hear about Darren later that night. Flattened into a brick wall in his Merc while an off-duty policeman stood watching. A professional eye witness who neither remembers what he saw nor can possibly explain how it happened.
