The Thudding
Ava flew up Route 9, pushing the old Accord as hard as she could, listening to it strain and rethinking the purchase. She’d bought the car cheap, and it seemed to drive fine. But she didn’t exactly look it over, having bought it in the heat of anger. She’d totaled her old car, and she’d needed a car in order to leave. So she took it.
It was dusk, scenic Ohio beautiful in hues of sunset, and she had her stereo on loud, blaring The Cramps beyond the limits of her crappy stereo. Listening to the music thunder at her with tinny, cracked quality.
She needed the noise.
Brian hadn’t even made eye contact with her when she told him she was leaving. Everything had been downhill since her accident, since she’d wrecked her old Metro and messed up her face.
So she left. It was just what he wanted.
Ava stomped harder on the gas pedal as she thought about it. She felt the car whip around the windy turns too fast, her stomach flopping around like a dying bird, the tires squealing, and her hands clutching the wheel too hard.
Then the thudding started.
At first, she thought it was the speakers. It had to be. Loud thumping, like someone pounding on the front door of her house, except she wasn’t at her house. She was in the car.
Just great. She blew the speakers. Ava sighed, exasperated with herself for damaging the poor old car, for ruining her sound system, and reluctantly turned it down.
The thudding stopped. Ava tried to take her mind off the music by putting her windows down. Who cared if it was cold? She needed a distraction, something to take her mind off everything, and quiet music just wouldn’t cut it.
The wind stung her face, froze her skin, but it felt good. As long as she could at least kind of hear her music, and she could feel wind in her face, she was ok.
Then the thudding started again. It sounded almost desperate, its tempo having sped up.
Ava turned off the stereo. Rolled up the windows. It stopped.
For a minute.
When it started again, Ava jumped, the car swerving to the side of the road hard enough to bounce off the guardrail. Ava panicked and hit the brakes. Tires screamed as she slowed, whipping the steering wheel back and forth to gain control of the car. It zig-zagged like a serpent.
The thudding quieted. Ava was shaking when she found a place to pull over. She was in the middle of nowhere.
No one would find her.
Ava thought again about the wreck, the feeling of gravity disappearing and then pain. Her face had cracked into the steering wheel, the airbag not ever going off, and she remembered the sound of crunching metal and shattering glass, and she remembered the horror of the glass in her skin, and she’d thought she was going to die there was so much blood.
She had survived. Changed, no doubt, but alive.
Everything was quiet as Ava sat, contemplating whether to move the car. She shut off the engine and thought.
Then the thudding restarted, and, this time it was even louder, and it didn’t stop, just pounding and pounding.
Ava shook as she pulled the key from the ignition and stepped out of the car. The night air was brisk. Her hands trembled as she fumbled with the keys and opened the trunk.
It was dark, but she could see sharp semi-white forms. Teeth? They lined her trunk like a mouth.
Out of the dark, a form rose and glistened, striking the sides of the trunk to produce the sound.
A tongue.
Ava looked at it for a minute before reaching in, unable to believe.
And Ava’s last thoughts involved the inspection of cars and the general lack of safety involved in buying a car you don’t know much about.