Miscellany

A burning car idled in an empty alley, jets of fire streaming skyward from lights, fender, blower, wheels, every pore. Within, the driver, also burning, wrapped leathery hands around the hot wheel.

Are you concentrating?

I don't tell you how to drive--

Yes you do. The clearing. I'm thinking about it. The driver bowed his blazing steely skull and rested it on the steering wheel, gazing at the footwell in lieu of closing lidless eyesockets. He'd memorized a view of trees and brown grass on a high ridge in Angeles National Forest, the particular cluster five trees made at one end, and the rubble of granite at the other end, the long shadow of a crumbling cliff shaped like the nose of an Astrovan. 

I know. I know! Stop pushing it at me! I see it, too!

Are we going? We've been sitting here five minutes doing nothing. It's hard to stay angry for five minutes doing nothing. You wait any longer, we won't have the power.

I'm working on it, you little shit. This is extremely technical.

The driver sat, still, for another minute, fists gripping and releasing the steering wheel, one foot revving the engine. The car roared and the blower whistled, echoing against the walls of the alley. 

A black hole ringed by fire opened on the pavement before them. Got it. Hit it, kid.

The driver slammed the car into gear and stomped on the gas. They lurched forward and dropped out of the world.

A blinding light shown through the windshield. The driver flinched aside. He was floating. He sunk himself half-into the seat, grabbed the wheel harder, looked out the side window in confusion. 

Blue. Clouds.

The other side window: wrinkled green-brown ridges, like a mussed bedspread, and in the distance, glitter and flash of windows and windshields. Angeles National Forest, and the Valley beyond.

The light swung down, out of view.

Uh...stay angry another minute.

They were falling.

The driver revved the gas again and again in panic, the car spat jets of flame in all directions, and the ground, those five pines and that rocky cliff like the nose of an Astrovan, rolled into view, above them, closer and closer in the windshield.

I thought you said you were handling this, the driver snarled as the hills descended on them. 

We landed exactly  where you pictured us!

I'm calling this a success.

And then the ground arrived.