Note:
Chapter totally revised: 12-03-14
The Second Coming
Chapter 4
Boy Meets Girl
870 words
Bang! The front door slammed. Joelle bounded upright, eyes wide open. She gasped for breath, felt her head and then ran her fingers through her hair. The water dried up, the bus gone, the policeman. The policeman, she looked around, Ray stirred in the bed next to her.
‘Ray. Wake up, Ray. Ray.’
‘Ray. Your pub, Ray,’ says Duncan.
‘Bearslake Inn?’ Raymond questions his luck again.
‘That’s a big nuffink for you,’ Duncan smiles. His lips slid up and around the sides of his face, they contort revealing a crescent of hundreds of pearly whites, as his swollen lips part. Literally grinning from ear to the other, half his head has evolved into a whale’s bony smile.
‘Come on Mum, it ain’t fair, he had The Highwayman,’ Raymond complains loudly, turning from his brother. ‘Dad, can’t you drive by the decent pubs when it’s my turn.’
‘Please boys, be quiet, your father’s drivin’, and gawd knows when we’ll get to this campsite,’ says his mother.
‘It ain’t my fault Shirl, these country roads are so bloomin’ slow,’ his father says.
‘Me next!’ Duncan presses his nose against the window of the car door, his newly acquired polished teeth rattle against the glass. Raymond sits disappointed; watching the lane in front speed past, yet the view from his side window shows trees and shrubs ambling along; he is convinced he could run faster.
Onward they drive, along the sunny winding lanes around the edge of Dartmoor. Both boys wait for the next pub with anticipation. Another high score for Duncan, or will Raymond’s luck change?
‘Tasty! The Fox and Hounds,’ Duncan beams, when the country pub comes into view. It lurches out from the wall of greenery, long windows and white walls bend out over the road, as the roof tiles nearly touch the car roof, they drive beneath smoking chimney pots. ‘That’s another twelve points to me.’
‘Bloody ‘ell, I don’t believe it,’ Raymond curses loudly, no change of fortune; the fox winks at him from the swaying signpost, its bushy tail waves.
‘Raymond,’ his father shouts to the back of the car. Eyes leave the road, whilst his neck stretches unnaturally, twisting to peer at Raymond face to face. ‘If I have to bring up your bloody swearin’ again, I’ll clip your ear and—’
‘Derek!’ Shirley shouts. Her hand shoots out instinctively to the dashboard.
A cloud of straw confetti engulfs the car, Derek’s neck recoils back to see it settle on the windscreen. Through the blur, Raymond sees a slow moving tractor and trailer that fills the road ahead, packed overly high with teetering straw bales. Brakes jam; his father swerves to avoid the trailer, head-on into the path of another car.
Derek steers the car off the road onto a freshly mown verge, its momentum carves tracks of mud into the green carpet of grass. A stone and red metal letterbox passes by Shirley’s passenger window, Raymond watches aghast; it smashes the wing mirror to pieces. Slow-motion fragments of mirror scatter in every direction, he can make out the reflected faces of his family’s shocked expressions, as the shards drift pass.
When they crash through an old split rail timber fence, the vehicle collides with a wooden post; it acts as a trigger to unfasten Raymond’s side door. As it swings open, the air sucks out an endless flow of playing cards, half-coloured sheets of hangman and noughts and crosses, which create a trail in their wake.
The car speeds-on uncontrollably. Without notice, an arm within a brown jacket sleeve reaches inside; the hand grabs Raymond’s t-shirt and forcefully yanks him out, it propels him headlong into a hedgerow of late-summer flowers and bracken. He rolls headfirst onwards, flowers fly everywhere, the smell of pollen tickles his nose, finally he comes to rest; petals flutter from above speckling his body.
Reminiscent to a crumpling accordion, the car pushes itself into the old oak tree. Derek’s ribs shatter, as they crush against the steering column; Shirley’s skull fractures, as her head shoves out the windscreen, her chest follows; Duncan’s small body and limbs bash off seats and the dashboard, passing his parents and out over the bonnet. Glass, dust and blood fills the air, the tree shudders, dust swirls. Steam from the engine seeps out through the concertinaed bodywork, lead petrol drips from the chassis and everything else comes to a halt.
Immediate noises stop, and the boom of the horn fills the void incessantly, an admonition to the horrific scene. It bellows, until a very ashen-faced Raymond pulls the bloody and broken torso of Derek from the steering wheel silencing it.
With a look to his father, Raymond feels guilt build up inside, as if on cue the man’s eyes open and blood gurgles from his mouth before he spatters cutting words.
‘I told you to shut it, and now you killed us,’ his bloodied hands reach out from nowhere and grasp Raymond by the throat; they squeeze ferociously, and pull him downwards at the same time. Helpless against his father’s strength, his hands slip in fresh blood, he tries to prise away fingers from his neck. He can’t breathe.
‘Did you hear me Raymond? Raymond?’
