Chase

The boy slouches in the street: ragged coat, ragged hair,

Battered body aching, heart empty.

 

Solace waits in the shadows, gleaming crimson, winking chrome

Snaring his imagination, 

Keys dangling in temptation.

He glances left… right…

 

…No one.  

 

He stares a frozen moment on the threshold of his dream,

Then eases the door, slides shyly into inviting black leather,

Bruises soothed by its caress.

His hands stroke the wheel, plead for control.

Just to hear the power, feel the rumble,

He turns the key.

 

“Hey!”

 

A running figure

Another hate-twisted face looms.

 

Fear!

 

He yanks the wheel, 

Jams the accelerator,

Flees in panic, tires screaming defiance.

 

Streets stream beneath him, abandoned in the ecstasy of flight.

Power courses through his hands, his feet, his soul…

Too slow, too slow, these clogged city streets.

 

The countryside opens to him, dark and forgetting, the road twisting beneath the stabbing beams of his headlights.

He swings into the rhythm of the curves, 

Accelerating, pushing his limits.

Other cars left, frozen in the impotence of slavish adherence to rules.

 

All but one.

Lights in the mirror, growing rapidly.

Another soul unbound, fleeing in shared rapture.  A race!

 

Then colours flash their demand. Reality moans its beckoning wail.

 

Muscles restrict in terror. 

The urge to escape drives his foot further into soft carpeting.  

He surges forward, borne on a frenzy of fear.

Agonized loops of pavement dart from his path.  

He follows desperately, clawing for traction, doom approaching from ahead and behind, the wet hiss of tires a siren of hope

Rising to a scream of terror…

 

The man at the edge of the road, 

Torn between fear and duty,

Stares down the embankment. 

A twist of metal steams red and blue in the flashing lights. 

A darker, softer form dangles through broken glass.

He shakes his head and drags reluctant boots across gouged earth.

 

Nobody wins today.