Banger was tired, more tired than he’d felt in his entire twenty five years of existence. He was fed up of his view of the lake, which glistened below him in the midsummer sunshine, dappled reflections of trees at the edges where the forests rolled on and on for what seemed like forever. He was weary of the house which lay in semi habitable ruins by the side of a road he hadn’t travelled for the best part of a decade. And he was drained of all the love he once felt for the mistress who every now and then would throw an insult at him as he sat there withering under the glare of yet another season; another year.
He remembered what she used to call him; baby.
‘Who’s mummy’s little baby?’ she’d ask as she slid onto his lap and wriggled her backside until she was comfortable. ‘Who’s mummy’s sexy little beast?’ she’d whimper as she adjusted her lipstick in the rear-view mirror, making herself pretty for yet another liaison in the soft, black leather interior.
But those were bygone days, when he’d been fashionable and had, indeed, been a sexy little beast. When his body had gleamed and glittered like polished jet as they cruised down the motorway, gaining admiring glances wherever they went. No one could refrain themselves from patting his bonnet affectionately as he waited in the car park of a supermarket or shopping centre, or outside an exclusive nightclub where she picked up the majority of her men.
He would have cried out in ecstasy if he’d had a voice. ‘Call me baby,’ he’d say. ‘Call me baby, baby!’
But now he sat forlorn and abandoned, a relic to the past, the insults his only entertainment. That she hated him now was obvious, but he didn’t care much. He hated her too. No longer was she the long legged lovely who cooed and whispered as her men fawned over her and drove her irresistibly deeper into his seat. She was old, withered and grey, having lost the will to look good over a decade ago when something bad had happened. Did he remember what had made her forget the true power of her beauty? No, and he didn’t care either. It wasn’t important. It was as though every time she came out of the hovel she now lived in and glanced at the decay of his once perfect, low formed body; the rust at his edges, the cracks in his glass, that she saw the decay of her own life, and hated him all the more for it. They were growing old disgracefully together, only he was faring slightly better than she was.
It was a mutual feeling in more ways than one.
She came out one morning and for a moment he felt intolerably dejected as she simply ignored him; she didn’t even throw him a sideways glance. She wore the same cardigan three sizes too big as she hung out some washing, and a flower patterned dress that was stained yellow down the front where some ghastly accident had taken place and she hadn’t bothered to clean it up. Her clumsy boots, sans laces clump-clumped on the baked, hard earth as she kicked up dirt and dust, trying to dislodge a dead bird from the garden.
He could smell her from where he sat, and the putrid reek of her ageing flesh and decaying mind made him all the more determined to escape the grass which grew by almost an inch a day, tickling his underbelly and irritating his flat wheels.
Would they still turn when he took his chance?
Would they take him where he wanted to go?
Did he still have enough charm and appeal to attract the naked lovers who skinny-dipped in the lake below?
He only had time on his side, and time would eventually reveal him the answers.
As it happened, time was not long in the passing as one day, through the tall ferns that marked the boundary of their land, two young lovers skipped hand in hand, he in cut off denim jeans and she in a two-piece swimming costume. Their hair was still wet from a long swim to cool off in the hot weather.
They stopped and studied the grounds of the house, wondering perhaps if anyone lived there. They whispered, hugging each other close as they ventured closer, footsteps quiet on the coarse, dry grass.
For the first time in as long as Banger could remember, he heard praise as the young man ran his hand along his slick, black exterior.
“Would you look at this, babe?” he asked the girl. “A 1979 Lamborghini. One of only 26 or so to come out of Germany. The LP400s. Can you imagine how much this is worth?”
The girl folded her arms and peered through the dirty windows of Bangers passenger side window. She evidently wasn’t interested in anything her boyfriend was saying. She had other things on her mind.
Banger remembered the smell she gave off well, when the moment of lust was upon his mistress as she invited yet another man into her baby. That smell was now emanating from the girl, and he grew exited as the moment on which he had based all his hopes grew closer.
The girl turned to the boy and tickled him playfully on his waist, causing him to forget the apparent beauty Banger still possessed, and soon they were kissing and caressing, with her buttocks pushed firmly up against Bangers door. He could feel the moisture from her bikini bottom, and the firmness of the flesh beneath. She was ripe, this one, as ripe as the mistress had ever been in her youth.
If he could have giggled he would have as the boy fumbled under the handle and pulled it, letting out a wild ‘whoop’ as the door opened easily. He flicked the front passenger seat forward and Banger sighed inwardly, smiling a secret smile as the girl slid into the backseat and pulled the boy in after her, opening her legs to give him room in the cramped enclosure.
Memories came flooding back to him; his mistress with her trouser suit thrown over the front seats haphazardly as though they were not expensive garments from the top boutiques in the city. The smell of her perfume mixed with her lover’s cologne. The scent of their mingled sweat in the summer’s heat as they heaved and writhed, finding no restricted discomfort in their passion, their slick bodies skidding and squeaking over the leather seat.
How the memories pleased him, how they teased him with snippets of the happier days when he had served a useful purpose. And now he hated that woman more than he cared to admit for leaving him to decay in desolation. He hated her for leaving him alone, hidden from sight with no one to tell him how beautiful he was, no one to take advantage of his luxurious comfort.
They moaned and groaned, fumbling clumsily in their youth as the mistress had once done; in the beginning, when he felt like a newborn brought into the world only to pleasure.
Foreplay was only a brief introduction as he heard their sighs, the singular, most expressive sign that penetration had occurred, and it was then that he decided to make his move. He knew the signs.
He locked the doors, sealing the exits as though they were moulded to his body. He slipped the handbrake from the upright position and waited, praying that he hadn’t creaked and alerted them to his intentions. Just on the off chance that it would work, he turned over his engine, knowing full well that it hadn’t been revved in years, but hopeful none the less.
Nothing happened, but he hoped the motion of his movements would cause some shift in his position. He waited, listening patiently to the sound of passion emanating from his back seat, and just as he was about to resign himself to the fact that the earth he parked on would be the earth he would die in, he felt a tremor. It began in the flat rubber of his wheels and vibrated through the steel of his underbelly. On it came, rising up through the depths of whatever soul he had, and suddenly he felt movement, miniscule at first and nothing his passengers would notice, but he had certainly shifted a little.
He only prayed it was forwards.
Then he jerked, a movement that was forced rather than fluid, and the view before him was suddenly a millimetre closer. The trees in the distance wavered for a moment as though seen through the eyes of a moving vehicle, and then calmed.
He was stuck.
He willed himself forward with all his might, chanting to himself over and over again, praying to whatever God looked after old rust buckets like he, and as though there was something or someone listening, he slid a little in the rough, dry topsoil and rocked gently.
The girl peered up from her gyrations and asked her boyfriend if he had felt anything, but he ignored her, his face buried deep in the curvature of her neck. He only ceased his thrusting movements when Banger rocked more violently and slipped off down the slope.
He gained speed as he moved onwards, feeling a cool breeze whipped up by his motion caressing his body like soft fingertips. The couple were now jumping about frantically, wondering what was happening, and as though they realised where they were heading, they grasped at the door handles and tried to escape from their prison.
The lake came closer, rushing towards him as though he were delving into a beautiful painting. There were people lazing and paddling that Banger could see, but they were too far away to hear what was happening. He would be left in peace to carry out his plan.
As he left the grounds of his imprisonment, he struck a small crop of rocks, his growing speed flinging him upwards, soaring through the air for just a moment as though he had sprouted wings. All that was above him was the clear, blue sky, and all that was below was the deep gorge which went straight down into the water below.
All that was inside his body was now screaming and banging on the windows, the pleasure of their mating now forgotten in a flurry of panic.
Down he went, the glistening water rushing towards him. He struck the surface with a loud splash and the screaming from within stopped as fear took over and numbed the couple’s senses. He sat there for a moment, feeling the cooling water gurgle and froth underneath him, and then it whooshed in, rising from the floor of his innards, pulling him down at a ninety degree angle.
Fish darted away from his form as he sank, taking his passengers with him, those souls who would spend the rest of their time alone with him. The boy would forever tell him he was beautiful. The girl would forever give him her scent as they made love in the back seat for eternity, however long that was. They landed with a thud that lacked any drama on the lake floor, a flurry of sand and silt rising up around them. Banger waited until it had settled a little before his introduction.
“I’m Banger,” he said to his passengers as they banged on the windows and held their breath to stop the rising water from entering their lungs.
“But you can call me baby!”
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