Part Three: The Villains (1)

1.

A quiet street corner, occasioned by pleasant, quiet insects going about their business in a peaceful, quiet sort of way on a peaceful, quiet sort of morning. A little bird quietly sits atop a quiet branch, unbothered by even the slightest of gentle breezes, and quietly utters a peaceful sigh of contentment. “Nothing bothers me.” The little bird congratulates herself, “All is well.” She looks down upon her friend, the peaceful, lazy cat, who lazily licks his paw and grooms his head while lying in the gentle sunlight of early spring. “All is well,” says the lazy cat, “and life is soooooo good!” Across the street, a fruit merchant looks northbound on his quiet, empty street as he hears a distant engine sound. “Mayhaps a customer cometh my way?” He thinks to himself. After a moment, the engine noise fades away, and he settles deeper into his cushioned chair and resumes reading his Shakespearian novel. “Mayhaps not.” He reasons.

A quiet minute passes peacefully.

Of a sudden, the engine noise returns, and at high amplitude. The sound is like an icy knife-jab to the eardrum, shattering the morning complacency into a thousand writhing worm-segments as the 8-cylinder flame-embroidered yellow Mustang blazes down the street and off into the distance. The fruit stand is upended by the blast, and the cat is shocked into a maniacal frenzy. The bird falls flat off the branch, instantly dead of a heart attack. Seconds later, the dust kicked up from the Mustang drifts past, settling like a veil over the scene to hide the atrocity.

Piloting the mustang and laughing at intervals, a mysterious man has his fun. This pleasure-seeker has been at it all morning, beginning with pinching this very car from its rightful owner, progressing to a top-off at a local gas station without paying, and reaching a crescendo in a single-man-powered, full-scale bank robbery. He is adept both at thievery and evasion, and does so with wanton style. The back seat of the car is openly packed with embezzled cash from his heist, bills occasionally catching some wind from the open windows, flying out onto the streets he rapes with incessant noise pollution. O, the mirth!

On closer inspection, this man, Caucasian of descent, wrinkled of clothing, reeking of Listerine, is genuinely pleased with himself. He rubs his two-day facial growth, looks at the reflection of his dirtily tanned, mid-forties face in the rear view mirror, framed with money-green from the back seat, and laughs again. Much harder now. He continues for quite some time.

He laughs until the squad cars catch up with him, then outright bellows laughter. “You think you can take me?” He shouts out the window, heard by no one but himself, yet he shouts again, “Ain’t nobody can take me!” He wings a hard left, onto a main strip, and shifts into high gear. The morning traffic is still light for this suburb, leaving his pathway relatively unimpeded. It quickly turns into a high-speed chase, attracting the attention of a newscast helicopter, which joins in, broadcasting on live television.

“The more, the merrier!” He says rejoicingly, downshifting to make another hard left. “Now y’all get to see me shine!” He takes the freeway onramp towards downtown Paradise City. He watches in amusement as one of the three squad cars characteristically lines up to attempt a PIT maneuver. “It’s not going to work, boys.” He mirthily warns, “It never does, don’t you ever learn?” More laughter.

Accelerate.

The noise of compound sirens is music to his ears.

He revels in his art.

Thinking of music, he reaches into his jacket pocket and pulls out an old burned CD with the roughly scrawled words, “Now would be a good time for a soundtrack” on the face. He flips it into the cd player and skips to track four, “Sleepwalk Capsules,” by At the Drive-In, and hits “play.” As the first thundering note sounds, along with the opening scream, “Taser taser kindergarten nap nap time” piercing the atmosphere, the first police car evens up with his left rear tire. “It’s nap time,” he mutters, all laughter stilled.

Blink.

Instead of turning into the mustang, the squad car sharply veered away, into the freeway meridian, nosing into the cement divider perpendicularly. Burning rubber, tilting up on two right tires, and finally rolling, rolling, rolling until its momentum threw it into the air off its hind bumper, to land in fragments and flame. One of the other squad cars halts to assist while the third, undeterred and naïve, regains headway on the Mustang.

Briefly surveying his effects in the side view mirror, he lowly mutters, “Told ya.” Then levels his gaze on the road ahead.

A grin.

A grip.

A gearshift.

Gone.