Fate, Destiny, and a Fat Man
from Arkansas
In his dreams, he saw the car from outside.
It was a white car, climbing up the exit from a flyover, going the wrong way. It was doing well over the speed limit but the oncoming traffic managed to avoid it. The car’s white paintwork was speckled with both grime and the blood from the two pedestrians it had hit thirty seconds earlier. It reached the highest point of the flyover; below it other roads writhed in thick tangles. The road was clear of traffic ahead. But, as if not to be denied its chance for the spectacular, the car swerved violently and deliberately to the left, into the crash barrier. Which failed to hold. The car shot over the edge of the flyover, for a few seconds following the same trajectory in mid-air as it had held on the road. In those final seconds the driver turned and looked, not at his friend in the back, but at the smiling face and blank glasses of the fat man from Arkansas in the passenger seat... Then the car hit the ground bonnet first, with such force that the deaths inside should have been mercifully quick.
In his dreams he saw the car from outside, and himself, clamped and terrified in the driver’s seat.
~
Tom awoke from his uncomfortable sleep, stretching and yawning. Normally, his dreams faded quickly when he woke, as if recognising the daylight; but this one refused to fade. He sat up on the back seat where he had slept, and looked for a while at the scenery blurring past his window with a worried frown on his otherwise baby-smooth features. Then he leaned forward and tapped the driver of the car on the shoulder.
Sean flinched at the contact, although he tried to pretend that he hadn’t. He turned round and glared at his companion. They were both young men, in their mid-twenties, although Sean was two years older. Tom wished Sean would look at the road, rather than back at him.
“I had that dream again.”
“What dream?” Sean said irritably.
“You know, the one I told you about. The one I had before. The one about the car crash and... and the fat guy.”
“Oh that dream,” Sean said, as if they always talked of dreams and he’d grown confused about which one. “It’s only a dream.” They entered a small village where a sign politely asked them to drive carefully. “Besides, you just imagined the fat guy,” Sean said. Outside he saw a church, a bowling green, a family owned butcher – the village they were passing through was like some Tory wet-dream of England, and the two inner-city lads felt taunted and threatened by its presence, its smug air of permanence and durability. They could break into the large homes, but the insurance would pay; they could swear at the residents, and just reinforce their prejudices. Sean accelerated, felt some satisfaction as the white car sped past the bus stop. But there was no one standing there to tut disapprovingly – everyone was probably too rich to need the bus here, Sean thought angrily. The service had probably been stopped years ago. Leaving the small village, a sign thanked them for driving carefully, and although he hadn’t this made Sean angrier still. He tried to calm himself – after all, he did want to drive carefully so as to not attract unwelcome attention, given that the boot was full of stolen goods... Yet his nervous irritation remained, like the fumes of a fuel that should’ve long since run dry.
Tom was also wondering why Sean was so worked up. He had known Sean for years, since he’d been twelve and Sean fourteen. Tom didn’t tend to think about things too much, but he had semi-conscious and nagging doubts about why Sean had ever wanted to be his friend. He knew the fact that he was younger could no longer be used as an excuse for his deference, for the fact that Sean thought up the ideas, whereas he just tagged along, like hired help. Knew too that he reverted back to earlier childishness and excitability when he was alongside Sean, despite the fact that Sean professed to be angered by this. But he was glad Sean had stuck by him; without Sean he’d never have dared attempt anything as audacious as the robbery last night; even with Sean they’d almost blown it... But there was no point in thinking about that, for it was okay now, and they were on their way down to London. There weren’t many fences where they came from who could give them a fair deal on the loot in the back of the car: the ornaments of precious metal, the grotty books and other religious paraphernalia. The designs on them were... unique. So Tom hoped, anyway. If it was worth as much as they thought then neither of them would ever need to return to the sink estate on which they’d both grown up.
The pair drove in silence for a while, neither able to think of anything to say. Occasionally they saw a police car and the silence grew tense and rigid, but the law didn’t seem interested in them. It seemed too easy. When Sean did eventually speak he sounded uncomfortable, as though the two had only just met.
“It feels like winning the lottery, huh?”
“Uh huh,” Tom agreed. “Yep.” He wished Sean wouldn’t look over his shoulder to speak to him; he wished it was his turn to drive. Although they were only going thirty miles an hour, if he closed his eyes and focussed Tom sensed how unnaturally fast that actually was, as if the surrounding car didn’t exist, and he was travelling at that speed unprotected, the air whipping past his face... He felt doubly out of control, not driving and also confined to the back seat, like a child. But then where else was he supposed to sleep? They’d both been tired after the robbery, after their midnight dash.
“It’s like something out of a movie, huh? All this stuff? I mean we normally steal phones and you know... TVs and stuff. Not these, these chalices and things. Not old Bibles.”
“They’re not Bibles,” Tom said.
“Well, you know... religious books. I mean, not a real religion but ... Well it is to them I guess. The people who go there.”
“Doesn’t make it a religion” Tom said, and Sean didn’t argue. Neither of them knew what they were talking about, after all. Tom never did, but Sean guessed he was right on this occasion – it wasn’t a real religion, just a load of sad, sick fuckers, and stealing from them wasn’t like stealing from a church, but in its way almost a good deed... – Sean wasn’t trying to reason himself out of a sense of guilt, but one of fear.
They pulled into a service station, to fill up with petrol and take a hurried look around the mini-mart. Sean bought The Mirror, a scotch egg, forty Bensons, and a copy of Razzle which he slid inside his newspaper as he walked back to the car. Tom bought Playboy, some Smarties, and a Ren & Stimpy comic, which he slipped inside his magazine on his way back to the car. Outside on the forecourt he could hear the speed of the traffic rushing past; if I just ran out into the road... he thought; then shook his head as if his thoughts were physical distractions like flies. He’d had such feelings since he’d woken, not serious ideas but almost dream-like, creeping across his consciousness before he realised how silly they were. They must have been caused by his troubled sleep on the back-seat of a speeding car, by his nerves.
Tom got into the front seat; it was his turn to drive. The idea that some of the nervousness he was feeling would fade when he was in the driving seat proved false, for he still felt the same lack of control as he pulled out into the road, the speeding traffic swerving to one side of him. Just because he was driving, what control did he have? He could be the most careful driver on the road, but his fate could still be sealed by the mental calculations of the person coming up behind him who was talking on his mobile phone... Slow down, Tom said in his head; slow down! The car didn’t decelerate, but moved into the other lane at the last moment, the driver still oblivious on his mobile as he passed. Tom’s eyes flicked to the mirror, saw the other cars racing to catch him up.
Sean stretched out on the back seat, and idly flicked through the dull and clichéd pornography before tossing it aside, not feeling in the least bit aroused. He closed his eyes and tried to sleep – despite the pretence he had made last time Tom had driven, Sean hadn’t slept at all since the robbery. This time though, his eyes felt heavy and he thought if he could just relax then he might be able to drop off. He felt the car jerk violently; heard Tom press the horn and swear, his voice stressed – Sean smiled: Tom was always a nervous driver. For a long time Sean lay with his eyes closed, worrying about the police, the reliability of their fence, and an American voice promising revenge in a just so tone: this is how things will be. And then he slept. And dreamt.
~
Neither of them wanted the grotesquely fat man to get into the car, but they both invited him to sit in the passenger seat. Which he did, cramming his buttocks into the tight space, barely managing to pull the seat-belt across his massive belly. Yet he neither grunted nor sweated nor struggled. Once he was in and the door was shut he told them, in an American accent, where to go. It was a little out of the way for them, and they were already late – but they did what he said. They drove south for a while, speeding up all the time. They were going roughly seventy miles an hour when they hit the teenage couple walking hand in hand across a pedestrian crossing. She turned and her face struggled with the split second comprehension of her death; he had been whispering into her ear and didn’t even look round. The white car shook and jolted as it went across the bodies; a few drops splattered as high as the windscreen. The car didn’t slow down, but accelerated towards the flyover. They both wished to act, even just to plead, but they just sat silent and immobile (the disconnected way his arms turned the wheel and his feet pressed the pedal didn’t seem like any movement of his own). The fat man sat silent too, relaxed in the confinement of the seatbelt. The car climbed up the exit from the flyover, going the wrong way...
~
Sean awoke with a barely controlled noise of fear. Within seconds he was angry with Tom – the stupid little prick had got him all worked up with his talk of dreams: now he was having them too! Except that wasn’t quite true. Sean hadn’t managed to sleep the first time Tom had taken over the driving, but he had... dozed. His thoughts had wandered, with as little coherence and control as if he had been dreaming after all. And while he could remember no details, Tom’s talk of car crashes and... and that fat guy had chimed perfectly with the vague feeling of dread he remembered, and which persisted.
“How long was I asleep?” he asked Tom. “This time?”
“About ten minutes. No, maybe fifteen.”
Sean looked out the window, trying to keep a frown from his face. He was sure he’d heard that you had to sleep for at least an hour to go deep enough to dream. But then, he had been so tired... Sean felt even worse after his nap than before. He pulled out a cigarette, and rolled down the car window. There was nothing to look at in the scenery scrolling past, and his eyes defocused so that the sight became nothing but a rushed blur. He got bored, irritable, and flicked through his newspaper, saw the same usual load of shite: scandals, gossip, the low down on a boy-band apparently ‘Destined For No 1!’, and a surprisingly accurate weather forecast.
“Hey, you wanna know your horoscope?” he asked Tom, more for something to say than through wanting to say it. Besides, he knew his friend liked hearing them, for Tom listened with childlike glee when they predicted great things.
“No, don’t read them out,” Tom said quietly. The car braked suddenly and Tom held down the horn; Sean was sprawled on the back seat and so didn’t see what had happened.
“Aw come on, Taurus right?” Sean said. He started to read the bullshit about financial luck and a broadening of personal horizons due to travel, but Tom interrupted him:
“Just shut up will you! You’re putting me off!”
Sean looked up from the paper – he couldn’t see Tom’s face, only his arm and hand on the gear stick. It was trembling.
“Well, fuck you too,” he muttered, flinging the paper away in disgust that was half feigned to hide his confusion.
Tom stared out the window, aware of his friend’s anger but unable to find anything to say to explain himself. Thought seemed hard, he was concentrating so much on driving – like he was a learner again, like it was a matter of life and death. Which he supposed it was. But the road didn’t normally seem so wild, with traffic veering and swerving with no predictability, with invisible bumps in the road making the car judder and bolt, with unsignposted junctions, unexpected side-winds. He wanted to explain to Sean why he was so afraid, but he didn’t know himself. He just knew that he was very scared and that the feeling had been getting stronger ever since the robbery. Of course he had been scared during the break-in as well, but that had been different, an adrenaline fuelled fear, alive with possibilities and so close to excitement it had made him feel high. Until he had seen the fat man: tall, but slumped under his own immense weight, leaning forward like a dinosaur, his head high and hairless, his spectacles glaring with reflected light, his teeth grinning horribly. He had introduced himself with an American accent, but Tom couldn’t remember the odd sounding name. Then as Tom had stood there paralysed, caught red handed with the temple’s goods in his pilferer’s grip, the fat man had said he came from Arkansas but “long before it was called that.” He had licked his fat round lips and then, smiling as if hungry, he had started saying the most horrible things... which Tom couldn’t quite remember. He didn’t want to. But now he felt like a rat in a maze, being prodded and electrocuted into going down certain routes...
It hadn’t been a real temple. Just an old rented house, where people gathered. No one admitted to going, or to having friends who went; maybe friends of friends, maybe, but no one you personally knew... Nevertheless, people went – neighbours saw people entering at strange hours, and began to claim they heard chanting through adjoining walls. And of course, because no one knew anyone who went, the stories about what went on inside became spuriously specific and hysterical: animal sacrifice, child abuse. There were, apparently, strange relics and old, old books inside the house, books that told of old beliefs that should’ve been long since buried... No one knew who owned the house, it had been empty for years. Overnight it became daubed with lurid anti-immigrant graffiti – but still people came and went at odd hours, and any slight noise on the wind was claimed to chanting from its interior.
Some local kids disappeared, and while there was no actual connection that could be made to the ‘temple’, the locals found it hard not to make a connection in their minds. But still, it had been just a house, with no alarm and with no one in it after nightfall. Best of all, due to the resentment it had caused in the community the local police weren’t going to care if it was broken into. They weren’t going to investigate too hard. It had almost seemed too easy. Even the question of where to sell ‘religious’ artefacts in an almost godless (and penniless) estate had been answered within a couple of days: bizarrely, unrealistically, someone’s brother worked in a museum in London and was known to pilfer things from the backrooms when they weren’t on public display. So he had the contacts; he gave them the name of a fence. In the pub that night, Sean and Tom had agreed to give it a go – they would break in, steal what they could, and head straight down to London to meet the fence. It would be a long, long drive and they would have to take shifts; but an easy drive at that, for the route was basically a straight line south, and the navigation needed was minimal.
They were coming into the outskirts of the outskirts of London now, and the traffic had slowed due to the rain that had come lashing in sideways, allowing Tom to relax somewhat at the slower pace, despite the reduced visibility. His memory of the inside of the temple was fading, and he could forget somewhat that it was a real life place, which he had entered. Into which he had trespassed. He glanced around and saw Sean was asleep again, although his friend’s sleep didn’t look peaceful. Tom wondered if Sean was having the same kind of dreams he was, and what that would mean if it was true...
Tom cursed – he had just driven past the turning that they wanted, because he’d been so wrapped up in his paranoid daydreams. He considered waking Sean, but he decided that it wasn’t anything to be worried by – there was bound to be another chance to make a right turn soon.
~
“Any chance of a lift?” the fat man said, and despite the raised last syllable (along with a thick eyebrow) it wasn’t a question, not really. He tried to frame a negative reply, but his head was already nodding, dog-like and obedient. He felt his lips part and his mouth draw breath – his lungs swelled and he knew he was about to speak; he had one last chance to refuse this but instead he heard himself say,
“Sure. Where’re you going?” His friend in the driving seat said something similar. The American man smiled, his teeth somehow glinting despite the overcast day. His glasses were giant circles of reflected light across his flabby face. He told them where he wanted them to go. They both felt terrified, felt the urge to open the doors and bolt from the car – but the desire turned to nothing in their nerves, and they just sat there.
“That’s where we’re going,” he heard himself saying, as if amazed by the coincidence of his desires and their destination.
“Yeah, get in!” his friend said, hands shaking and eyes terrified.
And the fat man did.
~
Sean awoke, having slept nearly twenty minutes this time. His back was aching from lying on the awkward back seat and his head felt fragile as well, as if he’d been drinking. Without getting up, he reached for and lit another cigarette, tossing his dead match to join its companions between the over exposed breasts of the Razzle centrefold, who was apparently called Rochelle. Sean felt he’d first seen Rochelle years ago, as if he’d been in the backseat of a car with her for a lifetime. For some reason he turned the page, but there she was again, in a grimly predictable pose. Sean sighed, massaged the side of his head, and struggled to sit up.
“You know I think these girls... Where the fuck are we?” Outside should have been the busy central London road that would take them all the way to their destination, not the dreary rows of houses of some north of the river estate. The shabby dwellings slouched against each other in their poverty; one in every five windows was boarded up. They passed under an old bridge, the graffiti on the walls like the decoration of a ghost train. When they came out the other side, tower blocks obscured any horizon, and the rows of the estate continued as if uninterrupted. It was, Sean thought, just like where they had come from.
“I don’t know!” Tom said. “I missed the turning and then... I tried to... I thought there would be another... but when I tried it wasn’t right, I stopped to ask someone and he said... but what he said didn’t make sense! And I’m lost and...”
“Shit!” Sean said, “Shit, shit! If we’re late... this guy isn’t going to hang around forever waiting for us you know!”
“Oh who cares about the fence!” Tom cried. “What about the fat guy?” As he said this he wasn’t concentrating, and there was the chastisement of a car horn, furious about something. In the rain, Sean couldn’t even see the other car, or what it was they had done wrong.
“Would you shut up about him! The fat guy is just a figment of your retarded imagination!”
But the damage had been done – Sean couldn’t stop himself thinking of the fat man, hearing his strange foreign voice, remembering the words he had spoken... – some of the words, at least.
The inside of the ‘temple’ had freaked Sean out, for the relics and religious ornaments had coexisted with other relics, relics of the normal and quotidian life that had apparently been lived here once. He had expected one back room to contain all the creepy stuff, not for it to be scattered haphazardly like catalogue knick-knacks on the tops of the TV and mantelpiece; not for the hideous murals to be draped from walls decorated with Eighties wallpaper; not for the ancient books to be stood up in the kitchen like they contained recipes. It was like seeing two things at once, one reality superimposed atop a second one, and his eyes seemed to itch as they attempted to decipher the puzzle. Sean and Tom had come with torches and this made things worse, for details of the temple kept emerging from the gloom as they turned their beams towards them: candlesticks, miniature statues, fluttering murals on the walls depicting impossible creatures: some showing combinations of existing animals such as rats and snakes, leeches and lizards. But others were beyond description, creatures formed from the usual stuff of tentacles, scales and hair, but in distorted and impractical forms it seemed impossible anyone could ever have conceived of. The worst thing about these idols had been the suggestion of sentience, somehow the very way they had been carved or painted implied a deranged and patient intelligence. Sean had tried hard not to look; tried harder to stop Tom jerking around and shining his torch at them every twenty seconds, convinced that they’d moved. Was the boy a liability? he’d thought. Had it been a mistake to bring him? They had both been sweating as they had hastily filled their bags with anything that looked valuable – but how were you supposed to tell, Sean thought, when it all looked like stuff from a poor B-movie? He found himself shoving it all in, trying hard not to look at the carvings and pictures, trying hard not to read the writing as the old and blasphemous books fell open in his hand... He would have felt more at ease robbing a real church for the imagery there would have been less disturbing...
When he had filled the first bag Sean ran out to the car, which was parked round the back of some garages. He’d seen Tom hadn’t wanted to be left alone, but his friend was being slow filling up his bag, and Sean hadn’t wanted to linger. Out in the cool night air Sean breathed a heavy sigh – from outside it was just a cramped ex-Council house like all the rest of them on the estate, and it seemed impossible to think of all the stuff he had seen inside. It seemed too small. He put his bag in the boot of the white family car, then got in and switched on the engine. But after another five minutes Tom still hadn’t returned. Sean cursed – what was taking so long? They should have been in and out! He was angry, but there was an underlying feeling of panic that he didn’t act on: if he had done he would have driven out of there alone.
Then Tom had rushed out of the temple (or house, or whatever the fuck it was) yelling and waving his arms. He had run to the car and got in the back, and shouted at Sean to go, while craning his neck to look behind him. He had been making enough noise to wake the entire street.
“Shut up!” Sean had whispered.
“Go Sean! Please!”
“What the hell’s wrong?”
But all Tom seemed able to reply was:
“Fat man! I saw... the fat man!”
“What fat man? What the hell are you talking about?”
“The fat man! From Arkansas!”
At that moment Sean had made the decision never to do anything like this with Tom again – he understood why being in a place like that, where the trappings of everyday life didn’t seem to sit sensibly next to the carved monstrosities and inverted religious symbols, where you weren’t able to decide which aspect of your vision was false... Sean understood why a place like that could screw up your imagination. His own imagination had been screwed up, imagining the idols moving and the books falling open of their own volition... But Tom was seemingly unable to distinguish between what went on in his head and what was real; and where had this thing about a fat man come from? And he was obviously so upset he’d forgotten the reason they’d been there in the first place.
“Where’s the bag, Tom?” Sean said.
“I must have... when the fat... when... the fat man!”
“Where the fuck’s the bag?”
Tom flinched at Sean’s anger.
“I dropped it! When the fat man came!”
Sean looked away, furious, trying to stop the shaking, trying to make the decision that he knew was the correct one: that it wasn’t worth the risk of going back. If the stuff from the temple was worth anything then they already had enough to sell; and if it was all fake then it didn’t matter how much they had. But he thought of the things he’d seen Tom put in his bag, glittering in his memory as if candle-lit, as if this were a real temple, with its treasures priceless...
“I’m going back for it.”
“Sean, don’t...” Tom whined, like a kid, still on the verge of tears. “What about... don’t leave me! The fat man!”
Sean got out of the car, almost slamming the door with his anger until he remembered the situation. He ran back into the house (through the back door they’d forced earlier) and into its disjointed vision, the focus of his sight flicking between the flock wallpaper and the twisting shapes within its pattern. He stooped to pick up the holdall Tom had dropped in the front room, and even though it was dark he sensed a darker shadow falling over him. He cried out; he looked up.
“Hello,” the fat man said, in an American accent.
He had been immense, every part of him bloated with what seemed a deliberate fatness, and not like someone who’d simply let himself go. Even his round glasses (in which Sean could see his stooped reflection) had seemed too big, like car headlights. His skin had been very red and shiny, very smooth as if it had been stretched tight and become sore. The fat man had no hair; his head had curved and gleamed. But it wasn’t the physical details that had so scared Sean, but the same sense of itchy double-vision, the sense that what he was seeing was not the whole reality, but merely a gloss, a hasty camouflage.
Sean had wanted to run, but he hadn’t been able to move a muscle. He had just remained bent over the loot, staring at the fat man and listening to his words: the fat man had spoken lightly, as though Sean was a stranger and this was just idle chatter at a bus stop. But his mouth had grinned with hidden meanings, and the words had nonetheless filled Sean with dread.
“I come from Arkansas, as you call it now. It was wild and vast and barren and empty then, you can’t imagine. So empty, so different from now, when everywhere is filled with maggots like you, insignificant nothings. It would be tolerable if you knew your place, but when you trespass... do you know what happens to those who trespass?”
And after that Sean could remember nothing... except the vague idea that the most terrible thing that happened to those who trespassed against the fat man wasn’t just that they died... or even how they died... but what happened to them after they died.
He told Tom none of this. After all, it had all been nonsense, there had been no fat man, how could there have been? If he had been anything other than a hallucination then Sean would never have been allowed out of the temple with the second bag. The fat man would simply have overpowered him or called the police. And since that hadn’t happened surely that proved there had been no one there? And even if there had been, it could only have been a man, not anything else his imagination had read into the experience. It could only have been a man, and what could the fat bastard do to them now? As if in answer his mind flinched from the image of metal and glass slicing through him as the car hit the ground and crumpled...
He came back to the present; or rather, let what he could see take precedence over what he could picture. The back of the car felt claustrophobic, as did the maze of streets outside, the houses of the estate seemingly too close and leaning in. Tom was no longer pretending to hide his anxiety as he drove – his breathing was fast and shallow, his hands were clamped to the wheel as if it were trying to turn without him willing it.
“We’re lost,” he yelled. “I don’t know where I am and everything looks the same! We’ve got to get out of here Sean, we’ve got to escape! But I don’t know which way, there aren’t any signs, it’s all the same...”
“Concentrate on the road!” Sean yelled back; he pulled out the final cigarette from his packet.
“Would you stop fuckin’ smoking!” Tom shouted, looking over his shoulder at Sean and almost swerving into the oncoming lane. With a cry Sean flung the fag down on the floor and stamped on it violently.
“There, that helps does it?” he said loudly. “Fucking pull over, let me drive.” He wanted to be behind the wheel, to be in control.
There was a pause, during which Tom’s panic subsided – he kept on driving but the only sound was the ragged way in which they were both breathing. Outside, the same shops went past as before, the same houses – or so it seemed.
“Sean?” Tom said finally, sniffing as he spoke.
“Yeah?”
“You did have those dreams didn’t you.”
“Sort of... yeah, sort of,” Sean said.
“And you did see... see...”
“The fat man. Yes, I did.”
“Oh God!” Tom shouted, his calm fading again.
“It doesn’t mean anything!” Sean added quickly, not knowing who he was trying to convince most. “It was just a... a... a group hallucination!” he said, clutching at a phrase he’d read in the papers, about people who had seemed to see two things at once. “The fat guy – he wasn’t real. How can he have been?”
“He wasn’t real,” Tom said quickly, and Sean realised with an appalled feeling that Tom was crying, and not bothering to hide it from him. “What we saw was just... I don’t know, but it wasn’t him! Not the real him! But he’s still gonna get us and make us drive up that flyover and hit those kids and crash us and then...”
“Shut up! Shut up about that!”
“But it’s going to happen! Oh fuck Sean, he’ll get us and it’s all going to happen!”
“Then don’t stop!” Sean said. “Don’t stop for anything – drive in one direction and let’s get out of here!”
“It won’t make any difference,” Tom said quietly, but he sped up anyway. From the backseat Sean couldn’t really gauge how fast they were actually going – he felt sick with a motion-sickness not helped by the way the houses seemed to slant as if the air through which he was viewing them was warped. He remember how as kids they’d once walked their bikes up the estate’s steepest hill, called the Drop, how at the top they’d got on their bikes, turned round, and pedalled as hard as they could... He remembered the feeling half-way down that he couldn’t stop now if even if he wanted to, that he’d committed himself to this crazy peer-pressure of speed and that to brake or even to steer now would throw him from the bike. And so he’d hung on half-terrified as the bike had plunged and rattled down the Drop. Now he felt like that, as the white car raced through the built up area, Tom taking corners in a way that felt barely under control. They went through a red light, and Sean instinctively flinched and closed his eyes as he felt the bray of angry traffic swerving to avoid hitting them side-on. But he didn’t shout at Tom to slow down, for the idea seemed inconceivable and just as unsafe – they had to find a way out, keep moving, keep moving... Tom shouted something as he fought with the wheel, and the car mounted the pavement for a few seconds. Sean wasn’t wearing his seat-belt, and he was flung to one side of the car, along with Rochelle and all the other models aping arousal. His head slammed against the door handle and he tasted sudden blood in his mouth as he bit his tongue. His heart hurt from the sheer speed it was beating at, as if willing the car faster and faster... Details of his dreams clouded his head: the riches he had taken, the inward shattering of the windscreen... He wasn’t sure for a few seconds which was real and which wasn’t. He tried to get up, but fell back as the car took another corner without braking. The roar of the motor and the sound of horns outside all seemed very loud, but he could still hear Tom chanting “Oh God, oh God...” under his breath. Bit late to start praying, Sean thought as they hit a straight section of road and Tom pressed down even harder on the accelerator. How fast were they actually going? It still didn’t seem fast enough, even though outside was just a blur. Sean realised he was whimpering too. He struggled upright, half expecting to see a flyover in front of them and the smiling fat man in the passenger seat.
Instead he saw a long bus pull out blindly in front of them, blocking the road. Tom cried out, stamped on the pedal. The scream of the brakes drowned out Sean’s own. He was thrown off the back seat again, twisting his hand painfully as he tried to break his fall. The car skidded for what seemed a long time; high pitched noises echoed around Sean’s head. Then the car stopped and stalled.
And then all that happened was the bus driver and his passengers glared at them in fright, and what sounded like a thousand belated car horns were pressed at once. Then the bus drove slowly off, the traffic started to flow around them again. There were no pedestrians, the streets seemed deserted. Sean looked wildly round, just to make sure, but there was no one, no one at all. There was no fat American. The thought struck him all at once as ludicrous – there would be no American tourists in this rundown and aggressive estate of outer London. Sean flung back his head and laughed with relief. He heard Tom do the same. The fear that had made them want to go faster and faster fled at the laughter. He leant back against the car seat and let out a long drawn out breath which was like the madness escaping. He closed his eyes.
There was a tap at the window.
Sean’s eyes flew open, but even closed they had already sensed the shadow which had fallen over him. A large, hunched form peered in through the passenger window. Sean impotently watched Tom lean over and unwind it. He could tell Tom desperately didn’t want to, could tell by the expression of fright on his face, but reality had doubled and neither Tom’s will nor his own had any interaction with it anymore – his limbs lay still as he commanded them to move. A stream of terrified thoughts flowed through his mind, but he did nothing. The window wound relentlessly down, revealing a huge face, fat hanging off, giant spectacles gleaming. Tom thought he saw the truth of that face for the first time, and when it spoke, it spoke in an American accent.
“Any chance of a lift?” the fat man said, and despite the raised last syllable, it wasn’t a question.