Rant

Green Taylor Simms: Beginning with Santa Claus as a cognitive exercise, a child is encouraged to share the same idea of reality as his peers. Even if that reality is patently invented and ludicrous, belief is encouraged with gifts that support and promote the common cultural lies.
    The greatest consensus in modern society is our traffic system. The way a flood of strangers can interact, sharing a path, almost all of them traveling without incident. It only takes one dissenting driver to create anarchy.
    Echo Lawrence: When a back car hits a front, brides get thrown against their seat belts, their veils whipped forward so fast your face gets a rash that players call “lace burn.” That moment, time slows down. All the hundred years of every boring day—they explode to fill that half-moment. That pulse.
    Here’s time squeezed down until it explodes into a slow-motion moment that will last for years.
    Your car you saved to buy, it’s punched down, smaller, but your life’s pumped back up. Bigger. Back to life-size or beyond. The brides on the side of the road, throwing white rice to hurt, they’re just trying to make that moment stretch. Milking the pulse.
    Shot Dunyun: Tina and the Shark get bigger in our back window, laughing and leaned forward so hard their breath fogs the windshield. Their bumper pushes our five o’clock, squeaking our springs and shocks. Their front tires spin so close that Echo’s parking alarm starts to beep. Beeping faster. Beyond close, the Shark’s wheels bite off one of our dragging tin cans, pinching each can flat and snapping the string. So close that Echo’s parking alarm goes to sounding one long beep.
    Rant leans forward to pat Green’s padded tux shoulder and says, “By the way, congratulations.” And, still looking at that gold quarter, Green says, “For what?”
    From the Field Notes of Green Taylor Simms: Perpetuating Santa Claus and the Easter Bunny breaks ground for further socialization—including conformance to traffic laws which allow the maximum number of drivers to commingle on our roadways. In addition, insisting that the journey is always a means to some greater end, and the excitement and danger of the journey should be minimized. Perpetuating the fallacy that a journey itself is of little value.
    Shot Dunyun: Tina and the Shark bite off another can, bump us again, drop back. Laughing. Rant says, “You…,” and he hitches a finger between Green and Echo, saying, “You got married…”
    Green says, “New team at two o’clock.” And Echo says, “Find me a hole!”
    Echo Lawrence: With both my feet I’m standing on the gas pedal, already planning to blind that Tina Something with a handful of raw rice. I can see my wheels in some junkyard still smeared with “Just Married” toothpaste.
    From the Field Notes of Green Taylor Simms: The activity casually referred to as Party Crashing rejects the idea that driving time is something to be suffered in order to achieve a more useful and fulfilling activity.
    Tina Something: At the next gaddamn police impound auction, I’ll be bidding against Echo. In less than one odometer click, we’ll both need new wheels.
    Shot Dunyun: And the bullshit Shark drops back.
    Echo Lawrence: Tina’s slammed against her headrest. Her tits and pearls thrown up, high, around her neck. Veil burn. Steam rises behind them, and their six o’clock’s been tagged. Taken out.
    From the Field Notes of Green Taylor Simms: Our Shark has been preyed upon by someone else. The Maserati has been slaughtered amid a litter of cowbells, shattered glass, and tin cans.
    Shot Dunyun: Echo pitches us around a corner, into a dark alley. She shuts off the headlights and taillights, letting the motor idle. She parts her veil to take a better look at Rant, and Echo says, “Get your Day Boy ass out of my car!”
    Offering the gold coin to her, Green says, “Do you know what this is worth?”
    And Rant Casey, he touches the backseat and sniffs his fingers, saying, “That girl who peed, three, maybe four weeks back”—Rant looks at us—“she ate bell peppers that day.”
    Rant grins his tar-black teeth at us and says, “Any of you folks know a fellow by the name of Chester Casey?”
    15–Boosted Peaks
    Shot Dunyun ( Party Crasher): How’s this for bullshit? At this shop, for our top all-time rental, you’re talking about Little Becky’s Walk on a Warm Spring Day. Shit like that, comfort shit, dumb shits come in here, ask to rent it all day