Lance often felt like he was suffocating; asphyxiating in his own blood and bones.
“You’re much too small for such big words,” his mother would often say. And she would be right — he was eight, a child still, far too young to feel like the world was a tight ball of lead sitting on his heart. Far too young to feel the weight that he felt on his shoulders.
“I feel like my lungs are too wide for my chest,” he’d tell her, and she would smile tightly at him, because although she loved him and Lance knew she did, she did not understand him.
“Maybe you should play with some of the other children your age,” she’d say, and Lance would shake his head before she finished her sentence. He tried, and tried and tried, and could not force the relationships. She knew this. She did not expect him to do as she asked, but asked anyway. Lance knew the routine.
Sometimes, though, the pressure would grow too great. His lungs would expand though his skin and his heart would pound so loudly it would burst his eardrums and his arms would stretch across the solar system and his fingers would shrink to atoms and he had get out get out get out as fast as he could on legs that has turned to stone and breath that had turned to ice and a body that no longer felt human, no longer felt Terran, felt too big and too powerful for the vessel he knew he was and was in.
On these days, Lance would escape. He would open the broken latch on the window in the room he shared with his brothers and climb carefully and quietly down the drainage pipe, like he’d seen the orphans do in Annie. He’d forgo shoes, as his mother would not be there to force them on his feet, and run down the dark and silent streets, forgetting to watch for broken glass or rusty nails and relying entirely on guardian angels he wasn’t sure existed. He’d sprint as far as he could down the broken down and pothole-ridden street that led away from the worn, paint-peeling, window-shuttered home he shared with his family, away from the sensitive ears of his mother and the ghost of his father and scolding voices of his siblings until the pressure on his chest would lessen, and then he would laugh and yell as he flew by the rest of the houses haunted by people who never came home. The guardian angels that did not exist guided him into the shadows, shielding him from the curious eyes and tattling mouths of annoyed and grouchy neighbours who would report him to his mother. Every night he fled, as far as his little feet would take him, and every night he would take grand gulps of pickup truck-diesel polluted air to store in his lungs before he returned to the house that felt like as much of a trap as it did a home.
One night, though, he heard a sound. Not the static sound of tires crunching over gravel, or the whistling of voices over the crackling of a campfire, or the crashing and bellowing of a party after dark. A different sound, as familiar as it was foreign, a deep rumbling that felt almost like an upcoming crack of thunder but did not carry the same sharp smell in the air. A sound that rumbled the black of the street under Lance’s bare toes, a sound that rattled his brain and quieted the thundering of his heart.
Lance followed the noise.
He turned on streets he often ran past, doubling back and ducking out of the wide swaths of streetlamp lights as a cop car cruised by. He followed the rumbling of the air, farther than he’d ever wandered before, until he saw it: a lineup of cars that looked like Marco’s old Hotwheels, barely illuminated by the silver glow of the moon and the yellow shine of the half-working street lamps, revving their engines and flashing their headlights.
Lance gasped. A street race. A real, live, right-in-front-of-him street race. He scrambled to the side of the road, crawling in the ditch and back out the other side to sit under the shadow of a big rock. He watched as someone came out holding a white bandana, stopping in the middle of the street between the two cars at the front of the line. Lance strained his ears to hear them over the roaring engines.
“From here to the end of the road! First there wins the pot! Ready, and…. go!” They whipped down their arm, the white bandana flapping down with it, and the cars were off before Lance could blink. He leaned as far as he could without falling over, desperately trying to soak in every detail as the cars raced towards him.
There were eight of them, all different shapes and sizes and colours, all cars made for speed. Most Lance didn’t recognise — fancy cars got ransacked fast in his neighbourhood, these people must be from out of town or else hide their prized racers real well — but there was one that caught his eye. It was blacker than night, a moving shadow, sleek and sharp. It had started last in the lineup, but was already overtaking the car in the lead. Lance watched with a gaping mouth as it came up just behind the leading car — a bright red monstrosity that looked like what you’d imagine a sports car would look like of you’d never seen one — then absolutely gunned it, shooting ahead by what felt like miles and zipping past Lance at the speed of light. The huge gust of wind that followed it almost sent Lance tumbling onto the road; luckily he held fast to the rock and stayed crouched low.
The rest of the cars followed in quick succession, so close to each other that they were almost one mass, but there was no questioning who won. Lance craned his neck, carefully watching as the black car slowed to a roll, looping around the corner on a victory lap. Some of the drivers of the losing cars stepped out of their vehicles, visibly seething as the black car cruised by. Lance could almost feel the smugness dripping from its tailpipe. The black car finally slowed to a stop back where it started, the person who’d started the race approaching the driver’s door with a fat bundle of cash. A gloved hand reached out the window and grabbed it, before ramming up the window, swerving around the person, and racing away.
Lance scrambled after it.
inspired by this art by @dalglieshx . to be continued!!
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