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| Acmlm's Board - I3 Archive - Writing - (Short Story) Seymour |
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C`aos Porcupo                  Since: 03-02-06 From: AB, Canada Last post: 6297 days Last view: 6297 days |
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| Seymour had an inferior car.
It was the stuff of legends, really. In any given high school atmosphere, you are virtually guaranteed to have your alotted number of stereotypes. The jocks, the nerds, all those people in the variety clubs that no one besides the founding members know about, the girls who go out with a dozen people in the span of a week, and the guys that go out with a dozen girls in the span of five minutes. Seymour was one of those. He didn't exactly fit the bill of a budding Romeo. He had the reputation of being the exact opposite, actually. Seymour was infamous for being one of the well-groomed yet totally unpolite people in the class of '97. It wasn't that he was a BAD guy so to speak, he just didn't necessarily make new friends easily. He usually kept to himself, and when he did manage to pry some words out of his mouth they would cause the most disaterous of domino effects. The thing was, he seemed pretty oblivious to this. He was able to turn most girls on and scar them for life moments later, and he'd just do this over and over again. 'Would you like to meet my mom', 'Sorry, I don't drink' and 'Would you believe someone like me has this much chest hair' are well-known sayings in my town now unfortuantely. I was still friends with him while we still went to school however. He had some bad habits but he treated everyone around him with respect, although most people wanted to strangle him on the spot anyways. Now, about that car. Y'see, Seymour has had a thing for mechanics ever since junior high. He joined the Industrial Works class that had just been offered, as did I. One of the first days he was there, the class was sat down in front of a famous man who had returned to his hometown to give them a nice warm motivational speech. He had won the Fanous 500, a popular yearly Formula-1 event in the city. I don't know what clicked in Seymour's mind, but from that point on he was fascinated by cars of every shape and size like a fat lady and wholesale Old Dutch chips. Anyways, at one point he got his own used car - quite possibly the most puke-colored piece-of-junk sedan that you could ever imagine, and it understandably was part of the stigma surrounding his ability (or lack thereof) to establish a meaningful relationship with anyone. He went on to get the highest grade that would ever be awarded in the mechanics section of that course. Now this is a kid that never got a mark above 60 in any other subject in his entire pre-secondary education. Speaking of which, he never advanced to that point. I had already moved to the city to pursue a degree in economics and statistics, but when I phoned my parents one day they told me that Seymour had begun his own small automotives shop. This spiked my interest, so at the end of my second year I returned home for summer break. I poked around and began to discover the fates of all the people I used to know; most had never bothered advancing beyond school or even bothered completing it, and now were stranded in this ghost town barely managing to care for poorly-thought-out marriages and the multiple children that followed suit. Eventually I followed his trail to a freshly-built concrete-reinforced garage on the outskirts of town. Surely Seymour hadn't gotten this much business, to work in fancy quarters like this? "Whoaaaa! Is that... wow! Keith?" Apparently he hadn't forgotten about me. Understandable I guess, having one friend makes that one much more noticable. "It's been a while, hasn't it," I mumbled, letting a smirk grow across my face. I stuck a hand in my jeans pocket, wandering inside. "I heard that you'd actually gone ahead with your plans and made your auto repair business fly. I had to come and see for myself. You must be doing good." "I'm the only one in town," Seymour jabbed his fist into my shoulder. "Damn straight business is going to be good." "You must handle a lot of vehicles then." "Yep. People bring them in for the stupidest reasons. I can't be bothered to care, people pay out the ass for me to do the simplest things." Seymour stepped back towards a hydraulic lift on the side of the garage, throwing a pair of wrenches back into a tall, cherry red storage container. I stared at what was on top of the lift with squinted eyes as I began to realize its significance. "Seymour..." I pointed at the sedan, which had now been painted yellow. It bore a black and white checkered strip that stretched straight across from the front to the back on both sides. "Is that what I think it is?" "It used to be what you thought it was." Seymour yanked hard on a nearby lever, causing the machinery to hiss and begin lowering the car to the ground. "This has been what's keeping me busy on lonely nights... I'm busy installing new parts in this car, all racing-grade. It took some unsavory methods to get my hands on what I needed... but so far its performance has improved tenfold." Seymour dug around in his toolkit some more, taking out a large ratchet and letting it roll around in his hand. "So you're refurbishing it?" "Refurbishing?" Seymour suddenly dropped the tool back in its pile, slapping both his hands down on my shoulders. "I'm rebuilding this thing from the ground up. I'm going to be entering the Fanous 500!" I took a double-take at Seymour's car. "...no offense dude, but isn't that a televised event? You know... all the cars that enter that are some of the most powerful in the country, and they're usually backed by sponsors up the wazoo. Are you sure they'll even let you in?" Seymour's goofy grin suddenly turned into a morbid frown. "You've changed, Keith." "Changed?" "From school," Seymour said weakly. "You knew full well that no matter how I conducted myself I would never truly fit in with other people. I thought you understood that. I might make my living servicing other peoples' vehicles, but I know that my only true love is mechanics, the only thing I was certain I could do right. I want to let everyone know exactly how much I've learned in these past few years, and establish my place in the world. Everyone will know that I am a mechanical genius, and for that they will finally respect me." "I understand where you're coming from..." I nervously looked over my shoulder, finding a barren corkboard hanging on the wall. He had no appointments today, thankfully. The last thing I needed was someone coming in and watching him pour his heart out to me. "...but are you entirely certain you can just waltz into this thing expecting to make that much of a revelation to the world? Like I said, you may not get in, and even if you do, there's a good probability that you might just lose horribly and make an ass out of yourself. And be honest with me... are any of the modifications you made even safe? You're talking about an 80's sedan he-" I'd never seen a colder exp "I don't recall ever saying I was better than you." "You imply. IMPLY." Seymour walked around the back of his car, absentmindedly shaking his finger at me. "Do you think you can just walk in here and tell me my dream is worthless? I am setting out to establish the fact that I can produce a car greater than other people! Is having a redeeming value such a goddamn sin?!" Seymour lashed out against his car's trunk with his fist, but dampened his blow suddenly as he realized what he was doing. I'd had enough of the argument finally, and simply turned to walk away. As I got into my vehicle outside, I could still hear him snarling under his breath. I sighed to myself, trying to block him out of my mind as I twisted the key in the ignition and rumbled off. Nonetheless, I still had some pity for that shunned soul, and I finally realized it as I drove by his garage a week later on the way to pick up some groceries for my parents. The garage bay was closed, and one of those roadside rental signs had been placed in front of it. It was announcing his acceptance into the qualifying rounds of the Fanous 500, and that all his favorite customers should watch him on his rise to glory. Letters were missing from various points. It had obviously been vandalized. Believing that I could get on his good side again somehow, I made a call to the ticketmaster and purchased a single ticket for the Fanous 500 due to be held several days later. All that was available were those single all-inclusive packs that gave you a free drink and hot dog, and as such was hideously overpriced, but I just sucked it up and took it. Days came and went, and finally I took the long drive to the track outside of the city and fought for a parking space. I seated myself in the midst of the stands mere minutes before the start of the main event. I slid binoculars up to my eyes and peered down upon the starting grid - as I had somewhat expected, he had actually had some success in the qualification. A bright yellow sedan, barren except for its checkered pinstripping, sat eighth to the starting line in a sea of aerofoil vehicles and corporate logos. I got comfortable and got ready for 50 laps of howling, snorting racecars. I never was a big race fan. What I saw then when the green flag fell shocked me. Seymour's car rocketed forward along with the other monsters and the race was on. Seymour drove like a maniac... a pro maniac. He drifted masterfully, he hugged corners like glue, slingshotted himself around the track taking passes that no one else dared to, and in the meanwhile continued to drive as hard as he possibly could. Eventually, Seymour flew across the finish line... dead last. And in flames. For Seymour had an inferior car. |
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Silvershield   580    Since: 11-19-05 From: Emerson, New Jersey Last post: 6308 days Last view: 6296 days |
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| I appreciate the humor, and I think you do well leading up to an ending that actually made me giggle a bit. My main complaint would have to be that the story can be a bit far-fetched at times. Not that the story is supposed to be a perfect representation of reality - it is fiction, of course - but a main idea is that this mechanic somehow enters his crappy car into a high profile, professional race. That's the backbone of the humor and of the ultimate ending, but it's possibly too outlandish for the reader to suspend his disbelief. I feel like you could achieve the same ending if the race he enters were not a professional event, but rather an amateur one. You could twist it, however, so that he still seems utterly incapable of winning the race for whatever reason, and it would no longer carry with it the impossible thought that this guy has gotten himself into a legitimate professional event. |
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