The Crush of Fate

The street flashed by in vibrant pulses. Everything penetrated her soul: every colour hit with a smack, each market shout tasting sharp and sour. Her eyes watered as smears of existence pressed themselves like desperate lovers to the outside of the ancient car, assaulting the windows of her vision in the weak sunlight. The rug shops. The grocers. The market stalls selling the loudest voices, the fairest prices, the hats, the gloves, the meat, the rice, wool, pies, silks, toys, cups, teas, seeds. Red.

Green. A horn screamed, but she was already moving—wasn’t she? Lurching off the line, her foot slipped inside her pleather loafer and tipped itself on the accelerator. What’s the number one rule of an interview? Never. Be. Late. She was definitely going to be late. 

With every thundering second of time lost she felt the rising panic: the familiar dark images of the old delivery office pressing down on her mouth and nose, clamping her temples in a vice of musty paper and wet canvas bags. Stop. It won’t be like last time. New place, new job. She tried to focus on the tarmac before her. From it rose a monstrous figure that loomed over her small frame, yelling, spitting, and jabbing her so hard in the chest that it bruised. Or was that just the seat belt? Her back was pressed against the office wall, nowhere to go. Or was that the seat cover she sat on now? Her hands were shaking, but was that here, then, or both? She couldn’t tell. Escape was the only option. She really needed this job. She had to take back control.

Putting her foot to the carpet she accelerated down the next street. Now she was going fast, tears ripping at her eyeline. This was silly; she was safe. She will not cry, she will not cry, she will not cry. She tilted her head back to stop the cheap mascara from running, paused, and returned to staring at the road. 

Only now it wasn’t empty. Head down and focusing intently on jumping the white lines of the zebra crossing, a small child bounced across the street. Too late. She was too late! Time slowed to the beat of a butterfly’s wing—the bang of a heart in open surgery. One foot on the brake. Two feet on the brake. Leather in hand, head slammed into the headrest, her whole body pulling on the wheel and pushing on the brake, willing the car to stop short. The braking force shot the memories she’d been suppressing through her forehead. They hung in the space just in front of her eyes, exactly where her head had just been. Ghostly frames that, with every metre gained, alternated with the picture in the windscreen. 

Sun glinting off shiny red shoes.

The ominous grey building in the rain

A sequined backpack glittering in the sun.

Dingy high-ceilinged sorting rooms with stained walls

Stringed mittens on coat sleeves waft in the air.

The mirroring chorus mocking her words

The landing strip of the zebra crossing.

Hand over her mouth

Small brown eyes are widening in shock.

The cruel laughter

Nowhere to run.

Nowhere to hide. 

The tyres are screeching eagles, diving for prey. The metal machine a bullet, aimed straight for the target. She knows she should pull the handbrake, make the emergency stop, but she doesn’t want to lose control of the steering. What if she hits the parked cars on either side of her as well? The child has frozen, she has frozen, the inside of the car is frozen, and like a great illusion, they are no longer moving through the universe; it’s the universe that’s moving around them, converging the inevitable collision.  

Then, there is a man. A man in jeans and a blue top. He’s behind the child; now he’s in front, blocking the small braided head from sight. His arms are outstretched. Fingers like javelins splayed like fireworks. His hands smack the bonnet’s face. The car stops. Miraculously. Inches from his legs. The deceased force flung her head and body forward so violently that her tattered seatbelt only managed to catch her just as her nose hit the steering wheel. 

Blinking at her knees, she tenderly inspects her face with her fingertips, too afraid to look up. Thankfully, nothing’s broken. Perhaps she’ll be able to make it through the interview before the bruise comes up. Raising her chin she finally looks at the man still glued to the peeling hood. His rage slowly blossoming in his shocked cheeks. 

He slams a fist on the bonnet and shouts something she thinks is, ‘Are you crazy?!’, but it’s sort of mute and she can’t feel it. All she feels is relief. He is tall and imposing, but he has curly, bouncy hair and kind crinkles around his eyes. And laughter lines. And he saved the child. She can just about make out the raised eyebrows of the little girl behind his legs, just above the dashboard.  She takes a breath to say sorry, but her tongue and lips only taste air. Instead, she sneezes. An eruption of blood plasters her white sleeves and chest, expanding like frost over water. The man straightens up and ushers the child to the pavement. Anger turning to satisfaction at the sight of her bloody face. Blood payment for a life saved.  

Killing the engine in the factory car park a couple of minutes later, she sat and stared at the clock. Breaking from that, she glanced around. The outside was moving normally again. She couldn’t understand. She should be in shock. She almost killed someone and it really would’ve been her fault. But she felt strangely calm: this may be another room of men she was walking into, but not the same ones. She would get out, go for the interview covered in specks of her own blood, and face her fear. Better than the alternative she almost just created. 

Pulling down the dirty mirror above her seat, she wiped off and reapplied her mascara. For all her experience and skill, if they didn’t want to hire her, they’d have the excuse of tardiness—a presumably welcome and convenient reason, she’d been sure. Only, now she wasn’t so. It’s so easy, she reflected, to be the victim of another’s selfishness, and lucky to come out standing. So she opened the door and stood. The snap of central locking following her across the lot as she strode toward the building that swallowed her whole behind mirrored glass doors.