Vile Villain

He totalled my car and got off without having to do a thing. I didn’t like him the minute I met him. He didn’t flee the scene, but he had a strange presence. You know when you just don’t like someone for some inexplicable reason, the minute you meet them? Maybe it’s like dogs and we unconsciously detect each other’s smells, or they resemble someone you once knew that unforgivably screwed you over. Whatever the reason, I instantly detested him.

The crash was sudden, as most crashes probably are, but the seconds slowed down so they felt like trying and failing to breath underwater. The car spun three hundred and sixty degrees. When an owl rotates its head almost that much, it looks wondrous. When a car does it, it looks torturous to those trapped inside and those independent observers just going about their own day. Two things with a similarity but that offer two entirely opposing feelings.

It took me a minute to come round and think to get out of the car. He’d run a red light, but I had no proof. I’d done a right turn across him, so I knew they were going to say I was at fault before we even exchanged a syllable. His car was a wreck too. It was all crumpled in the front, like tin foil rolled up in a ball and ready to be tossed away. I could tell the car was his pride and joy. Hitting his car was like someone with a heart’s equivalent to killing their family. I knew he was heartless, or all his love was stored up inside that car.

“Hey Dickhead,” he said, with a smug look on his face. “What the fuck were you doing?”

“You ran a red light,” I said, quietly.

“Says who? That’s an easy explanation for you isn’t it? You’re the one that turned right across me!”

“I thought you would have stopped for the red light.”

“The light was as green as you when you saw my car. That’s probably why you wrecked it.”

I shook my head. I knew it was pointless talking to this guy. The more I said, the more he’d have to use against me.

“Let’s let our insurance deal with this,” I said.

We exchanged numbers, names, addresses and I thought he was going to punch me in the face before we left. I wanted to get the police involved just to document everything, but when I suggested it, he gave me a bullying look that told me I better not bother. He knew where I lived now, so I got the feeling I’d have to watch my back.

The cars were no longer road-worthy, so they got towed away. Every minute I had to stand breathing the same air as him was painful. Whenever the recovery vehicles arrived, it felt like the sighting of a ship coming to an island on which I was stranded. I was enormously grateful when they took me and the car home – or what was left of it. It more closely resembled an alien contraption by then. I wished I never had to see the other driver’s two dead eyes again, but I had a feeling this wasn’t the end of it. I couldn’t have predicted the enormity of what came next.

Now and again, in life, you encounter someone so vile they make ordinary bad people look like cherubs. He was one example of that. He took me to court. I wasn’t willing to admit fault. He had driven through a red light; I knew it like I know my own name.

Our case was announced: Danny McCreight vs Patrick Stewart (me.) I thought his surname should have been changed to McCreep, but I didn’t voice that. I knew I needed to watch my every word and act professional and distant to get through court. I’d never entered a court room in my life, nor did I think I would in all my days. I didn’t realise one single thing can happen in a second and it changes the course of everything for good.

The longest morning of my life, and then, an outcome I’d prayed impossible – I was at entirely at fault and Danny was getting a new car. I watched him leave the court room, a sickening smile playing on his lips. He’d got what he wanted. I might have ruined his original baby, but he was getting one that was even better: shiny with new smelling leather: the new apple of his eye. The old one would quickly be forgotten on a junk heap. That was the one benefit of choosing possessions over people as the objects of your affection.

I went home, knowing things wouldn’t be the same again. I’d have a huge increase in my premium, I’d have costs of my own to pay and worst of all, my driving confidence was completely shaken. It was like a building that’s foundations have crumbled, leaving the rest a precarious post in the sky, waiting to fall too.

I tried to get past it. There was nothing I could do to change the outcome. My fate was final in that respect. But try as I may, I couldn’t forget what had happened. I could have tried to forgive and move forwards, but I was too enraged. Danny’s face was etched in my mind: a scowl reminding me of the lies he’d told, the injustice that had been served. I decided it was time for me to seek my own justice.

Months later, I still had his address tucked away on a piece of paper. I knew he must have had a new vehicle by then. I walked to his house, like a crook in a cape – only I wore a long black coat. I hoped it would mask me from recognition, that I’d blend in with the darkness and become nothing.

I got to his driveway, and I walked in so easily. I was amazed by how easy it was: no gate code, no guard dogs – just a straight walk from the road to his new car. It seemed to twinkle in the moonlight. It was a beauty – even to me. It had a pearlescent effect so whenever you passed it the colours seemed to morph and change into different ones. I wondered how much the paint job alone would have costed. Maybe I could have let it go, if I knew I was in the wrong, maybe I could have forgiven him if I’d known he was sorry, or truthful, or something human. But he wasn’t – he was heartless and he was happy he’d got his way. I had to teach him a lesson.

I scanned the property for some sign of a camera, but there was nothing. For how fancy his car was, his property was strangely antiquated. There was nothing security-wise to be found on site. I just hoped he hadn’t outsmarted me this time. I didn’t want to do anything too drastic. I didn’t want to cause a ruckus or attract unwanted attention, so I went for the simplest form of revenge: I keyed his new car – not a little hint of scrape – a long, car length line that would be impossible to patch up. The panels were ruined, and I had barely made a sound. As quickly as I came to his house, I vanished, like a villain in the night.