Beholder
There is beauty in destruction. I knew this, had from an early age but it was only recently that I discovered the pleasure to be had. On a smaller scale destruction captivates, but always left me wanting for more. I quickly progressed from the initial accident in a supermarket where I dropping a tray of eggs in the aisle to throwing bags of flower from high-rise tower blocks in a single afternoon, but it was as though I was always one step ahead of what I was doing. I dallied with fire for a while, different combinations and permutations, but even then that grew stale and, like the scent of a dying bonfire left me. Listless, I experimented with fireworks, lighting them and dropping them in bins, but once you’ve seen a mound of melted plastic encasing a pile of refuse, you’ve seen them all. There’s an abandoned burnt out Mini near the waste ground on the estate. The paintwork peeled back revealing the bare metal beneath, not a single colour but a myriad of hues, iridescent in the sunlight, changing where the fire had been hottest. The mirrors were shattered and lay scattered around the ground, sparking diamonds amongst the frosting of safety glass. The plastic trim had curled outwards, shrivelling and dying, popping from the bodywork and sagging to the ground in defeat. I remembered the belching clouds from the interior were hypnotic, drawing me close enough so that my face became reddened by the heat. And the sound: the flames roaring angrily, consuming the interior and desperately clinging to life by throwing out tendrils to grow and spread. A virulent but short lived cancer. The sight was seared into my soul. This was the next level. From then I dreamt of form reduced to chaos: Of cars perfectly constructed of individual elements, combined into a single piece of symbiotic machinery, suddenly being torn asunder; recognisable forms deformed into new unique shapes by friction and fire. Today excitement positively ran through me. The road was perfect for my experiment. Infrequently used along the top of a valley and curving savagely between the trees. The location was almost chosen for me, at one such bend where there wasn’t a proper crash barrier merely some upright posts and corrugated panels, down the steep embankment there lay a fenced-off compound. Blue barrels lined the back of the property, marked with ominous black skull and crossbones on a yellow background. They might be flammable, they might not. I had one shot at this – any more would increase my chances of getting caught. Do it once, and move on, that was my motto.
Even if the car that rounded the bend hadn’t been speeding, the trap would still have worked. The driver wouldn’t have noticed from the road that one of the trees was leaning at a peculiar angle, or see the anchoring rope that secured it in place. He would only see the result – that of a tree arcing down, filling the left side of his windscreen blocking out the light. The natural reaction would be to brake and jerk the steering wheel the other way. Which was exactly what happened. The car was a midnight blue saloon; it slewed to the right then skidded as the driver tried to overcompensate for the turn by slaloming into the fence throwing up leaves in a cloud of confetti. The metal barrier buckled, smashed from its moorings but didn’t actually rupture. Instead the car slid between the barrier and the road down the embankment. There was no explosion. In fact there was nothing at all, other than a sound of metal crumpling, probably as the car upended and came to rest at the bottom of the embankment. Disappointed that debris wasn’t raining from a black column staining the sky I unhurriedly collected my rope and went to investigate. Peering over the ridge, I could see the underside of the car, its wheels were still turning, but the engine had cut off. It wasn’t until I slid down the slope that I saw the actual damage that had been caused. My disappointment increased. No spectacular explosion, no mangled shell. The car was pretty much intact. I’d thought that it would have arced through the air, landing amidst the barrels of chemicals, instead it had simply dropped, snapping small trees and gouging furrows into the earth as though it had sprung fingers and had desperately tried to claw its way back to the road. Only the roof had collapsed to half its normal height and the driver, a dark haired man, was hanging outside of the broken window. He looked funny, pulled and stretched in wrong directions. While his legs were beneath the dashboard, his back was twisted like a corkscrew so that his upper torso was out of the window with his chest pressing into the earth. He must have heard the falling stones as I scrabbled down the slope. He coughed, blowing a cloud of dust with his exhalation, “H… Help!” His fingers clawed the earth as though he was going to pull himself out of the wreck, but of course he couldn’t. There was strong smell of petrol in the air, probably coming from the liquid that was splattering out from beneath the bonnet. “M-m-my phone… My phone. Get...” He faltered and wheezed, his lips a darker colour that before. He wiped his mouth on his shirt sleeve, leaving red streaks as bright as oil paint and just as thick. The driver looked incredulously at the lines for a moment then tried unsuccessfully to turn over on himself to look back into the car. “…Helen? Helen!” The words were followed by a half snuffle and a bloody retch. Obviously distressed, he winced. His watery eyes looked up, one red and unseeing, the other a picture of normality. Instead of trying to turn around, he looked at me. “I can’t see Helen’s. Helen! I can’t move to see. Please...” Using the same lighter that I had on the Mini, I learnt something that day. Something magic.
There is beauty in death.
