The Vehicle

Ever since the dark, stormy night when the transmission ghouls came to wreak havoc on Kristi's life, she has been forced to subsist on the vehicular equivalent of a cross between a sideshow freak and Frankenstein's monster. The Vehicle, a nameless hulk of rust and white, alternately makes her shake her head in wonder at the multitude of things that can go wrong in a shorted electrical system, and sigh in disbelief and awe that the Vehicle is still running after all these years.

As she looks longingly at others more indebted than she, and covets the beautiful shiny cars they effortlessly glide along the roadway, the monster rears its ugly head and turns things on and off at will. Wipers work and then not, at the most inconvenient times, heat blows lava on one side, and ice on the other, one eye in permanent blink, and a stench like no other emanating from carpet nearly as old as her teenage son. A window held up by a screwdriver, a dashboard of blinking Christmas wonder, it never ceases to enthrall passengers desperate enough to beg a ride.

The Vehicle has never been, as long as she has owned it, a pretty sight, it having been acquired for a dollar from someone who didn't want it soiling their lawn for another day. However, it has been, no matter the look of the beast, a friendly automobile, granting a start of its oil-encrusted engine almost every time a key is applied to the ignition. A battery problem here, a tire problem there, the Vehicle demands its fixes, but keeps on taking the Family from place to place. They don't complain, mostly for fear the Vehicle will hear them and decide not to be as accommodating in the future. So goes the saga of the Vehicle, sometimes a comedy, surely soon to be a tragedy when it decides it has had enough, and goes to the place of all old cars. The Family will be sad and glad to see it go, as it has been a dependable friend for two years, no matter what it looks like, they will always remember the Vehicle.