Jeff Gordon's Last Ride

This post is a creative writing collaboration between guest writers Monty and Prudence. All characters are fiction. Except Jeff Gordon, I guess, but everything he does in this story is completely made up. From the bottom of my heart, sorry Jeff.

PART ONE

The bus seemed to scrape against every car it passed as it lurched back and forth along the road. Willa kept expecting to hear a SCREEEE like nails on a chalkboard, but somehow it never came. To pedestrians, she thought they must look like the scene in the movie with the wizard boy. Or maybe her driver used to be an aspiring race car driver and he was really being held back by this bus driving job. He was bobbing and weaving through these cars like Jeff Gordon.

Still, though, the bus felt like it was going to tip over and Willa realized slowly that she’d had this fear since she was little. She was inside a rickety old bus going over a rickety old bridge, and the bus topples over, and she would bang on the window like let me out, let me out!

Jeff Gordon’s hands were steady on the wheel.

She had the sudden urge to ask for his license and registration. A third thought occurred to her- he was so good at zooming through the crowd because he was a criminal, a bus thief, and he was on the run.

She could relate.

Willa sat back in her seat and closed her eye. Took a deep breath. Put her fingers to her eye patch and said a little chant under her breath. “Give me the speed, give me the smarts.” She said it a couple times, then opened her eye and peered through the window to her right.

She jumped and went “BA” when she saw a small saw toothed fairy waving in at her from right outside her window pane. It smiled and pointed into her eye socket, in it was an eye that used to be her own!

“Hey!” She shouted. Heads turned on the bus. She looked around embarrassed then scooched up close to the glass. She whispered and pointed at the large eyed fairy that floated easily next to the zooming bus. She whispered to it, “give me my eye back you biiiiiitch”

“Nar.” It was ugly British. “I warnt until you do as I saye! I had to take this won coz you disobeyed me last time! I’ll have yer utha won if ya do it again!”

“What do you WANT! I robbed that place just like you said!”

“Yee ya deed. But theen ya dooble CROSSED meh!”

“You were about to double cross me’”

“No warsnt!”

“Yeah you were!”

“No I warsnt!”

“YEAH YOU WERE!” People look again. She looks around “sorry…” turns back to the window and whispers. “I left the money where you told me, but when I came back the next day to see if you had picked it up, it was still there so I just took it… honestly I thought you were a figment of my MIND… I mean no one else on this bus is freaking out that there’s a fairy outside this window.”

“Weeeell wheen yous woke up witout yer aaaaye ball I bet ya knew I was ferreal aye?”

She patted her eye. “What do you want”

“The bus driver. We used ta be lauvers. He’s a big washed up racin cars driver, some guy named Gordon Jefferson er somethin…. Kill im”

Willa gulped.

“Yar already killed two men when ya robbed the plarce. Donae get innocent on meh nahr.”

“That was different,” she hissed through the pane. “They were coming at me. Self-defense!”

“Self defense, shmelf shmefence. Yar’ve got blood on yer hands awready, missy. Mine are clean,” the fairy winked Willa’s own eye back at her.

That was the last straw. Willa whipped the switchblade out of her pocket and stabbed futility at the window.

“HAR HAR HAR, thars the fight I was lookin fahr, yah cannae tell meh yar didn’t feel like yarsel’ when yeh was fighten them bankers. Yer a natural born killer.”

“SHE’S GOT A KNIFE!”

Suddenly Willa was pummeled against the window by a middle-aged man passenger. But this was a big mistake. She got him quickly in a headlock and rammed his giant bald head against the window behind her with a sickening CRACK, and he slunk to the ground. The other passengers looked on in horror.

Willa grinned because truly the fairy was right. She was a natural born killer. Years of spy training and school had taught her how to use her inherent anger and abilities for a purpose, (or for their purposes, more specifically), but that was before.

She grabbed the money bag and began to kick out the back window to escape, but she could feel the bus veering to the side of the road- she glanced up just to see Jeff Gordon smoothly park on the shoulder and jump out of his seat. He really was quite a good driver.

“EXIT AT THE FRONT!” he yelled to the others as he ran towards Willa.

“Nars yer chance!! Kill the bastard!!” the fairy screamed through the window. “Kill im NARRRR!!! But by gar, he still looks fit i canno deny.”

Willa’s mind raced. She didn’t want to kill Jeff Gordon, because if it was true, if he and the saw-toothed fairy had been lovers, it meant one thing-

Jeff saw the fairies too. Maybe she wasn’t crazy…

“HI-YAHHHH!!!” Willa screamed with a final kick at the bus window, sending broken glass right into the fairy’s face. “MaRRR FACKER!!” the fairy screamed. Willa jumped through, grabbing the fairy out of mid-air and stuffing it into her money bag. Suddenly a cold metal claw closed around the back of her neck.

Jeff Gordon had caught her.

“Where do you think you’re going,” he boomed, spinning her around to face him.

“Jeff, please listen to me,” she choked out. “Don’t turn me in. I have crucial information for you. There’s a hit out on you. I can help protect you.”

Gordon’s face darkened.

He doesn’t believe me, Willa thought. This is the end. Back to the slammer, back to the grip of the government and–

“It wouldn’t be the first time,” Jeff said. “I noticed you’re missing an eye. Wrong end of a deal?” he asked.

“I noticed you’re missing a hand. Wrong end of a deal?” she countered, raising her eyebrows.

Jeff sighed. “I’ll hear you out. But I don’t trust you.”

---------------------------

Pedestrians screamed and scrambled all around them, squeezing past each other to exit the bus.

Jeff stood inside the bus, metal claw extended out of the window, clasping Willa’s shirt. They looked at each other distrustfully, then Willa’s shirt began to rip, and the bus driver pulled her back through the shattered window. Right up to his face.

“Don’t you double cross me. I’ve been double crossed like… 8 times already. Yesterday, a guy told me he’d pay for his bus fare by giving me his number. He was like… a solid 7.5. And when I called last night, all I heard was… ‘hello thanks for calling….’” Jeff sniffles. “The suicide hotline…”

He dropped Willa on a bus seat to wipe his tears.

. “Geeeez… im… so sorry.”

She opened her bag and peeked in as Jeff began to break down and made a confused ‘what should I do’ face at the fairy who just shrugged and looked embarrassed for Jeff.

“Hey, well look,” she clamped the bag shut as the fairy made a darting move for the opening. “I’ve had it pretty rough too, I was born in a government lab and raised for mass destruction and atrocities in the name of false liberties and justices. But heyyyy we can change right?? I mean you used to be a successful racecar driver and look at you now! Who says we can’t get back on track… any wayssss I got something that might cheer you up.”

“Is it one of those low calorie ice cream bars?”

“What? N…no.” She replied as she reached into the bag and pulled out the fairy in one hand.

“Mildar!!! Oh my gorshk is that really you! You’ve had work done… your eye. It looks great!”

“Faaack orf you fackin peice of SHITE!! Gimme may hand beck!! I letcha use eet tah ween yer damn races and ery one LOOOOVED JEFFYYY!! You owe me beck you farkface!”

“ hahahaa hell no and no way. This hand is top notch little fella! We had some great nights together, and I mean great” Jeff winks at Willa “ back in Vallejo but you gave this paw to me pal!

“Ewwwwy… ok, so you can see this guy too?”

“Course! Me and Mildar go waaaaayyyy back to when I was in middle school. We fell hard and fast. He loved my dangerous attitude and I loved that sweet sweet fairy dust. Ahhhh Mildar, lemme get a hit of that dust man, for old times!”

“NAR NEVA!! Neva agane! I’ll KEEL YA, YA GOOD FAR NOTHIN!”

Willa stuffed the fairy back in the bag, “ok what the heck is goin on here??”

“Let’s talk. I’ll drive… dang, I always thought i was a loon, I never met anyone else who could see the guy!”

“You are a loon.”

“Yeeeeeep.”

The entire time this conversation went on, the mass of passengers wedged themselves into the front door, no one able to exit the vehicle. Jeff squeezed into the throng holding Willa and the fairy and eased into the drivers seat. He slammed the bus door shut pushing people back into the aisle.

“Sorry folks” Jeff hit the gas hard and they took back off down the road.