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Raleigh slapped his hand down on the big red button that opened the door to his bay and munched on his powdered doughnut from the other. The door slowly creaked its way up, taking longer than normal in the chill morning air. He was about half way done with second break fast as it also reached half way open revealing the grill of the first car in Raleigh’s line up for the day.
“Oh son of a bitch!” he exclaimed, powered sugar going everywhere.
“What is it?” Yancy asked and then saw for himself, “Oh god what did he do this time?”
Chuck Hansen’s “Striker”’s familiar grill smiled at them in the morning sun, mocking Raleigh. He stormed to his workstation computer and pulled up the work order. Dripping fluids, swears he didn’t do anything wrong. He asked for you, you’re his favorite this week. Thanks in advance. How nice, a personal note from the Boss.
He jammed the remaining half of his doughnut in his mouth grumbling and snatched the all too familiar mess of keys and tchotchkes off his tool box, storming in the direction of the car.
Muttering darkly to himself about teenage boys, he unlocked the car and plopped into the driver’s seat with a grunt. He fumbled through the 500 key chains to find the right key to for the ignition and jabbed it in with more force then was strictly necessary. Raleigh gave the key a twist and she turned right over, so that was……
Every sane and conscious thought was driven violently from Raleigh Becket’s head as Striker came alive and the radio kicked on. The sheer volume of it slammed Raleigh back into the seat. Screaming, although it couldn’t be heard over the shrieking coming from the too big aftermarket speakers, he flailed his arms in the direction of the brightly lit, flashing, demonic presence spewing the most hair-raising sounds known to man.
He landed a lucky shot and the offending noise stopped as the CD popped to the floor. Raleigh opened his eyes, which he hadn’t realized he had shut at some point while in self-defense mode and panted like he had just run a mile. “Holy shit…..”
The entire shop was staring out at him; Yancy’s mouth was hanging open. “What the hell was that!?”
“That little bitch!” Raleigh snarled, grabbing the CD off the floor – Coheed and Cambria: Good Apollo I’m Burning Star IV Volume 1: From Fear through the Eyes of Madness. He seriously considered snapping the disc in half and shoving the shards of it back into the flashy expensive hell hole it had come screeching out of.
“Hey! Watch your mouth Becket.” Tendo Choi, the head service writer, warned pointing at him with his clip board, “That’s Herc’s kid…”
Raleigh rolled his eyes, “Still a bitch.” he muttered and pulled the car onto the lift.
Yancy sidled over grinning. “God Rals, I wish you could have seen yourself just then. That was priceless.”
Raleigh frowned up at him, “Ha. Ha. Seriously I swear to God that kid does this every time.”
Yancy shrugged a shoulder noncommittally. “Maybe he’s trying to woo you, I don’t know man.”
“Kill me more like.” Raleigh turned the car off and sighed. He had a feeling this job was going to be a bigger pain in the ass than Herc Hansen’s kid. He sat staring at the blessedly dark radio fuming when the epiphany hit him, “I’m the favorite huh? Well….let’s just see about that….”
…
Chuck sidled into his father’s office to swap keys with him. “Hey dad.” He tossed down the keys to Herc’s demo on the desk that was littered with papers.
Herc glanced up at him, “Oh there you are. No scratches or dents right?” His son rolled his eyes. “Good. You caused quite a ruckus this morning…..”
“Oh? Really?” he was all sugar and spice kitted out in his soccer gear. “Where are my keys? I have practice.”
“Raleigh’s probably still got them. I don’t know.” Herc shrugged.
Chuck trudged down to the service bays and retrieved his keys from an unusually docile Raleigh. “Your good to go,” Raleigh smiled and tossed him the keys. “Have a good time.” He watched the red head walk out to his car, “Sucker….”
Chuck got in Striker and she started with her usual roar, god bless that v6 3.8L, and he headed out of the lot. It was a couple minutes later he realized that it was too quiet and that the radio had been turned off. He smiled smugly to himself and turned it back on, fully expecting Good Apollo to pick up on track 4.
It did not.
“What the bloody fuck!?” Instead of the driving beat of Ten Speed Chuck’s ears were met with the horrific disgusting drawl and twang of some sort of hellish hick music. He could feel the blood trickling out his ears as he scrambled to change the station number, only to find all his carefully selected presets no longer existed and there was only hell.
Striker came to a very sudden stop in the middle of the road as Chuck panicked and fought to rid himself of the abomination. He reached up to the CD sleeve on his visor for Danger Days: The True Lives of the Fabulous Killjoys without looking but ended up putting Hybrid Theory. He cursed loudly again and looked up at his carefully and specifically organized CD’s only to find they had gone the way of his radio favorites and were totally messed up.
“That rat bastard!” he shrieked, “That piece of shit Becket! Touched all my shit!” He started thrashing around fixing his violated space, unable to function again until the transgression had been righted. Chuck couldn’t wait to tell his dad about Raleigh’s latest offence, and this time it better stick and get that piece of shit in real trouble.
But later when he told his father all he got in sympathy was a smile and a soft chuckle. Chuck was surrounded by bastards.