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The crowd cheered as the top 3 charged ahead. Strip “The King” Weathers in the lead, with the two nearing him, but not quite catching up. He could feel the wind rush past him as his engine roared. He knew the Piston Cup would once again be his. It was the final lap, and nothing could stop him! Just a little more and he would be winning before retiring. Only, it wasn’t that perfect as it all to come crashing down. Something, no someone, that no good cheater Chick Hicks, caught up to him. Chick suddenly swerved right bumping his rear left. Only to realize too late what the cheater was trying.
A PIT maneuver.
Suddenly all control was lost as he was spun sideways. The traction between his tires and the track beneath him disappearing with a simple bump. One spin and the world blurs around him as the second spin comes his rear wheels catch air as physics force him fully into the air, making the second spin far more disorienting and brutal. The next he was completely airborne, flipping in the air before crashing into the ditch. He rolls and rolls and mud cakes on him and metal dents, breaks and morphs into a twisted image of himself. The tired bend inwards, leaving him with only beeping as his company.
There at the bottom of the ditch, broken beyond recognition, all all the racers rush past his battered body without even anyone looking at him. No help, not from his crew, not even the announcer said anything focusing on commentating on who was winning. The announcer hadn’t even bothered, and instead continued as if he hadn’t brutally crashed into the ditch. He knew he was an older race car, and that he was close to retirement, so why did being forgotten hurt so much?
All he could hear was the cheering of the crowd for the new Piston Cup champion beating the former champion whose name couldn’t even be remembered. He was too old, relic of a bygone era, left broken at the bottom of the ditch to rust with only the intrusive, ever-present warning beeps keeping his mangled body company.
The stadium soon emptied out as they rushed to see the new champion, the new king of the racetracks, the new king of the racing world. While he was left in the center ditch to rust away as if he wasn’t important. He was too old, too outdated, too ancient for the new generation of better, younger, faster racers. He was old news, not even worth the salvageable parts that sure could do better than to rust in obscurity.
The stadium lights were shut off after track maintenance was done, yet no one came, even as he tried to yell for help or do anything to attract attention. Only for the maintenance crew to chalk it up to as the ghosts of past racers haunting the tracks to scare the newbie in some hazing ritual.
Droplets of water slowly started falling from the dark and stormy sky, slowly growing more and more as the raindrops pelted a heap of rusting scrap metal. Days passed, then years as new racers, new faces filled the track while his paint peeled, chipped and the metal underneath rusted while the grass grew around him. He couldn’t move anymore, couldn’t blink, everything was a blur. He was too old to keep up with everything as he was left in obscurity. He couldn’t cling onto consciousness anymore as his eyelids felt heavier and heavier before the darkness swallowed him whole. Luckily, at least now, he wouldn’t have to watch the world forget him, like some hunk of scrap metal.
He closed his eyes, allowing the darkness to consume him fully. Maybe it would grant relief from the pain blinking in and out like the warning light on a dashboard. At least then, everyone wouldn’t see him like this. Battered, old, and forgotten, like a relic of the past.
Only for him to open his eyes again, not being repaired. The memory haunted him as he was fully conscious at the time, but he had been aware of how wrong everything felt. First his bent tires had hurt as they had been pulled off which the unnatural angles had made even harder. The pain had disappeared, replaced by an emptiness before even the emptiness had disappeared replaced with the unfamiliar familiarity of the new parts.
However, as he looked around, he wasn’t being repaired, but instead he was at home, and had been sleeping next to his wife. He hadn’t been forgotten into the ditch. He slowly rolled out of the garage as the repairs from the crash felt different, as if it wasn’t a part of him, the crash had changed him, but was he still the same car. The repairs reminding him that it had happened, but he wasn’t forgotten and left to rust in the ditch.
Rolling along the hall he looked through at the old Piston Cup Trophies, old newspaper clippings, even the moment he had been dubbed the king, but even if they were old, he certainly had not been forgotten. The new ones reminded him of that. There was the article about the crash, and slowly the clippings of people that mattered to him grew. They started detailing his nephew’s victories with him as the crew chief, an interview of him as a legendary racer.
Of course, the newspaper cut out of the story how Lightning McQueen had given up the race to help him out of the ditch and let them finish the race together. “A thrilling show of sportsmanship!” as it had been called then. Even in the heat of the race he hadn’t been forgotten, and the future was in good hands, even if he wasn’t racing anymore. He had a great career, even if he missed the thrill of the race. The air rushing past him, the asphalt of the track beneath his tires, and of course most important of all, the friends one made along the way and the youngsters who took their places and carried on the message and inspiration.