Quadriga
Sirens harassed in a whiny simulacra of the damned wailing of hell...
On a desert stretch of interstate, Zissi drove her favorite car she would ever drive, a 1967 Plymouth Barracuda, a hardbody repainted in Olympic blue, the color of Zeus’s heaven, pushing its Slant-6, the famous Leaning Tower of Power, displacing at 225-cubic inches, approaching 100/mph, brakes pressing back with around 2,000 PSI, sweeping a waltz zigzag along an incline set steep into deep violet Eastern sky of twilight.
The steady dance, one two three. Too much, and Zissi would burn out and end up on the side of the road, possibly somewhere even worse, but not enough, and, well, where’s the pursuit in that? Jagged down black asphalt, dashes of uniform hyper yellow to her left, a straight line of bones demarcating the way to tomorrow. Though she would never admit it to anyone, in the moments that Zissi came closest to death, God spoke to her.
She hugged the inner-edges of a rightward curve downward, gaining some distance between Quadriga, the name she’d given the Barracuda, and the pair of officers in pursuit. For miles, neither had made a mistake, keeping an automaton-like fixed pace, not too close nor too much slack, tractor beam-assholes who would’ve loved nothing more than to have found a loud and fiery ending out there on the silent earth. Professionals, men without eyes or mouths. One two.
It wasn’t necessarily that she liked to drive fast, although speed was an element of the art form that the young woman quite enjoyed, but it was the exercise in control that enlivened in Zissi the godlike rush, the gas-burning interplay of tension between increase and decrease, fuel and brake, up and down, forward and back, gravity and flight, the idiot dance of premium octane.
Sirens harassed in a whiny simulacra of the damned wailing of hell, an aural-tyrannical sonic dilating of orders that would only awaken the wolves, spectrum red and Antwerp blue reflecting off of the “lucky charm” hanging from Zissi’s rear-view mirror, a holographic St. Christopher’s holy card reworked in the likeness of Bugs Bunny holding a carrot in lieu of staff. One red two blue three white. The white light of death herself.
Just past Zissi’s window, visions flashed in the hints of waning and artificial light blending like dyed streams flooding riverbanks and bleeding into impressionistic landscapes, apocalyptic images of a world cleansed in a caustic bath of merciful renewal, a chemical planing of the rougher surfaces of her external reality, vague hints of possible armageddon transmitted from the depths of some outer-space just beyond the limits of our very own.
But the rhythm one two three was one two three exploded in a one two chaos Zissi couldn’t be sure of what it was but on instinct she swerved hard left. Quadriga sailed belly-up, exposing her under-body to watchful heaven, a mechanical act of submission to the greater deities.
And from the material darkness, speaking from around the curving shadow of close-by death, Zissi heard the Word:
“…and the child spoke: ‘I am the Logos.’” — Valentinus, 100-160 A.D.
