Reflective Comics#27

As a young boy I saw my parents brutally murdered before my eyes. We were leaving the local cineplex, when, out of no where, a speeding car ran over my parents. I was a little boy, and the image was forever burned inside my haunted mind. On the rain slick pavement at the movie theater I shook my fist to the sky, and I swore vengeance that day. I would wage a war on those that took my parents from me-those that robbed me of the normal, happy childhood the son of two gold mine owning astronauts should have had. I swore my revenge on the automobile.

That night in the parking lot, after watching Taxi Driver 2: Oh, You Were Looking at Me, I became a man. Not just because of the parents dying by being run over, but also because I drowned my sorrow in a wave of cheap, loose women. It did not fill the gaping hole in my 8 year old heart. No, the quick, moist love of a tart could never replace the love of a mother that new the effects of zero gravity. My mother. I can still see the streets mashed with her brains, and her ribs that poked out of the side of her body, like a delicious looking meal. I would never feel her hugs again. Nor would I feel a spanking for my father, whom I was slightly less depressed that he was dead. However, in for a penny in for a pinch, I swore on both their graves to have revenge, and revenge I would have. On cars. Dreaded four wheeled death mobiles. I was also against motorcycles and 18 wheelers, anything between 2-18 wheels was an enemy, and anything with one wheel if it had an engine. That I would also destroy. Perhaps it wasn't the wheels, but the engines themselves. No, it was the wheels and engines combination. Also, fighter jets where an enemy, not if they were flying, but if they were rolling, then, yes revenge would have to be had on them as well. Hovercrafts were open to debate and mood of that day.

That horrible night, I was carried to the hospital inside an ambulance. My last ride inside one of the vehicles I had sworn vengeance upon. It was my prison. The dark womb of death. I could feel the walls cave in around me, I was inside the belly of the beast, my fits and rantings were hampered by the EMTs, who gave me a shot of Thorazine to calm me down. I don't remember much from the rest of the night. I remeber my parents dying, it's what drives me, I remember lsoing my virginity in the movie theater parking lot right after my parents died, and I think I remember eating a chicken sandwich sometime in the middle of the night. That could have been a dream thought. It was a really good chicken sandwich. The last good meal I ever tasted. Ever since then, after my parents died, food tastes like ashes. Happiness crumbles between my fingers. Anti-depressants only make me more depressed.

Since the ambulance ride, I have only ever been on a bike. The family's once trusty butler Wadsworth picked me up from the hospital on a tandem bike. I say once trusty butler as Wadsworth died from a heart attack, due to all the biking I forced upon him. Now I have a better, trustier butler named Gene. It was Gene that helped me on the beginning stages of my training for war. Boot Camp. Using the last of my parents fortune, I biked to Europe, no easy feat. There I learned at the foot of trained automobile manufacturers. I learned how to build the enemy to better destroy it. In the process of working on the assembly line, I learned how to make better a car. Yes, I made a better enemy, tougher to kill, cheaper to make, but I had used my inheritance to bike to Europe. Biking to Europe is hard, don't judge me, you don't understand. There's nothing but water between America and Europe, and I biked. So, yes, I built safer cars to make a fortune. I hate cars, but I hate being poor even more. My war on automobiles is an expensive war, and I needed the scratch.

The factory I worked at building cars was shut down due to child labor laws, because they had hired me, a ten year old boy to work the line. Rich again, I sat out on my quest to learn more about every kind of car all over the land. Japan, Russia, South America, a factory here, a show floor there. I spent my teens as a car salesman adapting my mind into the sick frame of someone that would actually buy an automobile. I don't like to talk about my teens. The dark places my mind went. I nearly lost myself in the sick thoughts of car owners. Their dirty dreams of taking turns at 65 miles per hour, of flipping up the emergency break and going into a slide. The purr of the engine as it accelerates to 88 mph. The thudding sound my mother's body made as it crumbled the front end of that mini cooper. Horrible dreams. My teen years, nothing but bad memories.

My early 20s, back home to Detroit. Fully trained and ready to smash cars. I walked the streets punching and kicking tires, the cars didn't seem to mind. My war was useless, I was trained to fight them, disassemble them, make the world a better place, but I just didn't know how to begin my counter offensive. One night, aimlessly walking, as the enemy taunted me with it's high beams, low beams, and caution lights. It came to me. It helped that I myself was run over by a car. I felt the pain my parents felt, the bumps and bruises. I did not die, but I had a few owies. I called Gene. He was busy, but would pick me up when he was free. That night, as I road on Gene's handlebars, I had an epiphany. I knew what I had to do. Cars are cowardly, superstitious when placed on a lot. I must make them fear me. I shall became a Vandal. From that day forward, I knew I would win the war.