A contest that gives life to inanimate things. |
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She never broke down. Not once. Not when the sky opened like a wound, not when the roads turned to rivers, not when I begged her— quiet, desperate— to just stop. She roared like a promise I didn’t want kept, dragging me forward past burning houses, half-submerged memories, and children I couldn’t carry. Her tires kissed the water like it meant nothing. Her engine hummed over the cries of the living and the silence of the lost. I wanted her to fail. To sputter. To give me an excuse to rest. To stay. To scream. To drown. But she just kept going, faithful like grief with a gas tank. At every red light, I shook. Not from cold, but from the weight of still being alive when so many weren’t. She didn’t care. She didn’t flinch. Even when I hit the steering wheel until my hands bled, she just blinked her dashboard lights like lullabies for the damned. I slept in her backseat between rescues, blanketed in sweat and the smell of rot, dreaming of static and missing faces. She held me like no one else could— not out of love, but out of indifference. And when it ended— when the waters receded, when the city gasped its first breath through cracked windows and broken prayers— she waited in the driveway, still warm, still loyal, still ready. I never forgave her for that. |