Sean E. Britten

I’ve always been inspired by music (I know, super original!) and music has always been a part of my writing. Way back in the days of burnt CDs, my mates and I used to put together CD mixtapes and I came up with the idea of a series of short stories based around pieces of music. Mixtape is all short stories sharing their titles with different songs and inspired, to various degrees, by their lyrics, artists, and vibe.

Currently Playing: Black Sorrows – Chained to the Wheel

Trigger Warning: Lot of fucked up stuff in this one. I don’t know, if you’re a sensitive soul or a new parent you might want to skip it?

Between the screaming, stress, and lack of sleep, Patrick is barely navigating a tightrope of sanity. What happens when a simple mistake gives him a push?

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Screams from the backseat cut through Patrick’s head like a chainsaw. No, a chainsaw would be quick and violent, almost merciful. These screams were more like a rusty hacksaw. He imagined its blade grating against his skull, rasping, with agonising slowness. Bone splintering, a few worn teeth snapping and being left behind, bristling like thorns, while the others continued their work.

“Shut the fuck up! Please, shut up!”

The baby, Eric, didn’t listen of course. One month old and colicky and pissed off at the world that was all so new to him. Strapped hard into his carseat and purple in the face, tears and snot forging pathways down his cheeks as he shrieked at the top of his lungs. Patrick’s eyes throbbed with exhaustion. His brain swelled against its confines like a wet sponge.

Patrick swerved to avoid a car poking its nose out of a side street. An overreaction, the car pulled to a stop without coming close to cutting in front of them. Patrick’s hands slid on the wheel and he realised he’d overcorrected, and he swerved again before he ran onto the sidewalk. He felt like he was piloting his body from a great distance. Steering himself steering the car, struggling to transform thought into action. Eric was jerked against his straps, stunning him for a blissful second, and then he started crying even harder.

“Fucker!” Patrick directed his anger at the other car. “Stupid piece of shit, fuck! Hey, no, no, please stop! Please stop, buddy, give me a break!”

A break was all he needed. If he could have at least left the baby at home. But no, Taylor needed her rest. Recovering from the c-section, she couldn’t pick up the baby, she could barely move on her own. He’d had no choice but to bring Eric with him. Like he didn’t need rest? Like he wasn’t suffering too? He was taking care of everything while she lay in bed with the baby on top of her. He didn’t know how much sleep he’d gotten in the last month exactly but he felt like he could count the number of full, uninterrupted hours on one hand. Plus, he was the one working. He had to work, and do everything around the house, and take care of the baby as well.

“When do I get to scream, huh? I’m the one who should be fucking screaming!”

Patrick circled the park. The car’s wheels drifted. A big, cumbersome, family SUV he hadn’t wanted, that had replaced his sporty little coupe. A fucking soccer mom car. He felt embarrassed to be driving it and struggled to adjust to its weight in his current state. All the same, as the road straightened he picked up speed. With the screams drilling through his head, he wanted the trip to be over as quickly as possible. Get to the store, get in, get out, get home to where he could dump the screaming little bundle of hate back on top of his wife and lock himself in the bathroom for an hour. Part of him was tempted to just leave Eric in his carseat while he went into the store. Just to get a rest from all the shrieking. The windows were tinted, it was hard to see into the SUV from the outside. It was an overcast day, the car couldn’t possibly get that hot. And if he should linger just a little too long inside, if it got too hot, if the worst were to happen, well, there was only so much he could be blamed for.

Rows of stores lined the sides of the road. Sidewalks were populated with pedestrians. Eric let out a piercing wail that seemed to tear at the lining of his young throat and Patrick twisted in his seat.

“Shut up! Just shut up, there’s nothing wrong with you!”

Failing to see the crosswalk ahead, Patrick didn’t slow down. A young man, ironically dressed in a bright yellow hi-vis jacket, crossed in front of him. Patrick glimpsed him out of the corner of his eye as he turned back toward the steering wheel but his reactions were sluggish and slow. His foot barely graced the brake pedal before the grille of the SUV plowed into the pedestrian.

The SUV collected the young man in the hi-vis jacket across the hip. Confident he had the right of way, he’d failed to take any notice of the SUV and hadn’t done anything to protect himself. An earpiece spun out of one ear. His pelvis crunched, a femur let out a blood chilling snap. He flew across the hood like a rag doll. No, he landed too heavily for that, he flew like a bag of cement tossed by a musclebound construction worker. His limp body cratered the bonnet with a slam then bounced into the windshield. The impact fractured the glass right in front of Patrick’s face. If he had time to think anything, he’d have worried the man’s body was going to punch right through the glass and crush him against his seat. But the windshield held and the guy in the yellow jacket launched forward again as Patrick finally nailed the brake pedal.

Wheels shrieked, burning streaks of rubber across the white stripes of the crosswalk. The pedestrian spun onto the road and landed in a crumpled heap, unmoving. From the backseat, Eric choked and started crying again, screaming. ‘Forward Collision Alert’ flashed at Patrick from the SUV’s fancy dashboard, ringing, over and over.

“No, no!” Patrick yelled.

People shouted and swarmed outside. Chaos, noise, and swirls of movement. Patrick felt his heart seizing in his chest, his breathing cutting short.

“I can’t do this, no! Not today! Not right now!”

Half a dozen people circled the man crumpled in the road. He didn’t move. Several others jogged toward the SUV, a couple with their phones already trained. Someone shouted at him to turn off the car. Without thinking, Patrick shoved the SUV into reverse.

“Stupid fuck! No, no! Not today!”

Hitting the accelerator, Patrick punched the SUV backward. The feed from the reversing camera appeared behind the steering wheel. He could see the grille of the car behind him. Proximity sensors chittered as it got closer and closer. A horn blared. Patrick didn’t stop until he crashed into the other car, causing the vehicle to shake. Eric rasped and wailed.

“What are you doing?” someone shouted outside.

“Fuck off!” Patrick said, tears cutting down his cheeks.

Patrick smacked the SUV back into ‘Drive’ and slammed forward again. In a distant part of his mind, he knew what he was doing was only going to make things worse. Hitting and running was far worse legally than only hitting. It was broad daylight and a dozen witnesses could give the police the number on his license plate. But exhausted and surrounded by screeching and panic, he just couldn’t handle it in that particular moment. Given a choice between handling the situation right then or dealing with a situation ten times worse in another ten minutes, he would choose the ten minutes leeway without a second thought. He felt he had no other choice. He grasped at denial like a drowning man grasping at a life preserver.

People remained clustered around the man that Patrick had hit. They yelled and shielded their faces but no one got out of the way as his hood hurtled toward them. At the last second, he swerved into the opposite lane. There were more vehicles there to meet him but traffic had come to a standstill. Passing the injured man and good samaritans, he swung even harder back into his own lane. The weight of the sports utility vehicle teetered and once again he swerved too hard toward the sidewalk. He went to pull away but spotted a crowd of onlookers watching, phones pointed at him, and it filled him with a fresh surge of rage. He pictured himself through the lenses of those cameras, a wildeyed silhouette behind the tinted glass.

“Fuck you! What are you looking at?”

With a twist of the wheel, Patrick mounted the gutter. Screams from the backseat filled his head. The folk on the sidewalk took a long, awkward moment to realise he intended to ram them. They screamed and scattered, one young woman dragging another out of the way. Another woman was too slow, falling backward and getting clipped by the leading edge of the SUV. She spun, shrieking, to the pavement, although Patrick couldn’t be sure how hard he’d hit her.

Patrick yanked the wheel sideways before he hit the front of the nearest store. The SUV lumbered back across the sidewalk. People sprung out of the way. It gave Patrick a gratifying sense of control even between peaks of terror and anger. Thumping, he joined the road again then picked up speed.

He’d done it now, Patrick realised as he sped away. The chaos dwindled in his rearview mirror but he knew its consequences weren’t going to shrink away and disappear. The first person he’d hit was a genuine accident, his fault of course, but it could be explained. It might have meant a fine, community service, but probably not jail time. But he couldn’t excuse driving up onto the sidewalk and charging those pedestrians, hitting that woman. And now he’d left the scene while one or both of the people he’d hit might be dead. His head throbbed like an inflamed tooth. His blood surged. Eric’s screams rattled off the windows.

“Stupid motherfucker!” Patrick shouted. “If you just looked! If you just looked before fucking crossing the fucking road then none of this would have happened!”

Patrick’s hands suddenly took over. He twisted the wheel sideways, crossing onto the other side of the road again. Narrowly he missed another moving car that blared its horn at him. Instead, he sideswiped a parked car on that side of the road with no one inside of it. Metal shrieked. Paint peeled away in streaks as both vehicles left pieces of themselves embedded in the other. More people on the sidewalk jumped back at the noise. He swung onto the right side of the road, forcing more drivers to dodge.

“Fuck it! Fuck you, fuck you!”

A terrible clarity filled Patrick’s mind. Already he’d gone too far. There was no going back. So make them feel it, make them suffer. Let them feel his rage and frustration and pain. For as long as he was wrapped up in inflicting it, he wouldn’t have to suffer any consequences. Consequences were for the other side of this insanity. For as long as he prolonged the first part, he wouldn’t have to deal with the second.

The grocery store where they’d been headed loomed off to one side with its sprawling parking lot. Patrick spun the wheel without slowing. The SUV swayed. People steered shopping carts between row after row of parked vehicles.

Patrick took an aisle at random and picked up speed. A smaller car reversed out of its spot, lights burning. He swerved and crashed into its trunk like a hammer hitting a nail. The car jolted forward and its driver shouted in protest but Patrick hurtled on. Reaching the apron in front of the store, he turned hard again. A few people moved in and out of the store using crosswalks which he was all too willing to ignore.

“Hey! Hey!” a man cried out as Patrick sped toward them.

The man and his female partner leapt in opposite directions. Patrick collected their overfull shopping cart instead. Groceries splattered the hood of the SUV. Dented, the trolley tumbled across the parking lot. A bottle of soft drink spun and hit the asphalt then launched itself into the air again like a fizzing rocket. In the backseat, Eric made another choking sound that almost sounded like laughter.

“Oh, you like that, do you?” Patrick said as Eric hiccoughed and started crying again.

Patrick pulled into another aisle at random. Ahead, a woman with two small children loaded bags into her car. She struggled to corral the kids while handling the groceries. He picked up speed and swung toward them. Finally she looked up, eyes wide and white. A pang of conscience managed to cut through the madness. At the very last moment, he swerved again. His car clipped the woman’s trolley as she and the children jumped back. The shopping cart spun and smashed into another vehicle.

For the next couple of minutes, Patrick stalked up and down the rows like a prowling beast. He swerved and pinballed off of parked cars, threatening more shoppers. People, however, disappeared behind the vehicles or back into the store. Short of targets, Patrick’s adrenaline began to ebb and sanity threatened. Then he saw red and blue lights strobing at one of the entrances to the parking lot.

“No, not yet! I’m not done yet!” Patrick said.

Patrick knew the grocery store and its parking lot. He headed for a different exit and left the police cruiser behind as he hit the road again.

For a few long moments, Patrick wasn’t sure where to go next. The streets suddenly seemed empty. Then, he remembered the entrance to the freeway wasn’t far away. With no police in pursuit, he drove for it.

Joining the onramp onto the freeway, Patrick shoved the accelerator to the floor. The SUV climbed to its top speed. While the response through the vehicle felt sluggish, the onramp shrank rapidly to an end. He merged without looking, swinging wildly onto the freeway. Behind him, another SUV had to brake and spun sideways, nearly tipping onto two of its wheels.

“Fuck you! Fuck you!”

Part of Patrick thought maybe he could just keep driving. Wherever the road took him, eating at drivethroughs and pissing in takeout cups. Never stopping, never sleeping. That way, he’d never have to face what he’d done. But Eric kept shrieking, hungry, tired, mad. And a tiny voice of reason told him that it wasn’t possible. In an attempt to drown out the voice, he drove even more recklessly. Wrenching the wheel, he sped between other vehicles. A tanker trailer dragging a full load behind it slammed on its brakes. The long, silvery container being towed began to jackknife. He sped past it, holding the accelerator to the floor.

It wasn’t long before Patrick spotted flashing lights behind him. They grew rapidly in his mirrors, weaving between other vehicles, morphing into a pair of police cruisers. Patrick was traveling at top speed but they gained on the SUV easily. A couple of wolves dogging a stampeding buffalo. They seemed to clear the road. One moved in as if to perform a PIT manoeuvre but then pulled back.

“Pull over! Pull the vehicle over!” a voice on a loudspeaker shouted over the sirens.

Patrick’s phone started buzzing in his pocket. The call was routed to the screen on the SUV’s dashboard. Glancing at it in the corner of his eyeline, he saw the name ‘Taylor’, his wife. Answering was as easy as thumbing a button on the screen or speaking aloud to the car’s computer system. In spite of his hesitation, he answered the call.

“Patrick! Patrick, tell me it’s not true! Where are you? Where’s Eric?”

“It-, it doesn’t matter! I can’t fucking go back, I can’t go back!”

“Go back where? Patrick, stop! Whatever you’ve done, stop it now!”

“If I stop then I have to-, and I can’t! I’m at the end of a fucking rope here! I can’t stop, I can’t fucking deal! I’m tired, and I’m fucked! And he keeps fucking screaming!”

“Patrick, bring him back! Stop the car, bring my baby back!”

Patrick slammed his open palm into the screen. It managed to catch the button to hang up and ended the call. He slammed his hand several more times into the dash and steering wheel.

“Fuck! Fuck, fuck!”

One of the police cruisers drew alongside the SUV. From one window to the next, he could look the cops chasing him right in the face. No, he didn’t want to go back. He didn’t want to deal with everything that came next. Instead, he let his worst impulses take over and shanked the wheel sideways. The heavy SUV hammered the police vehicle hard enough to send it careening into a waiting guardrail. Sparks fanned into the air as metal shrieked, the guardrail crumpled. The police car spun to a stop, already smoking. Patrick left them behind but several others joined the chase. Overhead, a helicopter flitted through air above the freeway.

One of the police cruisers surged up behind the SUV and punched its nose into the SUV’s back corner. Patrick wrestled the steering wheel but lost control. The unwieldy vehicle spun out like a carnival ride. He was wrenched sideways in his seat. Eric screamed. Airbags exploded from the wheel, the dash, and from the door beside him.

The SUV slammed to a stop. Patrick battered the airbags back down. Outside, police vehicles surrounded the SUV but none of them attacked the vehicle yet. End of the line. He still wasn’t ready but there was only one way out. He thought of Taylor and he thought of Eric. What they would think of him. That was the one good thing about Eric, no matter what he said or did, the baby wouldn’t judge. But he wouldn’t stay that way forever and if Patrick went through with what he was thinking then he wondered what his son would grow up hearing. About his crazy father who nearly killed him. Who killed himself because he couldn’t face the future after one little mistake.

“No, no, I won’t let them. I won’t let you hear it.”

Patrick’s phone buzzed again. He ignored it as he unbuckled his belt and reached into the backseat. He unclipped Eric from his seat then scooped him into his arms. The baby squirmed and screamed and fought, face scrunched into an angry purple ball.

“Sorry,” Patrick said.

Patrick stuffed the baby under his shirt. Eric kept fighting but he tucked the shirt into his jeans tightly enough to hold him in place. He looked around the car but all he could find to suit his purposes was a remote control for their garage door. He stuck it in his back pocket and then climbed out of the vehicle.

“Get on the ground! Get on the ground!” someone bellowed.

“Hands in the air!” another cop shouted.

Blocking the freeway, lights strobing, sirens wailing, police cruisers surrounded the SUV. The police chopper thundered overhead. Eric screamed under Patrick’s shirt but with all the noise even Patrick could barely hear him. Cops took cover beside their vehicles, guns raised.

Squinting into the sunlight, Patrick first acted as if he was complying. He raised his hands and started to turn. He braced, if bracing for such a thing was possible. Eric’s tiny limbs drummed his chest. With a sudden, rapid movement, he snatched the remote from his back pocket. In a blur of motion, he whipped it around at the nearest cops.

“Gun! Gun!”

Handguns erupted. An overlapping chatter of pistols, what sounded like dozens of rounds. Patrick jittered backward as bullets found their marks. The holes in his chest felt like blowtorches. Yes, blowtorches, tongues of blazing blue flame cutting through flesh and bone. Something smacked him above the eyes then everything went black.

Already dead, Patrick’s body teetered backward and slid against the side of his badly damaged SUV. It dropped, finally, and hit the ground with a wet smack. The sound of pistol fire fell silent immediately.

“Cease fire!”

Lights strobed and the helicopter continued to make passes overhead. Cops moved in to confirm the suspect was no longer a threat. The garage remote lay close at hand. They searched for a gun but it was obvious that Patrick was dead. Holes cut through his shirt in a dozen places and a crater marred the left side of his forehead. Blood thickened in a growing pool beneath him.

“The suspect is down,” one of the cops said. “Repeat, suspect is down, deceased.”

“Wait, what the fuck is that?” another said.

Something squirmed under the perp’s shirt. One of the officers began to raise his gun again but another stopped them. Moving like it was, beneath the torn and bloody shirt, it looked almost tumourous. Like something bursting free from the suspect’s chest.

“Wasn’t there a kid in the car?”

“Oh, shit!”

Several cops fell immediately on the body. One pair of hands found the shirt’s collar and ripped it open. There, nestled against his father’s chest, bathed, baptised, in his blood, was the baby. One of the officers scooped it up carefully and checked it over.

“Not a scratch,” they said with amazement.

Baby Eric blinked at the bright sunlight. Unfocused eyes moved from one cop’s face to the other. With a cooing noise, the baby inhaled, gurgled, and quietly smiled.

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Sean: I used to have a recurring nightmare of sorts. I’d be storming around this hotel lobby or something in a fit of rage. I have quite a bad temper which I’ve worked for years at controlling, quite successfully I’d say. I don’t know what’s supposed to have set me off in the dream but I’m yelling and punching walls and throwing furniture. And I’m completely aware in the dream that I look ridiculous, I know that I look like a grown man having a temper tantrum, but oh boy it feels good. It feels so good to scream and stomp and just let it out presumably because in real life I had to suppress that urge. I might look ridiculous but I feel invincible.

But then, in the dream, I feel so unstoppable I decide to throw myself headfirst into a big pane of glass. The glass shatters but a big shard breaks off the top of the frame and hits me in the neck. Either it decapitates me or gets me in the jugular, I’m not sure, because all I know is the next thing is I’m on the ground and I’m bleeding out and everything is going dark and I’m going to die because I let my stupid temper get the best of me. Writing it out I realise, this is not a terribly subtle dream. You probably don’t need to be Sigmund Freud to parse some meaning out of this one. I did wonder if it might be recurring because I was receiving a vision of how I was going to die, so, if this does end up happening, I called it.

Anyway, I wouldn’t have had that dream in well over a decade. Probably closer to two. And, as I say, I’ve usually got a pretty good handle on my homicidal urges. I will say though, I’m extremely sound sensitive when stressed out. Point being, I wrote this story before my daughter Zoe was born thinking of it as a kind of worst case scenario. Thankfully, as I wrote about last week, it hasn’t turned out that way! Babies are actually super easy, fatherhood is fun, and I’m actually a lot less stressed now than I was when I wrote it.

Next Track: The Police – Every Breath You Take