The intersection at Archer Rd

Another day walking up along the chipped beige wall. Beyond the plain color, its easy to see the jungle mural with its small ornate leaves painted under it. Cars rush through the intersection to the main road, their axels squeak from the sharp left turn blowing trash and broken car bits towards the narrow sidewalk. At the beginning of the crosswalk I stop and wait as a few hot rusty Junkers rush through it, tired engines putter up one of few steep hills in central Florida. It's hard to hear the beep of the crosswalk button when I press it with my elbow. The intersection crossing 13th street with Archer Road is the hottest place in the city, a solid infertile space of sidewalk and grey concrete that bakes any pedestrian or peddler like a slow cooking egg. I assumed all cars with their shade and air conditioning had it better until the day I turned to see who was parked first at the stoplight.

It was a convertible car with its top up, several people in tank tops and cheap shorts were slouching inside its shiny leather interior. After another inspection of the vehicle I realized the top was not up, but ripped off. While this alone would be strange, the most eye catching area of the car was its front. A series of wild scenarios crossed my mind the second I put my eyes on it. A fire under the hood? A bad front collision? A car part robbery? None of my ideas, brought any certain explanation to what I was seeing. The entire car was black and it looked like the color was applied through spray paint. Any front it had could not be understood by the bystanders terms. Nothing but random parts attached in that area through duct tape or sheer luck. This area too was blackened by spray paint. A windshield or side windows were nonexistent, just a loose car body with headlights dangling off like dead flowers.

There it idled, a poor clunker that had been disemboweled and sewn back together into a disfigured metal Frankenstein with shabby paint. A tired sagging shell of what it once was. That is, if it was anything to start out with. I couldn't believe such a sad machine could drive, but it did. When the light turned green its tires moved forward. All four of them seemed like a separate entity from the car that bobbed on top. Any logical person would suspect the main body was seconds away from sliding off of its foundations as the loose covering trudged through the intersection. It left as quick as it came, some strange anomaly that gave my bizarre dreams a run for their money. I crossed the sidewalk, seeing the last of the thing lurch up the hill and disappear into traffic.