Jake’s Jinxed Jalopy
It was an awful looking machine: Two decades old, and too broken down to be considered anything but a piece of crap. The original golden paint was worn away, leaving marbled streaks of white and dark in the steel. The seats were threadbare, with the ones in the back spilling chunks of brown and crumbling Styrofoam onto the torn and shredded carpets where the bare metal was shining through.
But that was all just the form of the thing. Its function was far, far worse. The engine would take fifteen minutes to warm up on anything but the hottest days. Even after it got going it would lose power at seemingly random moments, inevitable shutting off entirely at a random intersection, rolling to a dead stop and blocking traffic in all directions while Jake struggled to throw it quickly back into park so he could start it up again. While it idled it leaked smoke in a slim white plume that occasionally would get some unwanted police attention, and yet it always seemed to manage to barely pass inspection.
He’d owned the hunk of junk for five years, long past the point where he should have purchased another car. He had suffered with the terrible machine’s unacceptable behavior for all that time in spite of the fact that he could now easily afford something new.
The original Craigslist ad had described it as “well used”, but the truth was “used up” would have been far more accurate. He had gone out to meet the owner on a cold winter Sunday in an empty bank parking lot. The guy arrived late, but he arrived with a smile and a quick apology. The car seemed to run well, and Jake suffered through the man’s barely believable story about how the car had only been used for occasional sales trips up and down the peninsula. “It still runs like a top”, he told him, and when Jake took it out for a spin that seemed to be true. And at two thousand dollars the thing was cheap.
The deal itself had gone down without a hitch, and he drove away excited and satisfied. The car was his now. For the first ninety days everything was great, other than a few ominous moans and groans, and a busted speaker that sizzled on the highs and popped on the lows. Then the car lost power on the freeway, moaning for power, and jerking forward in spastic fits until it just gave up. He let his momentum roll the car toward the side of the road. The long blast of and eighteen wheeler’s horn as it barely managed to weave around him was one of the most terrifying moments of his entire life. It had been the water pump: $500.
A week later the timing belt broke free: $300. His mechanic, covered with grease and faded tattoos, patiently explained to Jake that while replacing it he had taken a good look at the carburetor, “These old Accords have a bad habit of sucking up goo from the bottom of the gas tank and choking on it.” He called the condition “The Black Death” and told Jake he’d need to replace the clogged part right away: $800 plus labor. Jake paid it.
The box of paperwork that the previous owner had handed over to him was comprehensive. There was a receipt for every bit of work that had been done on the car in its long life span, including all three owners before him. Each one had all taken immaculate care of the vehicle, eventually going so far as to replace the suspension and rebuild the engine. It was hard to feel ripped off, exactly—the car had been 17 years old when he got it—but he figured it would be worth a call to the previous owner to asking him whether he’d consider taking it back at half the price.
The phone rang twice before the disconnect message came on. Jake looked up the man’s name on Google and found the obituary notice on the second page of the search. The story of his death was unnerving. He had been driving his brand new BMW when a head on collision with a 1987 Honda Accord—a car of the same make, model, and year as the car that he had purchased—had obliterated both vehicles. A moment of random panic made Jake look out his window. The car was still parked in the driveway.
He pulled up the fate of the second owner by adding the word “obituary” and “crash” to the name he found on the paperwork. A week after selling the car she had been killed in a head on collision with another 87 Honda Accord.
Finding out about the first owner had taken more work. There hadn’t been much internet to speak of 1993. Scanning through scanned editions of the local paper allowed him to uncover her untimely demise in a “tragic head-on car crash.” Those were no more details, but he could imagine that the rest of it would involve a car of a very particular model, color, and year.
Jake was both terrified and embarrassed to be terrified. He had always been a rationalist to the core of his bones—the kind of man who believed that science was ultimately the solution to all the mysteries that mankind faced. But this was something that he couldn’t even begin to understand. He felt as if the floor had opened underneath him and he was suspended in air, his life maintained only by his continued ownership of rapidly disintegrating car.
In the four years since he had discovered the curse, the car’s insatiable appetite for repair had only grown. His original tattooed mechanic had long since given up any responsibility for the vehicle after referring to it as the “Black Hole” and offering Jake $500 to “take it off his hands for parts.” He found someone willing to keep the terrible machine running, no matter what the price.
Meanwhile, he spent his days trying to imagine the exact shape of the curse. Was it only selling the car that would doom him? Could he let it rust away under a tarp while he purchased and drove a new one, or would the murderous jealousy extend to any replacement? Perhaps it was all just proof that even the most rational human could become a superstitious idiot after being mugged by absurd coincidence.
As he pulled into the driveway Jake heard a loud bang from the engine, followed by a cloud of steam rising out from under the hood.
This was the last straw. He’d have his answers soon enough.