Angel was strapped into the back seat. After 88 hours the M25 still curved out in front of the bonnet. She felt like a stone on the end of a rope swung in Trafalgar Square, centrifugal force holding her out of the city. Though it wasn’t. That nonexistent force was really the result of tethered motion, moving forward but held in a loop. That withholding seemed to stop the clock. Here in the Car’s bubble, Angel existed outside of time, travelling to the same spot. The cars driven anti- to her clockwise created a zero sum. After all the fuel was burnt no net gain was made and no time had passed.
The Bell Common Tunnel rang with the sound of engines, this clock always striking zero on a clock face without hands. The Car was tired, its tyres predicting its journey, theirs predicted by white dashes. The Car existed always outside of time, or at least bore it without experience. Angel was light but her Driver was heavy, and the Car wished for speed to lift a proportion of his weight.
Passing the Erith exit, Angel was reminded of plugholes, and the whirlpool at Waterworld in the Midlands. These were the opposites of her current state, sucking in where London held all away. Clacket Lane Services could peer in at least, but Tandridge Golf Club would never get to London. Nor would Wraysbury Reservoir, nor Pinewood Studios. London kept its grime unsullied.
Angel sat still as the Car held everything outside. She thought of this pattern repeated down to her atoms, and she thought of how nothing was created. She thought of poaching an egg. Cracking it into a swirl of water boiling with drops of vinegar.
© Matthew Joseph Johnson, 2010
