Lanes

“Why are you honking at me you fucking idiot?”

The accelerant ignites and I am instantly engulfed in white heat rage.

“Fuck you!” I roar, jabbing my finger in the wing mirror as she makes eye contact, wildly gesticulating some audacious accusation that I’ve wronged her in some way.

It’s way worse that it is a woman, I presume she is being righteous because she thinks I’m straggling across two lanes – WHICH I AM – but if she weren’t so fucking thick, she might have noticed that there are fucking idiot cars parked in my lane and so I’m merely TRYING to keep going without hitting them, whilst showing I’m notionally in that lane for before moving in. It’s not like I’ve cut her up or anything.

But lo! She revs past me in her five litre tank with all the machismo of the drag race last lap.

Tiny, like Pinky’s brain, she sneers down at me from her elevated perch. The sheer arrogance of this person is breathtaking. Thinking I should just pull in for her after she blasts her horn, just to let her by? I don’t think so love.

That’s what I would have shouted if I were feeling reasonable, but I’m so fucking fed up of drivers like her.

So, I don’t do that.

Instead, I lean on my horn and flick my lights at her. Onoffonoffonoffonoff and start to accelerate. Again, onoffonoffonoff.

I’m no longer breathing with ease.

Who the fuck does she think she is? I’m fully committed to seeing the chase out.

She weaves in and out of the lanes, testing me. Or maybe obliviously, given her sense of self-importance. Water off a ducks back to her kind.

I follow her every move, every lane change, overtake, undertake, overtake; hoping she feels the weight of her new shadow.

She drives faster; faster than I would ever drive normally on a city road, but I match, adrenaline rising. Thriving on the wickedness of it all and daring her to pull over.

The fantasy that I’m an undercover cop in pursuit, ready with cuffs to make her life hell has really taken hold. Fully committed, I grip the wheel and dig in.

By some fun coincidence, she’s actually going the way I’m going for quite a shlep, so I race up behind her, amber gambling one, two, three sets of lights.

After a time we are in tree lined suburbia -it’s just the two of us now. Sorry now, bitch?

I pretend to note her reg plate with pantomime flair.

Then my turning is here. I slow, indicate and turn.

We diverge.

Lucky for both of us I think.