The rack's legs needed adjusting in width before the final fitting on the car's roof. Bolts screeched harshly as they were wrenched tight against the washers, causing the metal feet to be ratchet-trapped between the roofs raised ridges.

Solid as a rock, thought the car's so-called owner, as the car indeed rocked from side-to-side rather than the rack rocking solo, when one of the rack's stop-side bars was man­handled in a mock road-test. It'll take a bootful of luggage, the owner believed. But the car had other ideas, as its tyres literally ached at the thought of being overloaded. The in-car stereo system bleated in sym­pathy—without being switched on. However, the owner had gone off to fetch the luggage and had not noticed that the car was giving a realistic impression of being possessed of a life beyond its own.

When the owner returned, the car had begun to tilt over, with the apparent ambition of turning com­pletely turtle. And, once on its back, the rack groaned with skewing metal joints, its legs splayed at tortuous angles, revealing points of which mediaeval swordsmen would have been proud. The wheels pointed into the sky, as far as such round things could point. Twirling freely, they were proud of their new-found inde­pendence from engines.

The owner of a head scratched it. Top-heavy was not the word. But the vocabulary of human beings could not cope properly with situations, in any event. The car itself screeched louder than the loosening bolts—bolstered by the heavy-metal music mix which, as it was, the stereo found hard to encompass with too few graphic equalisers.

The owner-driver, pile-driven by a raging rack, screeched yet louder—as various human interior organs were punctured far too slowly for comfort. The hi-tech sneakers paddled the sky, but at least the toe-ends of rubber soles could point.

A rack and ruin of a corpse, with kidneys for eyes—yet still a lead singer, heavy or not.

 Published 'Stuff' 1995