Crashed. Melinda Ferguson

ride. If I had done what I had felt like doing at this point, I would have said no. I was tired and worried about getting the car back by 4 pm. It was already 3:20 pm. What if there was an unexpected hold-up, a robot down, a power failure on Sandton Drive, as there so often was at this time these days? I needed to leave. Now.

      But instead of saying no, I sighed inwardly, smiled and agreed for the girls to accompany me.

      “People pleaser,” I snarled to myself.

      Some of the top talent at The Mag, the Food Ed, the Deputy Ed, the Copy Ed and I made our way to the rooftop parking. Before we left we took a group selfie and posted it on Instagram. Then I pumped up the jam and we headed out of the parking lot, some dope Lil Wayne blaring from the speakers. It felt like we were cruising Miami. By the time “No Scrubs” kicked into gear, the world was ours for the taking, all 338 kilowatts of power bursting to life.

      This little Italian bitch of a ride needed very little coaxing. With her quick throttle response, within nanoseconds of pressing my foot on the edge of the accelerator she was begging for more in a hysterical cadenza of dizzying revs. She could have pushed Primal Scream off the charts.

      Instead of heading into rush-hour traffic, I decided to rather err on the side of safety and work my way along the back routes, through Benmore, a small-business-type residential suburb, just in case the main route was jammed up. It was 3:25 pm, plenty of time to travel the 7-kilometre journey back to Cali’s palace on William Nicol.

      Parked in neutral at the red light, crossing into Benmore, I couldn’t help but appreciate the great ironies in my life. Perched behind the tiny leather-bound steering wheel of this mega-million super car, images of what I once was exactly 14 years ago flashed before me: homeless, abandoned, addicted, trapped on a beggars’ farm in the middle of nowhere, on the bones of my then drug-depleted, malnutritioned skinny 48-kilogram white ass, hacking, coughing, lungs bleeding, a shell of a human, begging for oblivion, at the doorway of death.

      For fuck’s sake, I grinned to myself, how amazing was life? How much could one person’s entire existence change? Forget 360 degrees – mine was a 720-degree double revolution. I mean, I was the girl who was never going to drive. “The more you drive the less intelligent you are” – I had held onto that mantra for many years, the one from Alex Cox’s Repo Man, while I proceeded to get loaded, sprawled out on the back seat of other people’s cars as they ferried my usually inebriated self from A to B, backwards and forwards.

      And now this.

      I revved a little and checked my reflection in the rear-view mirror from behind D&G shades I’d bought for a fortune in the Roppongi district while attending the Tokyo Motor Show a few years earlier. God, I was a lucky bitch, I smirked. The Cat that Got the Cali. Another good chapter title for the book I was itching to write.

      On 11th Avenue, a long single-lane street that stretched almost all the way to connect with William Nicol, we found ourselves stuck behind a large delivery truck travelling at a snail’s pace. Fucking, hello? We were now forced to crawl at 20 kilometres per hour in a car that could screech to 100 kilometres in less than four seconds.

      I checked for oncoming traffic. Nothing for as far as I could see – the long road to the right completely clear. Here was my chance. I could rev her up, overtake this slow boat and get a bit of open tar to show my girls what this beauty could do. It seemed like the simplest thing in the world. I touched the right pedal, and she growled with impending pleasure. I began my move.

      And then, just as I sailed past the truck to nip back in and take my space on the left – I could not have been moving faster than 50 – I saw it. It would be an image that would continue to haunt me.

      A flash of red.

      An almighty meeting of metal on metal, a thunderous crash from Thor’s mansion in the sky and then a blur: a fast spin into a spectacular vortex, round and round into a cyclone of uncontrolled motion, swallowed up into a ravenous 12-metre wave of timelessness, a free-spinning roll of air. There was no sound, just the deathly choir of angels waiting to receive us.

      On and on we spun. We seemed to whirl forever. And then suddenly it all slowed down … time distorted like a 45 single playing on 33.

      And then I felt it, the White Light. It came in from above, descended and encased us.

      Like a monster shadow, it wrapped itself around me, around my everything. It took control like a lioness holds her litter, swirled around the spinning red and brought it to its knees. Everything stopped for the very longest time. It grew quieter, quieter than the dead end of time. The silence was impenetrable. Nothing moved. Then I breathed for the first time. I was alive.

      And then the screaming began.

      “My baby! My baby!” I heard a woman wailing.

      Slowly, catatonic, I opened the driver’s door. The red car lay sprawled in jagged fragments across the tar, like a toy that had been pummelled by a hammer, a mashed-up sardine can, road kill festering in the sun.

      Across from me, on the other side of the road, a seven-seat Pajero stood rammed up on the pavement, left side smashed. The traffic light lay on the pavement, dismembered, the amber light still flashing. I moved across the road, slow like a donkey slouching to Bethlehem in Yeats’s “The Second Coming”. The driver of the Pajero was holding her baby. They were both alive. No blood.

      The vultures were gathering fast. Phones whipped out, cameras clicking. Ambulance sirens screeched in. The appearance of tow-truck scavengers – six of them – was almost immediate. Within minutes, a sicko blogger who follows crashes posted images of the crushed red metal disaster on his website.

      News of the crash spread like an oil spill on social media. Twitter and Facebook were jam-packed with threads of dreck. Malicious jibes and comments of glee from fellow motoring journos were some of the worst.

      Thankfully, I refused to engage with any of the debased cruelty that erupted straight after the crash. In that dark post-crash depression I may very well have topped myself if I had.

      The following morning Gareth Cliff gloated about it for ten minutes on 5FM’s breakfast show. By Sunday the newspapers were running page-three stories: “Bestselling author writes off rare R3.2 million Ferrari.”

      Months later, when I am brave enough to look, I am shocked at how heartless humanity can really be. But the defamatory comments that probably hurt most were those around my sobriety and assumptions that I had relapsed on a crazy binge of crack and alcohol. Jokes about women drivers were par for the course. Of course.

      Back at the accident scene, spaced out in shock, I numbly turned to check on my three passengers … Everyone was alive but stumbling around like zombies. The Food Ed had blood running from above her eye and, for a second, I thought she had lost her eye. The Copy Ed kept on repeating, “My phone, my phone.” Her BlackBerry lay crushed on the tar next to my mutilated D&Gs. The Deputy Ed walked in circles, shaken, eyes glazed over.

      Then some vague thread of logic kicked in. I looked at the time on my phone, which had somehow remained unscathed in the pocket of my leather jacket. It was 3:45 pm. Insurance. A bolt of panic shot through me. I needed to phone the car dealer to alert the insurance before 4 pm. That was the agreement.

      Somehow I found the strength to dial the number.

      “Hello? Hello, Tracey?”

      A woman’s voice answered.

      “Hello, hello? Can you hear me? Something terrible’s happened. An accident. You have to come quickly – now. Benmore 11th … You’ll see it – there are people everywhere.”

      “I’m sure it’s fine. Just stay calm – we’re on our way …” the voice on the other end of the line said.

      “No, you don’t understand … It’s not fine. It’s really, really fucked. It’s not fine … not fine at all.”

      I dropped the call. I wanted to be sick. Where was my pink leather handbag?

      JG