Chapter 6: The Symphony of Sputtering

Chapter 6: The Symphony of Sputtering

Jake spent Monday morning in a state of suspended animation. On the surface, he was the picture of routine. He woke at six, drank his coffee while reading the news on his tablet, and packed a simple lunch. He exchanged a normal, placid goodbye kiss with Sarah as he headed out the door to a landscaping job on the other side of town. But beneath the calm, a high-frequency current of anticipation hummed through his veins. Every cell in his body was listening, waiting.

He glanced at the cousins’ house as he backed his F-150 out of the driveway. The decrepit Cavalier was still parked in its usual spot, a monument to indolence. For a fleeting moment, a sliver of doubt pricked at him. What if they didn't go anywhere today? What if they let the poisoned fuel sit, separating and settling, its potency diluted by time? He pushed the thought away. Their brand of stupidity was restless. They wouldn't be able to resist the allure of a free tank of gas for long.

The job was straightforward—clearing overgrown ivy from a brick retaining wall—but Jake found it impossible to focus. The rhythmic snip of his shears and the scrape of his trowel were a flimsy cover for the storm in his mind. He was a composer waiting for the orchestra to begin, a demolition expert waiting for the charge to blow. His phone, resting on a nearby garden stone, was the detonator. Every time a notification chimed for a spam email or a text from Boris asking about the postponed wood chipper project, his heart leaped into his throat.

He thought of the concoction sitting in their fuel tank, his ‘Rotten Egg Gas’. He could visualize it with the clarity of a diagnostic schematic. He pictured the heavy, black waste oil, laden with microscopic metal shavings, being drawn through the fuel lines. It would be coating the delicate fuel injectors with a thick, gummy varnish, choking the flow of fuel to a trickle. He imagined the diesel, anathema to a gasoline engine, washing the lubricating film from the cylinder walls. He could almost feel the friction as the pistons scraped, raw and unprotected, building a fatal heat. It was a beautiful, elegant, and brutal piece of engineering.

By 10:30 AM, the suspense was becoming a physical weight. He paused his work, wiping sweat from his brow with the back of a gloved hand, and took a long drink of water. He stared at his phone, willing it to ring. He had orchestrated every detail, every variable. All he needed now was confirmation that his masterpiece had been performed.

It came at 10:47 AM. His phone didn’t chime; it buzzed with an incoming call, the screen flashing a picture of Sarah. This was it. He stripped off his work gloves and answered, carefully schooling his voice into a mask of casual neutrality.

“Hey, honey. Everything okay?”

“Oh, Jake, you will not believe the morning my family is having,” Sarah’s voice came through the line, a frazzled mix of exasperation and second-hand embarrassment. It was the tone she reserved exclusively for news involving Randy and Billy.

Jake’s heart gave a single, triumphant thud. “What’s going on?” he asked, injecting a note of mild concern into his voice.

“It’s Randy and Billy, of course,” she sighed. “My Aunt Carol just called me in a panic. The boys were driving somewhere—probably to look for jobs, she claims, which, you know…” she trailed off, the skepticism evident. “And their car just… died. Completely gave up the ghost.”

Jake made a noncommittal sound of sympathy. “Oh, that’s too bad. Where’d they break down?”

This was the crucial detail. He prayed it wasn't some quiet side street where they could fade into obscurity. He wanted an audience.

“That’s the thing!” Sarah exclaimed. “It was right on Maple Avenue! Smack in the middle of the intersection with Oak Street, during the absolute peak of the morning rush. Carol said the guy behind them told her the car started belching this disgusting, thick black smoke—way worse than usual—and then it started making this horrible sound, like a bucket of bolts in a blender.”

A slow, cold grin spread across Jake’s face, a secret he kept from the world. A bucket of bolts in a blender. It was a more poetic description than he could have hoped for. That was the sound of pistons seizing. That was the music he had written.

“She said it just coughed a few times and then died completely, blocking the whole northbound lane,” Sarah continued, her voice a cascade of mortified drama. “People were furious, just laying on their horns. They had to get out and push it to the side of the road. Can you imagine? The humiliation! It’s a total mess. Now Grandpa has to go figure out a tow truck…”

Jake leaned against the cool brick of the retaining wall, the sun warm on his face, and closed his eyes. He could see it all. Randy’s weaselly face pinched with panic, Billy’s dull expression frozen in bovine confusion as a chorus of angry horns serenaded them. The thick, greasy smoke of his ‘Rotten Egg Gas’ hanging over the scene like a funeral shroud. The beautiful, chaotic, public failure. It was more perfect than he had dared to imagine.

“Wow,” he said, letting just the right amount of feigned shock into his tone. “That’s rough. Are they okay?”

“They’re fine,” Sarah said dismissively. “Just stranded and useless, which is their natural state. I swear, those two have the worst luck.”

It isn’t luck, Jake thought, the grin returning. It’s physics. It’s cause and effect.

“Well, let me know if they need anything,” he offered, the lie tasting sweet as nectar.

“Don’t worry, you’re the last person they’d call. They’re probably too embarrassed,” she said. “Anyway, I have to go. Just wanted to tell you about the latest disaster. I’ll see you tonight.”

“See you tonight, honey.”

He hung up the phone and stood in silence for a long moment, the sounds of the neighborhood—a distant lawnmower, the barking of a dog—fading into the background. He replayed Sarah’s words in his head, savoring each detail like a connoisseur tasting a fine wine.

The symphony had been performed to a captive audience. The coughing, sputtering percussion. The bellowing, black-smoke brass. The shrieking choir of angry car horns. It was a glorious ode to consequence.

He thought of the eighty dollars he’d lost, of the smug, insolent wave from Billy, of the sheer, bone-deep disrespect. And now, he thought of the bill that was coming due for them. The tow truck fee. The mechanic’s diagnostic fee, which would be a long, confusing, and ultimately fruitless investigation. And, finally, the price of a dead car, a worthless heap of scrap metal.

The first phase of his plan was a resounding success. A wave of exhilarating satisfaction washed over him, clean and powerful. He had taken their chaos and answered it with his own brand of meticulous, calculated order. He had administered the first dose. And as he picked up his shears and returned to the ivy, a single, cold thought solidified in his mind.

This was only the beginning.