Green
By Slyford Rabbit

You love the smell of flameproof jelly in the morning. You revel in its sharp peppermint smell as it rolls down the sides of your helmet, feeling it evaporate as your helmet’s cooling fans blows cooling air at your temples.  It’s a smell that’s been a part of you for as long as you can remember, almost as long as the smell of burning rubber and methanol vapors.

You’re getting strapped into the car, now.  The pit crew tacks up the net you have for a driver’s side window.  As they work another crew member buckles you in and checks your radio with his walkie-talkie. Through it all you keep calm on the outside, cool, collected, easygoing.  This is nothing new for you.

Inside your heart is thumping out of your chest.  The butterflies never really go away; when you started on the circuit you had halfway expected them to dull down after a few years in the sport but you can never quite shake that anxiety.  After all, how could you possibly get used to strapping yourself to a steel cage designed to move at screaming fast speeds?

The pace car lumbers by as you flip the starter switch.  Immediately the car comes to life under you, rumbling like a monster in slumber.  The pit crew clears away as they finish with the car.  You goose the gas pedal and feel the engine roar out in anticipation; the sound and vibrations pound your chest, making your heart beat harder and faster.

In your head you start counting off the seconds while easing your way out of pit row.

This is what you were made to do, the pit crew chief screams in your earbud receiver.  He didn’t need to tell you that.  You know you were meant to race from the first time you jammed that shifter into first gear.  This is your element.  Here you can put your balls to the walls and get respected for it; all or nothing has always been your motto, and it is here that you gain notoriety for doing just that.

You readjust your grip on the shifter and revel in the way your leather driving gloves creak and crackle over the shifter’s ball.  Outside the pits you slam down on the clutch and shift to second gear, making sure that you really pound it home and get the engine roaring. The crowd loves it.  You love it.  The race fever in the air redoubles as the cars make their agonizing pace lap around the track, all waiting for the magic signal.

All hell will break loose.  You know that, the other drivers know that, the fans know it, and everyone is welcoming it with open arms.  Someone may crash and die.  Someone may run face first into a wall.  Someone may miss a turn and sent white-hot chunks of sharp steel hurtling towards the fans.

But hey, go big or stay home, right?

You force yourself to settle back into the seat as you continue to drive – you always had a bad habit of tensing up during a race.  You’re too excited to sit still and loose like they teach you at driving school. But no amount of relaxation or calming will ease the tension in your foot.  It sits poised over the gas pedal, waiting for the all-clear to slam the metal to the floor.  You want it.  You need it.  You yearn for that feeling of raw, sexy, powerful speed.

The fans in your helmet work doubly hard to try and keep up.  Your breath comes short and shallow.  Your eyes widen as the time comes closer, ever closer, the time in which you can finally run free.  Engines on the track scream out in anguish, longing for release. Your car joins in the cries.  Under your breath you find yourself growling, mumbling, begging for the flag to wave.  The muscles in your shifter arm start to twitch from being so tense.

The pace car pulls away.  You slam the pedal to the floor and let the car slam you into the seat.  From your throat comes an inhuman moan of elation as the car thunders down the track at full tilt – the only way that car wants to be driven.

With a triumphant chorus of roaring engines, the green flag drops.  It’s race time.