A long, low black sedan rolls into the empty parking lot in front of Uncle Mel's D_ive-In, stops smoothly, the sound of its wide tires crushing dirt giving way to the not-really-a-sound-more-a-feeling deep nearly imperceptible rumble of whatever it is being fed by the four carburetors whose open pipes stand stand in line through neat round holes in the hood. The driver's door opens slowly and a wiry man dressed in a suit of silk blacker than the car slides out and unfolds. If there had been a beholder he would have been surprised that so tall a man could have fit in a car with so low a roof. But there are no witnesses as the man glances at the tire tracks all leading out of the parking lot, the tracks that seem momentarily to glow as if the man willed them to reveal themselves and they did. The glow died as the man's eyes followed their direction up the road, and as he raised his eyes, he raised his head and sniffed the air, reading the fumes, cataloguing them, and then he smiled a small, tightlipped smile, that had no humor or benificence in it, only satisfaction that he understood all, that things were going as he expected, as he planned. He folded himself up and slipped back into the car, mumbling softly, "So now I have you, you greaseball John Denver clone...you owe me a pinkslip--two, actually: your car and your soul...." He turned on his car's radio just as Commander Cody finished singing "My daddy says, "Son, yer gonna drive me to drinkin',
if you don't stop driving that hot...rod...Lincoln."
Boobah-doobah-doobah-doobah-doobah-doobah-doobah-doobah,
Bibbah-dibbah-dibbah-dibbah-dibbah-dibbah-dibbah-dibbah,
Beebah-deebah-deebah-deebah-deebah-deebah-deebah-deebah,
Beedahp, baddleyah-dahp, bop.

The car rolled quietly out of the parking lot, amazingly quietly considering the fact that by the time it was two hundred yards down the road it was going 175 miles an hour...

--seed