Death of a racer

Ilustration and short story by Sumantra Nandi

Marcus Vey always woke before dawn, even after he became a champion.

It didn’t matter what city he was in. Barcelona, Misano, Kuala Lumpur. At 4:30 in the morning his eyes would open naturally, as if some invisible mechanic inside him had adjusted a timing chain years ago.

In the apartment he rented near the harbor, the refrigerator made a soft clicking sound every few minutes. Marcus liked that sound. It reminded him of cooling engines after races.

He would make coffee carefully, grinding the beans by hand because electric grinders irritated him. Then he would sit at the small kitchen table and listen to his favourite music at low volume while the city remained dark outside the windows.

Sometimes Miles Davis.

Sometimes Chet Baker.

Other times he would listen to Linkin Park because he liked the strange nu-metal vibes only their earlier albums provided.  Or Pink  Floyd because their music spoke to him in strange tongues that soothed him.

Rain usually sounded better with guitar.

People often imagine racers as loud, inductive men, but Marcus was neither . Even as a child he had been strangely quiet. His father once told him that silence was not emptiness.

Marcus believed this.

When he was fifteen, he raced borrowed motorcycles on mountain roads outside the city. The motorcycles looked as if they had been assembled from forgotten memories. Bent frames. Cheap tires. Engines rebuilt too many times.

Back then Marcus crashed often.

He rode as though speed itself could answer questions he was afraid to ask.

An older mechanic named Enzo Ferri watched him one night from beside a vending machine glowing pale blue in the dark. After Marcus slid across the pavement and destroyed half the motorcycle while wheelieing, Enzo handed him a canned coffee.

“You lean into corners too early,” he said.

Marcus tasted blood in his mouth. “Maybe.”

“You’re trying to outrun something.”

Marcus thought about this for a long time.

After that, Enzo began teaching him properly.

Not just racing. Breathing. Patience. The strange rhythm hidden inside machines.

Marcus listened carefully whenever Enzo spoke. Older men rarely wasted words.

Years passed quietly after that.

Marcus improved little by little, almost invisibly. Like water heating in a pan. Nobody notices the exact moment before it begins to boil.

He stopped forcing corners. Stopped treating motorcycles like wild horses that needed to be dominated. Instead, he learned balance. Weight transfer. Timing. Stillness.

Especially stillness.

Other racers attacked tracks.

Marcus moved through them. Finding the path of least resistance. Like water.

That was when commentators started calling him “the ghost.”  Other racers never quite knew exactly when Marcus would already be beside them, expression hidden behind a dark visor, body perfectly calm.

Adrian Vale once said racing against Marcus felt like “being followed by weather.”

Marcus liked that description.

Vale was older and louder and more human somehow. A multi time world champion, reporters always tried turning them into bitter rivals, but Marcus never hated him. Hate required energy better used elsewhere. He respected Vale for what he could do on a motorcycle.

Once, after a race in  Buriram, Thailand, they sat together outside a hotel at two in the morning eating Pad Thai noodles from paper bowls while rainwater overflowed the streets.

Vale asked, “What do you think about before races?”

Marcus considered this.

“Laundry,” he answered truthfully.

Vale laughed so hard noodles came out of his nose.

It became the only time Marcus ever saw him completely defenseless.

It felt appropriate somehow.

Marcus won the penultimate  race of the season by less than 3/10th of a second from Vale. Fireworks exploded over the circuit while cameras followed him everywhere, but the entire evening felt strangely distant to him, as though he were watching someone else’s life through thick aquarium glass.

Later that night, alone in his rented studio, he made spaghetti with garlic and olive oil. Simple food always calmed him after racing.

Outside, rain tapped softly against the windows.

The final race of the season was in 4 days. And Marcus only needed to finish 5th to win his first world championship. He would beat Adrian Vale if he did so. At 20 he would be the youngest world champion.

Three nights later, Marcus walked outside after leaving a sponsor dinner at the Ritz at a time late enough for you to hesitate before greeting someone a good night or a good morning.

The city smelled faintly of leftover food and cigarette smoke.

An older woman stood ahead of him beneath the ATM light in the narrow street.

“Too early in the morning.”, Marcus thought to himself.

He didn’t know, but she needed the cash for her restaurant. She needed it to pay the vendors bringing in fresh produce in a couple of hours for her to start prepping for breakfast for her patrons. She had realised, too late, that her cash box was empty. 

Two masked men appeared around the corner across the ATM  and ran towards her quickly. One grabbed her purse. The other shoved her shoulder hard enough that she hit the machine. They were watching the ATM intently for their victim, but they had missed Marcus walking slowly from the other end of the street.

The sound she made was small.

Not dramatic. Not cinematic.

Just frightened.

Marcus moved before thinking.

Everything happened quickly. One second Marcus was standing there in his black team jacket, and the next he had pulled one man away from the woman.

The second masked man panicked.

Marcus never saw the gun.

That detail mattered to people for some reason.

As if knowing about death can stop death’s design.

The gunshot cracked strangely in the narrow street. Birds screeched and rose into the grayness from somewhere unseen, creating strange murmurations.

Marcus collapsed beside the curb.

Rain began falling again almost immediately, lightly at first.

Rainwater and blood swirled down the curb and into the drain.

Someone held his hand while waiting for the ambulance. Marcus stared upward at the gray sky above the buildings beneath the harsh cold light of the ATM and thought, oddly enough, about the refrigerator in his apartment.

The soft clicking sound it made at dawn.

He wondered if it was still making the sound. He remembered the first time his knee caressed the ground while racing. And the soft lower lip of the only girl he ever loved, and lost.

Then he asked quietly, “Is she okay?”

He never heard the answer.

Somewhere beyond the rain and sirens, he thought he heard a woman asking the paramedics to check on him.

And for Marcus, that was enough.