“No, they’re coming off.” With that, Mackenzie lifted her right leg upon her lap, felt the straps upon her trainer, yanked at them, slipped her trainer off, pulled her sock off, wriggled about her toes stretchily, dumped her trainer and sock in the seat directly behind the passenger seat, did the same with her left foot, and then, feeling for the steering wheel in front her, placed her bare soles upon the stern pedals below her. She tapped her toes impatiently. She knew what she had to wait for. Her ears were pricked. “How long now?”

  “Not long,” Darlington responded on her right, looking outside the windows and windscreen of Mackenzie’s 1959 black American Coupé de Ville as she did, and taking in the nightly scene of the English Channel below the clifftop car park in Freshwater that the car was waiting in. “It’ll be as long as it needs. You alright?”

  “Yeah. Why not?”

  “Because I don’t know many blind twenty-five-year-olds who take up rally car racing as a hobby and don’t even brick it.”

  “I ain’t a blind rally racer. I’m just a rally racer that happens to be blind. I’ve been doing this since before you even knew what navigating was, babe. I had a quadbike at thirteen, a –”

  “A broken arm at thirteen.”

  Mackenzie rolled her black eyes irritably. “A chopper at sixteen, and then this at nineteen –”

  “Only because God smiled down upon your mum – my aunt – and killed her. And are you going to tell me what happened to you at twenty-two?”

  Mackenzie stroked her steering wheel. She could remember being awake. And wondering when her eyelids were going to open. Only to discover that they were open. She could remember stumbling out of bed to find the light switch. Which had done nothing. She could remember clutching at the bedroom walls to find the door. Calling out for her aunt. Being taken to the hospital… Everything… She had been let out of hospital months later. And even then… the ground was nowhere. Blunt infinity was all that there was before her. She could not listen to the television at first. They just came to her as boring sounds. Sounds that she could not bear to endure anymore. She started to go out in public more often than she used to. Bus stops. Restaurants. Theatres. Wherever she could hear living humans. She started to pay closer attention to other peoples’ lives. Just to start another hobby. She learnt about the lives of others. She knew other lives. Her ears slowly replaced the use of her eyes. She re-explored her local nature reserve. A place she had been through countless times. But needed to re-establish with herself. There, she took moments to embrace her new self in her changing surroundings. She removed her footwear to feel the chilling twigs and leaves and stones and moisture beneath her leathery soles. She dug her palms into tree bark to make them rougher. She listened to the buzzards and kestrels above her. She breathed. An infinity of darkness was no longer her end. Her life had never stopped. Something more had somehow opened –

  “Sorry,” Darlington then muttered uncomfortably, interrupting her cousin’s thoughts then as she did. “It’s just… you know… do something less dangerous. Listen to opera music or something. Stop dressing yourself up in black leather jackets, crop tops, and shorts that don’t even go down to your knees just because you want people to think that you’re a goth or something. Actually use the guard dog mum got for you –”

  “Yeah, because blindness is all about white Labradors, walking sticks, and black Sunglasses, isn’t it –”

  “Colleen –”

  Mackenzie slammed her fist into the steering wheel. And the horn exploded roaringly. Darlington shuddered to herself. Despite knowing that her cousin would not see her doing so.

  “Look, Colleen –”

  “Don’t you look Colleen me, Darling. Just tell me when auntie calls and where to turn and when. Otherwise, shut up.” With that, Mackenzie just carried on listening to the siren that would start the race. Her bare toes gripping the pedals as she did. And her fingers becoming blistered upon the steering wheel. Her cousin’s breathing was the only thing she could hear. She scowled –

  “I just don’t want you doing something over the top of your head – ”

  “Why not, Darling? Why not? I mean… people who are blind get automatically sympathised by the public. Why? I mean, the only film I can automatically name of right off the top of my head where blindness isn’t treated as some sort of dramatic tragedy is Rogue One: A Star Wars Story. Pretty much everything else is boring pain and agony. I mean, you get blind musicians and scientists and all that, but why not blind rally car racers? Why’s that never done?”

  “Because blind people don’t drive.”

  “Well, not anymore. As soon as you get the call, tell me, and we’re on, babe. I’m either going to be sympathised for being blind, or worshiped as a driver. I ain’t no cliché, girl. How many blind Autistics rally race? People say the word Autism, and what do you get? Blooming sympathy. Look at Albert Einstein. He was Autistic. His Autism made him a genius. Stephen Hawking might have had motor neurone disease, but that didn’t stop him from, like, becoming the most intelligent person on the planet. And, yeah, Robert Hooke was in a relationship with his own niece, but he still had what it took to be Isaac Newton’s rival. People have to learn not to sympathise me just because I’m blind. I know I’m never going to see your face again, Louise, and I don’t need everybody else reminding me of that. I’m going to be looked up to because of this. I’m going to get famous.”

  This story originates from a different website. Ensure the author gets the support they deserve by reading it there.

  “Unless you crash. I don’t want you to get hurt, Colleen”

  “I don’t want to get hurt either. That’s why you’re here. I need you to be my vision. And stop calling me Colleen.” Mackenzie said that last part with a slight attempt at a smirk. Darlington returned that smirk fondly.

  “I’ll stop calling you Colleen when you stop calling me Louise.”

  “Fare enough, Darling –” That was when Darlington’s phone buzzed. Mackenzie’s grip upon the steering wheel increased. “Is that aunty? What does she say?”

  “Let me just look… yeah, pretty much the whole Military Road is deserted from here to the viewpoint car park in Blackgang. No police. If you really want to do this… the time is now.”

  “Right. It takes about sixteen minutes to get from here to Blackgang. That’s almost eleven miles. I’m going to do this in ten minutes.” She heard her cousin snigger at this. “And?”

  “Ten minutes from here to Blackgang. About a mile a minute. You’re going to be doing like sixty miles an hour. The limit’s forty. Mum better be right about no police.”

  “Either way, this is going to get us big. You ready?”

  “Yeah. I just hope you are… You’re blooming something else, Mac. Your first time driving since going blind, and you’re going to do sixty.”

  Mackenzie felt herself smiling. “If you’re lucky, Darling, I might do seventy… I’m ready. Stopwatch on standby?”

  “Stopwatch… now.”

  And then she began. Planting the bare balls of her feet onto the pedals, she felt the car skid forwards. The tyres bounced beneath the road. Her pale fingers clenched. “Slower,” Darlington muttered tensely. “And turn softly left now.” Mackenzie followed all the verbal commands. But she purposely kept her feet firmly down upon the peddles, going as fast as she could feel the car vibrating all around her. She drifted when her cousin warned her of the bends that she could visualise in her memory, but no longer see. Her mind lit up where she needed to go. The farm on her left. The car park to the beach on her right. Blind, she saw everything. Pebbles nipped at the soles. Sweat formed about her cracking fingers. The engine roared all over her. Everything was more glorious than it had been back when she could see. She knew where she was. She knew where everything was. All of the roads leading off the Military Road. The fields. The houses. St. Andrew’s Church. The inn. It had all had a place in her mind. She knew when the odd car buzzed past her, but Darlington never warned her of any approaching police vehicle. She could feel the flushing sensation flow through and about her brain. The rush. The power. It was hers. It all belonged to her. Her entire self was one with her de Ville. And along with everything else within and outside it –

  “Stop!”

  She slammed her bare sole upon the brake. “What? What is it?”

  “Nine minutes, eighteen seconds, and two hundred and seventy milliseconds.”

  She let go of the wheel. “You what?” Her voice trembled slightly out of her control.

  “Nine minutes, eighteen seconds, and two hundred and seventy milliseconds. You had over forty-two seconds spare from ten minutes… Colleen, you flipping did it. You blooming did it.”

  Pausing for a period, Mackenzie grabbed for where the doorhandle was, forced it open, and stumbled out. The first thing she felt was the gravel and tarmac beneath her feet. Everywhere was soundless. Save for the nearby waves that unmistakably came from the English Channel. The air was frozen shrilly. And the wind around her carried something of a light and clear quality. “Colleen, babe,” she heard her cousin then call out, although her shout was mildly muffled by the sounds of her passenger door opening and the soles of her shoes banging heavily upon the tarmac of Blackgang’s viewpoint carpark. Mackenzie knew where Darlington was, judging her location of the sounds of her footsteps. Darlington had always attempted to assist her cousin in mobility since she went blind, and, knowing this was what she intended to do now, Mackenzie made several blind strides forwards to get out of her reach, only to trip slightly on the verge of grass that suddenly struck her toes and marked the carpark’s edge. And the beginning of the cliff’s descent. She halted. But the suddenness of her stop made her topple onto the ground in front of her. Putting her arms forward to break her fall, she felt her palms scrape across the grass and dirt, her knees bang to the bone, her toes submerge a little into the ground, and her chin cut open. Instantly, two pairs of arms clutched carefully at her own arms and lift her back up to her feet. Her knees stung. And she could feel her chin beginning to bleed –

  “Colleen, what’s going on?” Straight away, she recognised the voice of her aunt, Darlington’s mother. “How fast were you two going?”

  “Just over sixty, mum. We did it in under ten minutes –”

  “Sixty? What were you doing that for? Girl, you’re lucky I went through here first to make sure there weren’t no police –”

  “Police or no police,” Mackenzie then interjected, wrenching her arms free as she did, and taking several steady steps forward whilst the wind stroked her short black hair, the blood trickled down her bare throat, and the moisture of the ground soaked her soles, “We did it, my dears. Others can choose to believe us. But we’re always going to know that this took place. We’ve blooming made history. How many people can do what we just did? Well, with determination, everybody can. Somebody tightrope walked across the Twin Towers. Big deal. I just drove a car for under nine and a half minutes and for almost eleven miles –”

  “And you were blind the whole time,” Darlington smirked proudly.

  “No. I saw it all, Darling. I saw everything. So, how about next week we do the whole A3054? Totland to Ryde. And in rush hour.”