The Dingbat is The Ubyssey's satire section. Send pitches and completed pieces to blog@ubyssey.ca.
It’s dark. You’re driving down University Boulevard, and the silence of your nighttime drive is only fractured by the sweet lullabies of a crooning Taylor Swift filtering through your car stereo.
You pass the 99, narrowly avoiding being stuck behind it for the duration of the creep down this long, winding road. Students, like zombies, stumble toward McDonald’s in a cheap-burger-induced trance.
You are alone. You roll down your window, and a cool breeze hits your face. The humble cooing of campus raccoons surrounds you in a calm musicality. The sky is cloudy and rainless save for a gentle mist which places delightful dew drops on your windshield. It’s a perfect drive — too perfect. You speed up, delighted by the gentle purr of your car’s engine, when all of a sudden you see it.
A flash of black. Then blue, that dreaded blue.
Skrrrrrrrt. Screech! Crash! Clang. AN EVO. You gasp. Another near miss.
Maybe next time, you won’t be so lucky.
Fellow students of the University of British Columbia, I must inform you of a dire situation: one which may end horrifyingly. If I am to mysteriously go missing, then I am sure you are all to know why.
Evo Car Share is trying to kill me.
What lies beneath such soulless, black and blue exteriors? What secret motives rest beneath the hood? This, my friends, is a question that may remain unanswered for all of time.
It started September 2021. A young first year, I drove myself to school with pep — excitement in the press of my gas pedal, I fell into a rather positive relationship with the roads. They respected me. I respected them. Until, I noticed a trend.
A regular night owl, I often spend my evenings haunting the halls of IKB. A quick skip to North Parkade, and I’m on my jolly way. However, these late nights revealed to me an uglier side of the UBC driving crowd.
At first, an Evo stopped in the middle of my parkade, unresponsive to the frustrated flash of my headlights, only daring to move once honked — odd, but understandable. Then, one parked in the middle of an intersection. The light green, I flash my high beams. I honk. Perhaps, I dream it in my dreary state, but not even the silhouette of a driver could be seen. Another honk, and from the left hand lane, it made a dreadful turn right before scampering off into the night.
Like wild creatures, they are unpredictable and dangerous. Not yet accustomed to human folk (like our civilized mascot Kip) DO NOT approach an Evo in the wild, for then they may spook, and you may face the unspeakable consequences.
A year passes with similar levels of bizarreness in encounters. I grow used to it.
One morning I spot an Evo wrapped around a telephone pole: its windshield cracked, bleeding onto the road the inner fluids which support its life. An odd sight, but alas I press onward.
I tell myself it’s not a sign.
A week goes by. West 10th. Handle on my car door, I watch as an Evo makes a U-turn, rather, drives directly into the curb, then a tree, before screeching off down the road in a disoriented limp. I fear that next time, I may be next. I imagine myself parked not two metres from where I was standing. My fate becomes clear.
After school, I went back to my car. Left completely alone upon my departure, it is now surrounded by one, two, three, five, SEVEN Evos. Their scratches and dents serve as ample intimidation. A threat. The smooth white paint of my car gleams in the moonlight and I fear for its fate. Disfigured. Mangled. The decrepit Evos whispers into the night, “you’re next…you’re next…you’re next…”
Another morning. From a left turn only lane into my right turn lane, an Evo cuts me off. SLAM! go my brakes. Dear reader, he drives off without so much as a blink. I survey my surroundings and in this busy hour it still seems that not one other person has witnessed my near-death experience.
A cool shiver cuts through my spine. Even in daylight, I am alone.
And so, it is with great fear that I recount these events to you. Fear for me, as I am evidently being targeted. Fear for you, as there’s no telling who might be next…
Do they desire destruction? The scent of oil and the sharp screech of metal on metal? Or perhaps they crave chaos, driving without care for safety, propriety or even themselves.