Tunnel vision

There’s nothing innately sinister about tunnels. Dr. Sigmund would even argue they’re merely sexual metaphors, but not necessarily evil. That is, unless you have other repression issues, but that’s a whole ‘nother therapy session.

I digress…

It started when we were talking about our Spring Break trips and Chris made such a big deal about the tunnels cut through the Smoky Mountains. Beth kept asking if he held his breath while driving through, then Kevin said his family just honked the car horn.

Of course, the more ridiculous the topic, the more heated their debate. Honk or hold your breath, lift your feet driving over railroad tracks, punch buggies. It was all so stupid.

Jan stayed uncharacteristically quiet until her silence sucked all the other conversation out of the room.

Everyone turned to look at her, waiting for an explanation – a silent, group “what?”

Squaring her shoulders, she declared she had never been through a tunnel, and she never would.

“I will drive 100 miles out of my way to avoid one,” she said, more a challenge than a
simple statement.

Being game for any dare, Kevin asked what we all wanted to know.

“Seriously?”

After bugging her until she finally gave up her phobia, she tried to make us believe that when she was a kid, her dad drove into the west entrance of Bankhead Tunnel in Mobile, and never came out. Vanished, car and all, like a cruise ship blundering into the Bermuda Triangle.

I already knew the truth.

Jan’s mom was first cousins with Chris’s sister’s best friend’s neighbor, who’s daughter dated my brother. Jan’s dad ran off with the chick working the front counter at the Blockbuster. That was just some crazy story her mom came up with, and tried to pass off as the truth.

Maybe Freud was right, and tunnels do represent va-jay-jays.

Trifecta, a weekly one-word prompt, challenges writers to use that word in its third definition form, using no less than 33 words or no more than 333. The week’s prompt is: Sinister [adj. \ˈsi-nəs-tər\] 3: singularly evil or productive of evil