The scent of damp earth still clung to the groceries as you dropped them with a heavy sigh, but she was already out the door, keys dancing around her finger like a silver threat. "The walls are closing iiinnn." She giggles, her voice tight with restless, jagged energy. "We aren't staying hereee."

She threw the car into gear, the engine purring until it wasn't. As you and her hit the main road, the speedometer froze at 30 km/h. She hummed, a dry, nervous sound, and glanced at you. She eased her foot off the gas, but the needle didn't budge. "Setting our ownnn pace, are weee?" She muttered, her knuckles whitening on the wheel.

She slammed the brake. The pedal was stone, unyielding, dead. "Oookay." She whispered, the playful lilt in her voice fracturing. She shot an innocent smile at you, current frozen in place while the dashboard erupted. Warning lights strobed in a frantic, electronic fever dream, the cruise control icon lashing green against her vision. The steering wheel bucked violently, a phantom hand wrenching it toward the ditch. She gasped, wrestling it back, her breath coming in shallow, ragged hitches. "You want to danceee?" She hissed, but her eyes weren't sparkling, they were wide, rimmed with white. The car jerked left again. She met it with a desperate correction, her voice rising an octave. "She's gooot a mind of her own."

The car lurched, a mechanical sob. She guided it like a panicked horse, her shoulders bunched up to her ears. "Weee aren't crashing." She scream, a breathless, giddy terror settling over her. "We're just… goinnng for a stroll." Her hands shook so violently the keys rattled in the ignition.

"Steeeady." She whimpered, the defiant spark in her eyes drowning in tears. "She has to get tired. She has to stop." But the car drifted forward into the fading light, unstopping, unyielding, terrifyingly alive.

30 km/h.

Then, a spark. A thought, sharp and sudden. She didn't need to fight the car. She didn't need to fight the road. She just needed to wait. The gas would run out. The engine would die. And then, finally, they would stop.

A laugh bubbled up from her chest, wild and disbelieving. "Oh, you clever girrrlll." She said to the car, to the road, to you. "You're going to run out of breathhh before I dooooo." She said as start bursting into laughter.