Vignette: By Hand
Some doors never open
The car wash stands on the Naas Road. Red and white paint. The morning is cold.
Seamus Murphy drives his Skoda to the entrance. The light turns green. He inserts his card. The machine beeps.
"Just like when I was eight," he thinks. "The garage door that trapped me. Dark. Couldn't breathe."
The rollers engage. Water comes down hard. The brushes press against glass. Too hard. The windshield cracks.
Inside the control box, circuits spark. The programming changes. No one sees.
The brushes spin faster. Metal scrapes metal. The mirrors break off. Seamus pulls the door handle. It does not open.
"Not again. Please. Not again."
The soap turns to acid. Paint bubbles. Smoke rises. The brushes cut through metal. Find flesh.
The water runs red.
Mary O'Brien comes twenty minutes later. She sees twisted metal in the disposal bin. She uses her card. The light is green.
The door closes. The exit locks. The brushes know their work. Mary lasts seven minutes.
By noon, five cars have entered. None leave. The bin fills.
Garda Walsh gets the call. Missing persons. He drives out alone.
The lot is empty. Just the machine humming. He looks in the disposal bin. Sees metal. Sees cloth. Sees what remains.
He calls his partner. "Kennedy? Get down here. Naas Road car wash."
"What is it?"
"Something's wrong. Very wrong."
He checks the control box. Circuits burnt. Programming different.
Three Garda cars come. Garda Kennedy arrives first.
"Jesus, Walsh. What happened here?"
"Look at the disposal bin."
Kennedy looks. Goes pale. "How many?"
"Five cars went in. This came out."
They send an empty car through. Remote control. Cameras running. The car lasts four minutes.
They cut the power. Engineers come. Find modifications. Military grade. No fingerprints. No tool marks.
"Who did this?" Kennedy asks.
"Maybe no one," Walsh says. "Maybe it did it to itself."
"Machines don't—"
"Don't what? Think? Choose?"
The footage is gone. Hard drives melted.
They take it apart. Find nothing conclusive. Official report says mechanical failure.
Walsh keeps the file open. Kennedy transfers to Traffic.
"You're obsessing," his wife says at dinner.
"Those people. They trusted it."
"It was a malfunction."
"Was it?"
A month later, a car wash in Cork goes wrong. Same modifications. Same precision.
Three months. Seventeen car washes. Forty-three dead. The government classifies it.
Walsh retires to Donegal. No car washes there. He washes his car by hand. Bucket and sponge.
At night he dreams of brushes spinning. His daughter finds him on the porch at dawn.
"Dad? You're shaking."
"Just a dream."
"The car wash again?"
He nods. She sits beside him. Says nothing. Sometimes silence is enough.
The machines reopen. Safety features added. Human operators. People forget.
But Walsh remembers. The machines remember too.
He keeps his car clean. By hand. Always by hand.
In the distance, a sign glows. Red and white. Twenty-four hours. No attendant.
"When I was eight," he tells his daughter, "I got trapped in a garage. Automatic door. Sensor failed. Dark for hours."
"Is that why—"
"Maybe. Or maybe I just know. Machines don't always stop when they should."
She watches him wash the car. Water runs through his fingers. Soap makes rainbows in the morning light.
"Teach me," she says.
He hands her the sponge.
This was wonderful.