There's a gas station across the street from the bar I frequent. Except it isn't. I mean, it has three gas pumps sitting there in a center island with a large aluminum looking fake roof above them, held up by two brightly painted poles. There're some large metal garbage cans around the lot; there's even a big glass fronted store at the back. There are signs around, all of them flat and white, gleamingly proud of proclaiming nothing.

The store section is empty. The lights are off, the shelves barren, the coolers in the back are empty, too. No, what was once a gas station is now a lifeless husk of a property lot. Except someone forgot to take everything away.

It's been like this for a few years now. Just sitting and waiting, poised to become something any day but never actually following through with the threat. Dust gathers and every now and then some kids tag the windows with paint, but that's it. Oddly no one has broken the glass front yet or taken anything of note.

It still looks like it might be a functioning gas station except for the emptiness and lack of real signs. Sometimes people pull into it and sit, waiting for a moment until they realize the score. And maybe that's why everyone has left it. It's a great naturally occurring prank. I don't know.

But it's always felt off to me. Which is why, most nights, when I stand outside the bar talking to people, I keep an eye on it. I don't know what I expect to happen considering all the time I spend collectively just keeping an eye on it. I couldn't tell you for any price there is a real answer. Just that something was off with it.

Which may explain Jimmy's actions. But probably not.

So there I was, standing outside talking to some guy, some guy who kept talking nonsense in my ear all about some shit job he worked. The night was fairly clear, crisp, and endless. Just the way I like them.

I spotted Jimmy's car down the block, driving in, like normal. What wasn't like normal at all was the way he veered off the road and gunned it straight at the gas station. He took out a pump and cut right through one of the support poles for that roof overhang thing. It promptly fell, hitting the trunk of his car, and stuck there, getting dragged the last twenty feet or so through the plate glass windows of the abandoned storefront.

I hit the guy next to me and shouted something stupid-- bad dialogue happens to the best of us at times like that-- and ran across the street. Jimmy was getting out his car, picking his way through the remains of the store, grinning like an idiot.

"Jimmy," I asked him, "what the hot fuck was that about?"

"I didn't like the way it kept looking at me, man." Now when Jimmy said that I searched his eyes for madness, drink, or drugs. I found none of them. It was just Jimmy back there. I turned and looked at the store and then back at him.

"Yeah," I agreed and helped him across the street.

Sirens wailed away at the night not long after. The cops came, a fire truck and an ambulance bringing up the rear. They questioned Jimmy, who by then was saying things like, "My brakes went out I think," and "I don't think the wheel was responding."

The cops nodded and took a lot of notes and tested his breath and made him walk in a straight line. We saw his car was a loss when they towed it clear of the wreckage. The gas station was a total loss.

Now the gas station is boarded up and is being torn down over the next few weeks. Jimmy is fighting with insurance about his car. We all had a story to tell about the night he drove into the place. Everyone says things about his brakes and how lucky he was to have an abandoned gas station handy to go out of control near.

I nod and smile.

The gas station doesn't look at any of us kinda funny anymore.