The ceaseless humming of vehicles echoed throughout the central business district of Sandton, as motorists and taxi drivers alike wiggled their way in between the high rises that towered over the inferior city landscape.

Mixed in with the unsynchronized symphony of disgruntled groaning, the low hum of beggars, barters and business executives alike made up for the other half of the audible chaos.

As impossible as it had seemed for any one sound to peak higher than its peers, a single vehicle rose to the challenge.

Daniel Deiss was in a panic.

Wriggling in his cold leather seat as the blue Honda sped down the straightaway, he grabbed the Uber driver by the shoulder once more. “Wake up, man!” he yelled, shaking him like a rag doll. “What the hell has gotten into you?”

It had happened only moments earlier…

The two gentlemen had been talking about family and the importance of sibling relationships, an unusually deep conversation between strangers who had only known each other for about 15 minutes.

“Triplets?” gasped the driver with a look of disbelief. “I feel sorry for your mother,” he snickered. “I can’t imagine what that must’ve been like.”

“It’s had its moments,” answered Daniel amusedly, shaking his head with a wry smile as he eased into his seat. The cold leather interior creaked softly against his suede jacket until he found a comfortable sitting. “But for the most part we’re inseparable.”

“Glad you don’t mean that literally,” the driver said with a wink, for which Daniel had to laugh.

Mr. Molokowane was an elderly gentleman. From his seat, he permeated the faint smell of mint & aloe hand cream, which was popular among Africans for avoiding dry skin. Wearing a checkered beret that covered the grey curls in his hair, the Sepedi man was dressed in a brown tweed jacket, old denims and a white shirt.

Upon meeting him, Daniel had almost instantly admired the quiet respectability the old man had about him. Where many people would consider his line of taxi work to be menial and degrading, it was almost as if this gentleman had dressed for the occasion.

Clearly, this senior was a remnant of a bygone culture, one where its people cared for their appearance and found ways to dignify whatever labor their hands found to do.

“I can cope with the 4 ankle biters I have at home,” said Mr. Molokowane. “Each one is so different that they tend to balance the chaos of the other…but to have more than one of the same child would certainly overwhelm me.”

Daniel snorted. “At least we’re not identical…2 brothers and 1 sister.”

“So, whose the weird one?”

Confused at the question, Daniel furrowed his brow. “The weird one?”

“Every sibling group has an odd one out, don’t they?”

Daniel thought about it for a moment, amused at the thought. “Now that you remind me…”

By the time the two of them had finished the last bit of conversation on the topic, the vehicle had quickly fallen silent, not to the disappointment of either party. It was clear that both Daniel and his driver had long, tiresome days and felt no need to try force more extraversion than was needed.

It was then, as Daniel had started to doze off in his passenger seat, that Mr. Molokowane had burst out in sudden laughter, as if he had heard something greatly amusing. 

Daniel had still been startled by the sudden outburst and even started chuckling as well. But his amusement quickly died down when he noticed that Mr. Molokowane had taken both hands off the steering wheel and clutched his belly. 

More concerning, the laughter hadn’t stopped. It now even seemed to pain the poor man.

“Shouldn’t you get a grip on that?” Daniel had remarked casually, pointing to the steering wheel. In that moment, he had still trusted that his driver would swiftly resume his usually composed demeanor, for this sporadic behavior had been a strong contrast to the dignified poise Mr. Molokowane man had shown only moments earlier.   

Content that the old man would return to his senses, Daniel turned his head to look out the window.

Staring at the fleeting buildings in the distance had proved less uncomfortable than lingering in their shared moment of awkward confusion, so he decided to keep his face turned away until the laughter had died down.

Which it did, within a few moments.

At that point, Daniel felt a quiet sense of relief and convinced himself it was all right to breathe again. He felt a strange peacefulness from staring out the window, as the Honda Amaze sped them along the elongated curve of tar at about 80kph. 

As Daniel eased his left temple against the cold window pane, he lowered his eyes to look upon the road beside him. He thoughtlessly noticed how the car was nearing the end of the curve and figured it would need to straighten up again to make it onto the straight.

Staring into the rear-view mirror outside his door, he mindlessly gauged how the blue underwing of the Honda slowly neared the white line at the edge of the road.

It came closer and closer.

Keeping to himself, Daniel trusted that Mr. Molokowane would straighten the car at any moment to keep it within the lines.

Inch by inch, he saw the blue wing near the white line even more. The wheels touched the line, momentarily, then swept over them.

Daniel cocked his head back over his shoulder to look upon his driver, realizing the car was now only a few seconds away from smacking into the steel rail beside the road.

Only then did he find his Uber driver slouched to one side, passed out in his seat.

In that moment, a sense of panic rose in him but was quickly replaced by adrenal rage as his mind convinced him this old man would be his doom. “Wake up, man!” he yelled, clasping him by the shoulder. “What the hell has gotten into you?”

As more of his survival instincts kicked in, it was as if his panic was methodically being replaced by calculated aggression, a frustrating calmness that gave him clarity of mind and a singular focus: to survive.

Daniel jerked his head to look out of the front windshield. It was then as if another switch had flicked on and his greatest priority became keeping the car on the road.

He clasped the steering wheel with his right hand and started rotating it away from him.

The Honda rounded the bend and entered the straightaway.

From his quick glances, Daniel gauged the vehicle to now be moving at 95 kmph. It was likely that Mr. Molokowane still had his foot on the petrol pedal and now hastened their fate with every passing second.

What just happened? Daniel thought in a flurry of confused emotions. Never before was his mind so alert, hyper-analyzing every possible variable, every possible explanation, as to what might have caused his driver to pass out.

Of everything, the man’s sudden, uncontrollable laughter had been the most telling.

It reminded Daniel of his triplet brother many years back, how he had always been so convinced of his childish superstitions and the bad omens that preceded his various misfortunes. Daniel and their sister, Diana, had always mocked their brother for it. How childish had his irrational fears not been?

Yet, the similarities were now uncomfortably clear, about 15 years after his brother’s last ‘incidents’ had faded from memory.

“It couldn’t have been true,” he whispered in disbelief, fighting with one hand to keep the car in the lines as it raced down the bustling streak of tar. “It can’t be…”

In that moment, he realized Mr. Molokowane’s laughter for the bad omen it had been and knew he had only a matter of seconds to brace for the inevitable.

At the same time, there was another pressing matter fighting for his attention- the fact that the car was now nearing a red light at 103 kmph.

Crap, he thought and looked down between the two seats for the handbrake. It would be the quickest way to try and stop the car, as Mr. Molokowane still hadn’t regained consciousness.

Keeping his right hand on the wheel, Daniel would have to unbuckle himself with his left hand and stretch over his far side to grip the handbrake lever.

It wouldn’t have been such a challenging feat, he figured, if he wasn’t speeding past other vehicles at 107kmph!

He quickly wrapped his free hand over his waist and jammed his thumb into the red seatbelt button, releasing the steel tongue. Flinging the strap aside, he was about to stretch for the handbrake when his eyes started fluttering uncontrollably.

It was as if his sockets were filled with lead and he had to fight to keep his eyelids open.

In that moment, he felt a strange sense of irritated disbelief. It’s starting, he realized with great reluctance, now in a panic as the red light was only about 20 meters away.

There was no stopping it in time.

“No!” he yelled in defiance and squinted to maintain his focus on the road ahead of him. His temples started cramping up from the effort to keep his eyes open.

That was when he realized it was any moment before he would smack into the white vehicle in front of him.

Moments before impact, he noticed in the blurry distance that the light had gone green.

Within a matter of angst-filled seconds, the white vehicle before him crawled ahead, opening up just enough of a gap for Daniel to jerk the wheel to the right and scrape the Honda past it. As he did, he noticed the motionless body of Mr. Molokowane thud into the side of his door, like a lifeless sack of meat being flung about.

Smashing off the rear-view mirrors from both cars, he quickly compensated and brought the Honda back within the white lines.

Near miss, he thought with relief but noticed how the next traffic light had already betrayed him.

The problem, however, was that this one was much closer.

Daniel glanced over at the speedometer, eyes flickering uncontrollably, and noticed how the car had regained its speed, propelling them towards another set of red lights at 102 kmph.

It had to be now, he decided and stretched for the handbrake.

As he did, he went blind.

Eyes shut, Daniel found himself cut off from the outside world, unable to make out a single thing around him. He abandoned the handbrake and grabbed the steering wheel with both hands, fighting to keep it as still as possible.

In a strange way, he felt a certain calm come over him in that moment of intense focus. It was a sense of release that came from being helpless, completely at the mercy of forces outside of his control. He contended that panic was the last thing that would help him survive his fate.

With this new mindset, Daniel focused on controlling his breathing. It was about all he could do now.  

He quickly oriented himself towards the new, singular task that would determine the fate of himself and the old man beside him. The task was maddeningly simple: keep-the-car-in-the-lines, just as he last saw them.

As they sped down the straight, likely appearing as nothing more than a dark blue blur, Daniel could hear the engine roaring with reluctant gusto. Next, he felt a slight dip in the road and heard a flurry of vehicle tooters around him.

By the next moment, the cacophony of noises was gone again.

This signaled to him that they had successfully jumped the red light and were on their way to the next intersection, likely another few hundred meters ahead.

In the meantime, he forced himself to remember his brother, David, and to think back on the superstitious claims he had made during their childhood years. Always the victim of circumstance, their brother had an uncanny ability to connect the dots of his misfortune, as if he were some sort of doom prophet.

And deservingly, he had always been mocked for it.

Now, Daniel started to wonder if he and their sister hadn’t been too hard on him…

How did the stories go again? Daniel wondered now with a hateful detest towards his own blindness. Any hint would be helpful in those fateful moments. How long did he always say they had lasted?

Then he remembered…

Daniel focused on feeling for bumps and unevenness in the road and tried to adjust the steering as gently as he could. All the while, he realized that he was supposed to have counted down from fifteen the moment he had lost his sight.

In a few brief moments, he guessed that about ten of those seconds had already transpired.

All he needed was to keep the vehicle on the road for another 5 seconds, and he would get his sight back.

If I can just make it to David…he’d know…he also knows…

He started counting down from 5 and fought to keep the car straight as it jumped and dipped with every lump in the road.

“5 Mississippi…4 Mississippi…3…Mississippi,” he counted.

It was almost over.

He turned the wheel ever so slightly, fighting to ignore the burning anticipation that now ached in his stomach.

“1 Mississippi-”

His eyes shot open.

“Yes!”

He was at the end of the road. All that his recovering eyes could make out was the enormous blur of a grey high-rise that was headed straight for him.

He clutched both hands around the handbrake and jerked it up as hard as he could.

That was when a new, much harsher sound pierced through the unsynchronized symphony of disgruntled groaning, which the rest of Sandton had grown so intimately familiar with.