The race began, and every racer spent less than a second before zooming off from the starting line, leaving Jeremy alone with his thoughts.
The sounds of revving engines zooming off from the starting line filled their ears accompanied by the sight of engine smoke covering the air, causing the neon lights to streak in the veil of the gassed air.
Their cars moved faster than he could have imagined, taking off within a split second of his thought. They streaked neon lights behind them as they moved, colouring the race tracks in artistic beauty.
"Whoa! This dream might not be so bad after all." His eyes widened, the neon colours reflecting off his pupils as he watched the cars zoom.
Reality snapped him back to his situation when he realised he hadn't started driving yet and every eye was set on him. The cold chill of everyone's gaze rippled through his skin.
'Shit! I have to get going.'
He glanced down at the engine setup before him. The only recognisable features were the steering wheel, the hand brakes, the accelerator pedal, and the clutch pedal.
Apart from those features he recognised from his own world, the rest felt alien to him, making him struggle to turn the ignition.
"Okay, if this is the steering, then the ignition should be somewhere close." He murmured to himself, tracing his fingers across the dashboard.
'It should be this button, looks pretty obvious for an ignition starter.'
He pressed on the button, and the car revved to life, vibrating under his weight.
The vibration made him feel alive, like it had been long since he felt what it was like to sit in a race.
"This actually feels really good," he laughed openly, staring at the neon indicators.
'These people love colours a lot.' One fact he noticed from the continuous use of neon shades in any form of light.
He slowly pulled the handbrake low, then with his left foot, he pressed the clutch pedal all the way down, then shifted the gear handle to the first gear. Then he slowly released the clutch pedal while placing his right foot on the foot throttle, the shimmering neon lights blazing behind him.
The car slowly accelerated from zero to a hundred in less than a minute. His adrenaline release was rising as well by the minute.
He followed the streak of neon lights left behind by the other drivers before it disappeared. Driving as fast as he could with the bare minimum effort.
"Mom always advised me to get my driver's license on time as it would be of help one day. I guess she wasn't totally wrong about that."
His thoughts drifted to his mom, who died a year ago due to cancer, which was the whole reason he started the bakery at such a young age.
At the age of fourteen, he took extra cooking lessons in school, always troubling the teacher to educate him more. The teacher, on the other hand, knew little as to why he wanted to learn more. She only saw him as an enthusiastic student and taught him anyway.
He, on the other hand, perfected his skills in baking, cooking and frying so he could finally open the bakery because it was partly his dream and the only way to raise enough money to treat his mother.
His dad had passed away before he was born, during a break in which he sacrificed his life to protect his pregnant wife.
His mom carried on to raise him as a single mom, promising not to marry any other man.
So practically, he was the only one who could help out his mother in her trying times, her times as a cancer patient.
He opened the bakery a year after finishing high school, skipping college to make money for his dying mother. The town he found himself in had little competition when it came to the bakery business, so it was a good source of income when you knew what you were doing.
He slowly became famous and started making enough money to pay for his mother's treatment, but after a while, she gave up her soul.
He continued the bakery in her memory, not skipping a single day as punishment for his lack of finances.
'Focus Jeremy, not right now. You have a race to complete before a universe gets erased because of you.' He snapped himself back to reality.
As his blurry eyes slowly focused, he realised he had caught up to some of the other racers. They were nasty drivers, drifting, wrecking, and causing havoc on the road.
'Is this even allowed in the race? I thought races were meant to be safe. Just drivers trying to surpass each other and get to the finish line first.'
'On second thought, I wouldn't blame them. I mean, the existence of their universe rests on their performance in this race, which, as I think about it, is a really weird tradition.'
He didn't want to get involved in any of that, but going ahead of them meant he had no choice, so he simply tailed behind them, waiting for the right moment.
Most of the drivers before him had been successfully wrecked and pulled out of the race, though it wasn't the end for them yet.
Another driver got wrecked in front of him, and his car stumbled and tumbled off behind him. When he glanced back to check up on them, he noticed something weird.
"Huh, every wrecked racer isn't removed from the race. Their cars are repaired by another group of weird creatures and they're sent back into the race. Man, this gets weirder and harder with every turn." He heaved, turning his head forward and facing the road.
For the time being, he had not been wrecked or disqualified for any reason yet. His pace was steady as a normal road driver, no drifts, no abnormal movements, just a steady speed behind the other drivers.
'So far so good, nothing abnormal has occurred. I'm hoping for the best from this race, a universe's existence rests on my shoulders and I plan to keep them alive, even if this is a dream!.'