This photo story is taken from the fall 2025 issue of VICE magazine, THE BE QUIET AND DRIVE ISSUE, a Deftones special. It is now sold out, so new subscribers will not receive it. You may still find copies in stores across the world—check here for a list of our retail partners or subscribe to get 4 issues a year, sent straight to your door.
ROLL THE WINDOWS DOWN
THIS COOL NIGHT AIR IS CURIOUS
LET THE WHOLE WORLD LOOK IN
Norma breezes in and out of the office every day like a ghost.
She passes through without causing a stir, unseen, though perfectly opaque. She is of no interest to her colleagues at the office, for she is extremely bland in both appearance and in character. Her skin is a pallid yellow-grey stretched across unfortunate features that when looked upon for too long spark irritation in the viewer without provocation.
The loneliness that drains her grows like a parasite in her brain, the parasite being her imagination, which with every feed grows more and more indistinguishable from real life. She has visions of romantic encounters with the lead singer of her favorite band. She sits at home and lets his albums spin. She dreams of sex and cars and sex on cars, sex in cars and sex with cars. Kissing the framed face beside her bed she closes her eyes and waits for the exact same day to arrive.
Incrementally, her passions develop with more and more intensity until a deep yearning envelops her. She wants to—needs to—get closer to him, to them. Already, she knows what every band member likes to eat and the names of their childhood pets. She knows enough to deduce where she might be able to construct a chance encounter.
She decides to devote her annual allocated work holiday to exploring this and drives to a posh suburb of LA one evening to begin her stake out. It takes a day and a half of burning anticipation in her car before she spots him from a distance, parking his car and entering one of the large houses. Heart pounding, she runs to his car, the night disguising her for the most part. She reaches the vehicle and can no longer contain herself. She licks and wraps herself around the car like a rabid thing. Sucking on the wing mirrors and writhing over the windshield. She slides beneath the car and wedges a heel inside the mechanics to try and get closer, to get inside, entwining a leg through the steel suspension. Lifting her body up against the undercarriage, she grinds until she orgasms.
This becomes routine. She learns his patterns, and waits to pounce on moments she can steal away with the car to devour his trace. She observes him on her lunch breaks at work, noting for later where he may have left a hand print on the car door, or where he left behind a trace of muddy shoe print on his way into the driver’s seat.
One day while filling up her own car, she is surprised by the intense craving induced by the petrol scent hitting her nose, triggering the memory of her nights with his car, turning her on. She looks at her car and it pleases her.
She watches him leave his car, this time noting the hardness of its body as he rests on the hood a moment to check his phone before going inside. She watches with jealousy at how he lingers around it. So casually, even though he has spent the whole day with this car, he is not sick of her. She thinks how unlike this car she is, with her squishy, disgusting body. She thinks how he would be sick of her if they had spent even half as long together. She realizes how the car acts as a necessary mediator so that she can pursue this relationship, the car is her avatar.
When he leaves this time, instead of running like a dog out of a cage as usual, she approaches the car carefully, slowly. This time, she examines the car with forensic precision. Looking at the glass, the metal, the machinery, the leather seats, taking in all of the textures and smells as she goes. She finds it all so beautiful, and it makes her sick.
She storms home, vibrating, adrenalized, nauseous. She looks at herself in the mirror and stares at her body. Her pale, anemic body, soft and undulating. It couldn’t be any more different to his pristine black leather-seated car, with its professional cleans and smooth tires that barely make a sound against tarmac. She almost throws herself at the mirror and cuts herself into a million pieces.
Instead, she lies awake in bed with her mind racing. As soon as the night becomes morning, fueled with self-loathing, she drives to the first open scrapyard. She selects the most stylish car parts she can find and on the way home purchases rubbing alcohol, sterilized compresses, a few scalpels, and other surgical instruments.
Without nerves, acting with pure unwavering intent, she begins to operate on herself, integrating the pieces of mechanics into flesh. On her left leg, she constructs what could almost be mistaken for an Ilizarov frame.
Admiring her work—her left leg bloodied, with a metal brace jutting out down the length of it—she feels better. She goes into work using a pair of crutches to help her walk and comes home glowing in ecstasy because of all the attention she received that day.
Soon however, the novelty wears off, and it’s not long before she starts looking for the next enhancement—and the next and the next. She starts taking small, unnoticeable pieces from his car, the epitome of feminine beauty, and surgically merging them with her own body. Until one day, while he is on tour, she decides to take the entire underside of the car and rebuild it inside herself, before taking the final step and amputating her hands and feet, replacing them with his wheels—her wheels.
Now fully merged with his car, Norma waits, immobile and hot. He returns home, clicking his keys to unlock the car. As he approaches he notices the smell of raw flesh, blood, oil and steel. He opens the car door and sees Norma looking up at him from the footwell, her face half open with cavities revealing metal screws, steel pipes, and a piece of engine where an eye used to be. She is the most beautiful woman he has ever seen. He starts the engine and rides her into the sunset.
CREDITS:
Artwork by Icysaw
Story by Siâna-Leànn Douglas
Concept + direction by Siâna-Leànn Douglas + Ben Ditto
This photo story is taken from the fall 2025 issue of VICE magazine, THE BE QUIET AND DRIVE ISSUE, a Deftones special. It is now sold out, so new subscribers will not receive it. You may still find copies in stores across the world—check here for a list of our retail partners or subscribe to get 4 issues a year, sent straight to your door.
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