The cop kicked out his stand and casually strolled over, flipping the cover of his ticket book before looking at me. “Morning, sir. Could you please dismount and turn off your engine?”
I did as he said. My headlight died, just like my chance of getting home without getting caught by the pigs.
“Any reason why you’re not wearing a helmet?”
I’m fucked.
Truth is, I didn’t want to wear the fucking thing like a good little boy. I just wanted to feel the wind in my hair, and hide behind a bandana like an outlaw.
“It was stolen while I was taking a piss.”
His bland expression flattened by a fraction. The guy had clearly heard every sort of bullshit excuse from every kind of nut job. “Did you realise you were speeding around the bend back there?”
“Nuh. What speed was I doing, cunt-stable?” He ignored my jibe and started jotting down my license plate on his ticket book. “Don’t you guys have an app for that now?” His pen paused for a millisecond before he continued to write the government a cheque for an obscene amount of my money.
“I’m going to need your driver’s license. Have you been drinking tonight?” He narrowed his eyes, obviously unamused. His look told me that he’d like to add the word ‘dickhead’ to his question.
I shook my head. Even though I did have a drink late last night, technically, I haven’t had anything today. He tested me anyway and I just scraped in under the limit.
I’ve got nothing against the pigs. They’ve got a shitty job, and we’re all buggered without them. I was just being a petulant little shit because my care factor was in the negative. I wanted to stir up trouble. I wanted the adrenaline rush of skirting the edge of danger. Riding the winding roads of Mount Glorious in the early hours of a Saturday morning had felt like a good plan. If I happened to take a corner too wide and launched into sweet oblivion, well, I’d crack one last smile before my exit. If my face remembered what to do. There was nobody home to answer the door anyway, if the cops came knocking. So, what would it matter?
He handed my license back with the ticket, explaining my offenses, and the consequences that came with them. Five hundred and ten dollars and four demerit points later, I still felt no remorse. As I stood there with my arms folded and legs apart, I felt the adrenaline continue to pump through my veins, feeding the anger that thrived in my shrivelled heart. I was pissed that I didn’t just slide off the edge of the mountain. Now, I was stuck waiting for a cop car to take me to the nearest train station.
I didn’t want to go back to that house. I didn’t want to go back to living the nightmare I’ve been forced to endure. I did not fucking deserve to live at all.
Ronnie—Present Day
Rhythmic breaths screamed through my lungs. As my feet hit the pavement, shocks ricocheted up my body. I was sharing the dawn light with a handful of diehards, braving the onslaught in order to flog our bodies into a state of fitness, discipline and beauty, or in my case—numbness. This torture was as necessary to me as breathing. Sometimes I run twice a day, even more when I'm not working. It was a feeling I revelled in. The pulsing of muscle, the surging of blood and endorphins, the sting of fatigue and lactic acid … it’s my bliss.
I lifted the collar of my singlet to wipe the sweat from my neck as I passed another runner. If there’s one thing I didn’t like about running, it was the sweat. The feeling of it trickling down my neck was particularly offensive. It reminded me too much of … unwanted visitors. They’re never too far away. As inescapable to me as the need to take a dump, and about as pleasant.
My arms and legs continued to pump as I turned my head to gaze across the brown, Brisbane River, watching the city wake up. Vehicles either scurried home for the day, or started out early on the Riverside Expressway. Cranes perched themselves on infantile skyscrapers, stretching their necks, ready to cast their lines for the next piece of the puzzle. I couldn’t hear anything but the thumping of rock music through my earbuds, though, and that’s just the way I liked it. But I could smell the river, and the overlay of wet clay on the humid breeze.
I swivelled my head back around just in time to notice an Ibis scavenging for treasures left over from last night's social scene in South Bank. Heaving my body up, I leaped over the bird, spinning in mid-air so that I landed facing the direction I’d come from. It opened its long black beak, giving me the stink eye and probably squawking at me. Not that I could hear it. I was tempted to give it the finger. I was tempted to give anything the finger, if it got too close.
My head jerked up at some movement behind Featherbrain. A young woman stood applauding with a huge grin on her face. Smart arse. I resisted the urge to bow and flip her the bird. Turning back, I pushed my aviators up the bridge of my nose, pulled down the shade of my baseball cap, and yanked two handfuls of my long, brown hair to tighten my ponytail. It flapped against my back as I ran, acting like a blanket in the sticky heat.
My peripheral vision registered that I’d gained a companion. The young woman had started running beside me. She was actually keeping pace,
