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A Short Story

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A Short Story

Postby joe_canadian » 3/9/2004, 4:29 pm

Wrote this for Writer's Craft and I'm a feedback-whore, so if anyone wants to read this and tell me what they think I'd appreciate it. :)

---

Pretender

The windshield wipers feel out their screaming metronome rhythm against the white car. Their tireless labour’s report is lost amidst the cacophony of a rain-shrouded city lagoon, even to the two occupants of the plodding vehicle’s cigarette-warm insides. Tony pounds on the cruiser’s cement grey cage.
He had been shouting obscenities for minutes without rest, but until this point Bill had not taken any interest in the particulars. Now, however, the white noise produced by the young man’s incredibly foul mouth took on a different flavour.
“Eh? What was that then?” Bill took his eyes off the crowded, rain blackened road to squint into the rearview mirror at his captive.
Tony ducks below the mirror’s eye, hesitates a moment, then resumes his vacant cursing.
Bill shrugs without feeling and resumes watching the red eyes of the back of a snarling semi that is his most immediate obstacle. He pats down his ash-brown hair and thinks that if the punk kid wants to run his mouth, let him.
Tony looks the way James Dean would’ve looked if he had developed his mystique and ego without also developing any recognizable charm or talent. His punching-bag frame slouches into his costume of old leather and faded denim. He perpetually holds a grimace on his artificially tanned face as though he smells something rancid in the air around him that isn’t his personal cloud of cheap, nameless cologne. What’s worse, he speaks in a muddy lilt that is allegedly evidence of his tough-as-nails Bronx heritage and loudly demands unquestioning respect for no specific reason.
Bill does not like him, and likely would have felt so even if Tony hadn’t tossed a wad of gum onto his perfectly maintained vehicle. Bill never takes kindly to carelessness such as this. The littering laws in Toronto are surprisingly tough, though few people know so. Bill knows: he has every bylaw and city regulation memorized in alphabetical order. He has to. He is not the most popular or privileged officer in his over-worked niche of the city. Bill is not a veteran by any means – being the go-to man for unthinkably trivial crimes keeps him afloat. He’d taken the chore of working the most petty of beats around town and turned it into a sick hobby, if only to force himself into enjoying his laughable work.
He makes a mental note to polish his city code book later that night when he cleaned his apartment. The cruiser swings ponderously around a corner with a splash, suddenly obscuring Bill’s view with a constellation of red and green lights smeared through the wind whipped rain. The policeman mutters about the traffic as he slides to as stop behind another inexplicable traffic jam.
Tony coughs out a hyena laugh.
Temporarily thwarted in his movement, Bill idyllically flips through the young man’s wallet, having happily confiscated it upon their immediate introduction. Driver’s license, expired. Decent picture, unusual. Anthony Miller it said, eighteen, from some nowhere hick town with an eleven syllable name Bill assumes is somewhere between Ottawa and eternity. Bill frowns.
“You said your name was Tony.” He says blankly.
“You said your name was Bill.” Tony barks back.
Bill’s brow comes in on itself, “Ah, yes? Has something in my demeanor suggested otherwise?”
Tony presses against the crisscross cruiser cage, “Your ID says William, Bill.” He sticks a dirty finger at Bill’s laminated personal identification, posted on his dashboard, as is regulation. Tony’s self satisfied grin provokes a roll of Bill’s bored blue eyes.
Bill has long loathed the arrestee habit of trying to sardonically outwit him in as many small ways as possible, “Clever,” Bill is a passionless liar, “so will you be paying the fine? Or can I expect the pleasure of your company overnight downtown?”
Tony glowers, “I’ll pay. Sure.”
“It’s a significant fine.”
“Sure. I’ll pay.”
“You sure don’t look like you can, punk.”
“And you look like an anal retentive asshole cop on a power trip.” Tony slurs the word retentive and takes obvious joy in saying the word anal.
“Mom and Pop’ll come to your rescue, eh?”
This seems to sting, “I pay my own way.”
“Right kid.”
“My own way. I don’t need nobody.”
Bill laughs with genuine vigor, “Yeah, you’re one tough character. Really impressing me, really you are.”
“Right… Right back at you!” Both know it was a pathetic barb.
Bill spies a peculiar slip of white amidst Tony’s identification.
“A welfare kid are you? Pity that.”
Tony is silent.
“I know you can’t afford this buddy. Good luck on the street.” Bill is a passionless cop.
Red light; wind dies down. Horizontal rain hurries to the Earth and thence through gutters like refugee pedestrians. Bill wonders at the absurdity of elements obeying the traffic laws.
The herd of vehicles accompanying the white car hover indistinctly in the torrent; infinitely far away, it seems, outside the car’s warm leather and glass.
The backseat white noise returns, Bill reflexively goes to turn on the radio but is taken by strange curiosity. He swivels his head apathetically.
Tony is weeping.
This has happened before. Bill has been an officer for a very successful five years. He has seen what he would arrogantly describe as it all. Bill will return his uncaring eyes back to the road. He will stare at the back of the car in front of him and do his job. He will count the number of taxis he sees on his way, he will work the perp over downtown, and he will head home in time to watch sitcoms that make him chortle, satisfied that he has properly performed his chosen role of protector of all that is right and good in the world.
This time though, Bill is struck with a surprise attack of feeling. He feels his usually well-organized insides wrench like twisted rubber.
Car crashes on the inside – facade buckles like windshield glass.
Car parallel parks on the side of the road – brake lights flicker and die.
Bill turns about in his seat, staring incredulously at genuine white tears falling from beneath a child’s face-clenching tremor hands. Bill sees Tony and thinks it is himself. Bill does not feel any genuine animosity toward the younger man. He did not mean to hurt him, he cannot understand why Tony cries.
“The arrogance of the boy!” Bill thinks in a geyser of rage.
Bill is doing his job. Bill is his job. Bill has to do this, has to take the criminal away. Has to ruin the criminal for his crime. Ruin the criminal. Tony. No, Anthony Miller. Ruin him for gum while Bill pretends to be the shining incarnation of words he’s lost the meaning to. Pretends to be something he is not, with the authority of the uselessly powerful role he has chosen for himself.
He finds his eyes squeezed behind his own hands in surprise. Feels tears he does not realize are his. Fades into the blackness and terrified confusion.
A sliver of blue light finds its way through a crack between Bill’s fingers. He has forgotten what he is doing. He peeks at Tony. Tony peers suspiciously back. Bill does not know how long their duet of sobbing has lasted.
Bill’s mouth moves, but the inside of his head has no words for what he wants to say.
Tony tenses and slinks back into his squeaky leather corner.
Bill gets out. The rain thrills around him, colder and louder than the white car’s insides had proclaimed. A passing station wagon gives a Doppler honk of surprise as it passes. Bill fumbles with freezing keys, slides them into the lock, and opens Tony’s door.
Tony blinks at him. He takes him by the shirt sleeve in angry sorrow and pulls him out into the scouring squall.
Tony is making some sort of bewildered protest, but Bill cannot hear it. The sound of the rain and street and the echo of tears make a cotton wall on the inside of his head. He feels dumbly for Tony’s hands. No handcuffs – he hadn’t cuffed him, he’d forgotten to. Bill wishes quietly that he had, if only so he could now release Tony in more tactile manner.
He stares down into Tony’s confused, limp, free hands.
Head snaps back, “Do you know your way from here?”
Tony mouths some inaudible shock, but thinks better of it, “Yeah, I do, why?”
“I… admire that, Anthony.”
Tail lights fade into waterfall curtains of mist. William flees.
Just because I am sexy, naked, a bassist, and sporting a top hat doesn't make me Duncan Coutts!
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Postby clumsychild_ » 3/9/2004, 5:08 pm

Wow. That's amazing.

Very detailed and descriptive.

:thumbs:
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Postby gavtodd71 » 3/22/2004, 8:27 am

clumsychild_ wrote:Wow. That's amazing.

Very detailed and descriptive.

:thumbs:


Almost a little too detailed!

Still i like it
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Postby Keys » 3/22/2004, 2:03 pm

great start!!! :D coolios!!!
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Postby Henrietta » 3/22/2004, 2:12 pm

Yeah it was really detailed, but pains a really good picture. Wooh I liked that.
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