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Shorts
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| Victory | |
| By kitten_princess | ||||||||||||
| 03 December 2006 | ||||||||||||
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Little bit of crime, set a little way into the future. But it's not really about Crime, that's why it's in Short Stories, not Crime :) Hope you enjoy it! [Corrected: the "incident/innocent" thing] [Updated: Thanks for all the comments! I've tried to give a little bit more of an insight into the main character's mind without spelling it all out... Do you think it's an improvement?] I walk away from a corner shop, on my face an expression that needs to be indifference, but feels more like guilt laced with fear – not particularly helpful, given my circumstances. I lean back on a wall for a while to observe my winnings for the night more closely. Victory fags. Victory gin. I have risked an awful lot for this crap. Why do I keep doing it though? Maybe it’s the sheer thrill of the illicit. I know what the cost is, every cell in my body knows the danger, but I’ve been able to walk away so many times, I reckon I’m getting quite good at it. Like a foolish sort of invincibility, I guess. I wish I could get better at picking quality goods to lift now. If beggars can’t be choosers, maybe thieves can’t be either. I sigh, and unscrew the bottle top. It makes a metallic squeak, and then a series of fading clinks as it falls to the floor. I take a generous swig from the bottle. I am about to flick open the packet of Victories but I stop as I glance at the floor. I hadn't noticed before, but a lurid orange street light had been betraying me for quite a while. I am leaving a shadow a mile long that a stray dog has taken an unusual interest in. I decide that it's time to move on. I find a corner, and wait there. It's about now that I hear the familiar sound of a crackling static signal from a walkie-talkie. I hear “murder” and “search in progress” and I feel my veins freeze in fear. Even though I know I haven’t killed anyone tonight, and thus am innocent, I’m still scared. My uncle is in the police force; he told me when I was smaller how it all works in there. He was off duty, and his common sense must have been too; he told me so much more he really meant. What his boys would say if they knew! "We get a call of an event; we drive to the scene, around a dozen of us usually. Then we start to look for someone. Most of the time, we don't get who has burnt the house or stolen the gin or killed the man. Most of the time, we don't care. We just need to bring someone back, lock someone away, so that we can say, ‘Fifty crimes reported. Fifty people behind bars’. You can't argue with that kind of statistic, son. It's what they call a "one-hundred-percent" success rate." What he inadvertently told me is that if I can hide for long enough, someone else is bound to come along and get taken away, and no police officer today will bother looking for the real criminal if they already have a scapegoat. Click. What was that? I make a most imprudent move; I stick my head out to look. A police officer is marching calmly along the orange street, muttering into the walkie-talkie I heard crackle earlier. I assume he’s on the lookout for someone. He seems to look through me, then at me, and I whip my head back into the dark. I am becoming very aware of my breathing now, as I hide. It's so loud and rasping. The tension makes each breath hotter, faster, louder than the last. I am amazed that I haven't been found yet by my noise. I wonder if holding my breath will make me harder to find. I try it. Now, my heartbeat is beginning to betray me. It hammers against my seemingly hollow chest, louder and louder, fighting to escape the horrors that lie in store for me – No! I can’t think like that already! I carefully allow myself a breath in steadily, and then I let it out just as carefully. You can barely hear a thing. I repeat that, and again. In the sheer success of those three breaths, I allow myself a sigh. Idiot. The next thing I know, there is a face right next to mine. I’ve been found. And guess who’s on duty tonight? Uncle Joe. I stand in front of him, at eye level. His grey eyes seem much older than I remember. He blinks at me, and I know that every second he stands there, looking at me without speaking, is a second that I have survived. He watches my breathing become shallow and erratic. He must be able to see my fear. I’d like to imagine there’s some sort of moral battle going on inside his head. Is he going to betray his dead brother’s child, the same child he has been a father to for so many years? Or is he just going to let his job carve a stone heart for him? He then walks away, very even paces, out of the dark corner he found me in, to the orange street. I don’t know why he didn’t just take me away and get it over with. I hardly dare to think it, but maybe I won. Maybe he’ll let me go. I gingerly leave the gin and fags on the floor, begin the long walk home. I may not get to keep my spoils for the night, but at least I got away with it. That’s when I hear the sound of a whole unit’s footsteps marching towards me. They’re looking for a murderer, but they just found me. I guess I didn’t win after all.
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