Thirst Trap [https://i.imgur.com/oxezwME.png]
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It was too early in the morning for the streets between Richard’s apartment and the police station to be busy, which was something of a blessing on his right foot. As it turned out, gingerly depressing the accelerator with one’s toes was not a good way to build up any speed, but he’d sooner be damned than stop every minute to wince through the pain for that man. A fortune, therefore, that the little traffic was in no real hurry—or, at least, had nowhere better to be.
The thought knocked Richard as he drove. Nowhere better to be? There were many places he’d rather be. He couldn’t name them in his mind, but was sure they existed. They had to.
He weaved between roadworks and temporary traffic lights, passing patches of tarmac ripped from the ground and bundles of cabling around gas lines, and paid it all no mind. Absent of builders themselves, no jackhammers rang out, nor did chugging diggers chuff in trenching and scooping. Whether the workers would ever arrive was anyone’s guess, but their absence the reserved delight of all. Let them never come. The sun rose peacefully enough without their commotion, and spilled between the shards of the horizon, and poured through the streets as paint over grainy canvas. On the radio, the broadcaster recounted a silent night of uneventful chill, and recommended the people come together in festive cheer, drawn by the siren song of winter. Mariah Carey had finally finished defrosting, which—as any would say—was the official start of Christmas.
For all the peacefulness, Richard still couldn’t shake his feelings as he rounded a corner and nearly mounted the curb, lost in his swimming brain-ramblings, and he grasped the steering wheel with two hands instead of one like he were a decade back in his driving lessons—would he rather. He might prefer a head-on collision if it could make the tightness in his chest go away.
Raw. No ice.
Richard’s vision defocused for a second and he inhaled deeply through his nose, not to bring his senses back to him, for he was breathing too quickly for that, but to give him something real to focus on as he pulled into the police station’s parking and, after some pained reversing, brought his car to a stop. He could tell even without looking that he was sitting well outside the lines, but at that point such concerned him far less than it should. His car hummed.
The charm was an act, and Richard knew better than to think otherwise. It got the man what he wanted, precisely because people like Richard thought they knew better in getting what they wanted.
The narrative has been taken without permission. Report any sightings.
Fuck.
Why had he come? Thirty slow seconds gave pause for thought as he sat there, as the city passed him by more slowly still. He toyed with himself, penance for his stupidity four months ago, and the desire to take the handbrake off and drive straight home almost overwhelmed everything, but it was the lesser of two, and Richard slave to what he knew was disaster. He killed the engine and opened his door, hauling himself out as carefully as he could so as not to double over in splintering agony the moment he put too much weight where he shouldn’t. It wasn’t seemly, the limping, but it beat vomiting. Richard couldn’t even find an answer when he realised he’d passed the hospital itself on his journey, and he slammed the car door to punctuate that regret.
The whole place was empty, save for the thought he should’ve parked closer to the station itself. He pointed the car keys over his shoulder to lock it, and turned to make sure it actually did. The thing’s makers had decided, in their own clouded wisdom, that the newest model didn’t need to beep or chirp when it locked, that you should’ve just assumed it to have done so. Naturally, Richard found that disconcerting, no less now than ever, and he waited for the headlights to flash their reassuring sequence. They did, after some delay; the car obviously didn’t enjoy being treated with suspicion by its owner, but Richard was more occupied with peeling himself out of the cold than the feelings of the machine. The station’s automatic doors squealed, and he was greeted immediately by the damp smell of mildew-y paint, the welcome of a lazy decorator with little time for prisoners and detainees, and he scrunched his red-tipped nose.
The woman at the reception desk took one look at Richard and immediately put down her phone—not out of courtesy, in truth, but to provide him her complete, undivided attention. Such was his most faithful companion. Richard caught his right foot on an uneven tile in approaching the counter, and clenched his jaw hard enough his eyes welled up and his teeth groaned.
“Can I help you, sir?”
“Y-Yes. Morning," Richard said, on the inhale. "I’m here to inquire after someone’s… bail.”
“Have you come to post a bond?”
He swallowed the hesitation clamming his throat. “Yes.”
The receptionist turned her inquisition from Richard to the computer, and typed the way all semi-distracted people did. “What’s the name, please?”
“Richard,” he said, waiting for her to start working the keyboard, “Linwood.”
She couldn’t have been slower if she tried, bless her immortal soul. Four backspaces followed what was at best a mere five keystrokes, then more finger-pecked characters, then a smattering of clicks and taps to fill the stale, empty air between them. If she had been sent to remind Richard of the virtues of faithful, God-fearing decisions, then the message had come loudly and clearly—although this decision among his many was perhaps the least holy of them all.
The reflection in the tumbler. Something beyond curiosity.
“Sir? Excuse me?” she said, craning her neck. “Whose bond are you here to post?”
Richard startled behind his eyes. “Uh—Mister Rocco…”
The receptionist let her lips part a little, enquiring after an answer he simply couldn’t give. Richard rifled through his thoughts, cluttered as they were, and realised with no time to surrender nor retreat that he had been ensorcelled by a man whose name he didn’t even know.
God-fearing?
Like hell.