There had been a girl, a long time gone now, who ran around the foothills outside of the town of Carter, Montana; running was her favorite activity before things changed. It let her get away from her mother, for one thing. And the wind in her hair as she ran was a glorious feeling. It was pretty hair, and it was the only thing about her that her mother had approved of. Her hair, blonde in her youth, had darkened as she had grown up. She now sat in a small pub situated below the inn in which she and her own now grown daughter were staying. Dee had already headed to bed some hours ago. But Aubree wanted to stay up extra late, to shake off the jetlag she knew she would be having in the morning.
She sat at the beautiful, old wooden table by the front window of the pub, slowly drinking her fourth hot toddy. Aubree had wanted a daiquiri. But when she had taken in the old, ale and lemon scented, well oiled wood of the interior of the pub, and had seen the other patrons of the tap room somberly drinking lagers, and sipping whiskeys, she decided to not be "The American."
So, she sipped her hot toddy. They even brought her a small plate of elegantly frosted cookies. The first toddy had made her very happy. It had been everything Aubree had hoped it would be after reading about them for years in her favorite British mystery novels.
By the third, she had become a bit maudlin. Aubree would be the first to admit that one too many drinks could send her into the sad realms of self evaluation, if no one was around to distract her from herself. She had taken the leap of her lifetime to come on this trip with her daughter to Scotland; but Dee was now blissfully asleep and snoring away like a steam train about to leave the rails and kill half the unsuspecting sleepy town lying below the picturesque mountainside. Those poor imaginary bastards. she thought, as she played with one of her braids, and looked out the window at the pretty street nighttime beyond the frost edged pain of glass.
As she fiddled with it, Aubree's hair had been, to her mother's reckoning, her "unfortunately chubby" daughter's best feature. It was kept clean, and Aubree was expected to keep up a strict regimen of the silliest hair related health fads she could possibly inflict on the poor girl. Her mother had spent too much time when Aubree was young telling her how she would have to work hard to get nice boy's to see around her flaws, so that one of the "Better Ones" might make her an "Honest Woman." The older Thackery made it clear to young Aubree that only her hair had value.
By the age of ten, her slightly wavy, darkly golden hair reached nearly to her knees, and had to be Washed every evening, and thoroughly brushed out, and braided. Every morning, it was her before school task to either take her hair down, and brush and straighten it, or to re-braid the amber mass in an approved style that fit the fashions and fads her mother approved of at that time.
Aubree's mother had ideas that made Aubree sad growing up, regularly.
The best revenge life had given Aubree against her monster of a mother had been puberty. She didn't know if there was a Puberty Fairy, or a Puberty Goblin, or some kind of Boob Granting Bigfoot, but whatever there was, she had been visited one summer. And for several years after that Aubree had found herself constantly under the walleyed, slack jawed, watchful gaze of every man with a pulse in Carter Montana.
With her new "Brick House" physique came a pronounced darkening of her hair. Biology: who knew? Highschool brought a marked upswing in her interest in very fancy, if sturdy, underwear, and a drop in her interest in running.
In an act of reckless rebellion, she had worn her hair in a very cute bob all three years of highschool, much to her mother's disgust. Her mother never saw her as anything other than fat, and so had been oblivious to the idea that anyone of the opposite sex (or even anyone of the same sex, for that matter) would be attracted to her.
Aubree nibbled at another cookie, and sipped at her (fourth?) toddy. The frosting on the cookies had a delightful almond flavor, and a wonderful snowflake pattern. These Scots knew their cookies, Aubree was learning.
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Across the street, and down half a block from where she sat, Aubree saw an older model of cab slowly pull up to the front of the quaint little hospital. She blinked in surprise as the cab slewed to the side, and the front and side windows blew out with a distinctive popping and cracking noise that she recognized.
She sat up straighter in her seat, and watched as a small man in baggy clothing who had just exited the hospital and spoke to the security guard out front suddenly hopped and spun to the left, and then in the blink of an eye he danced out towards the street from the sidewalk, and the security man dropped to the concrete, and then rolled bonelessly into the street.
Suddenly the street was filled with both tall men in white suits, and that all too distinctive "Poppoppop!POP!POP!POP!" that almost every American living west of the Mississippi was familiar. Aubree had heard that it was an even more common sound in her grandmother's day, before legislation limiting access to firearms had been passed.
She had just reached for her pad phone to call for the police, when she paused to wonder if they had 911 here, like they did in America. Shit... I should have looked this up...
She dithered for a moment, and then frantically waved to the bar keeper, a petite woman with her salt and pepper hair pulled up in an improbable bun. She heard a sharp shout, and turned back to the drama on the street just in time to see a VERY tall woman pulled aside and held at gunpoint by one of the armed men. She noisily stood to her feet, knocking back her chair, as a little man was punched, or possibly pistol whipped, by another of the armed men.
The bartender was at her side, concern in her voice as she was asking "Wotch'r luv?" before she too was caught up in looking at the unfolding drama outside. Aubree could see the little man throw something, and one of the armed men went down like he had been shot, himself.
She heard the barkeep gasp out an "OY!" of surprise as she saw her pull out her own pad phone, and dial for the local emergency services.
Behind her, as she stared out the window, the barkeep was speed-yelling into her phone at whoever was answering the emergency line. Aubree leaned forward, both hands now on the cold glass, her breath making a small foggy spot below where her mouth almost touched the pane. She watched as the little man... the LITTLER man, was kicked into a wall, and the tall woman was dragged back to her feet and a gun put directly to her head. The barkeep, with her pad to her ear yelled another, louder, "OY!!!!" as she pointed at the circus going on down the block from her bar. Almost as if she thought the varied players in this drama would stop at the sound of her yelling.
Shit... did...did they still call them Bobbies..? Had they ever, or was that just on tv and books? Of course they did, what am I thinking? Did that fella just pull shadows around him and jump through them?! What's in these toddys?!
There were more POPs! and at least four men ran down the alley across the street nearest the pub in pursuit of the dancing man in the baggy clothing. More indistinct yelling.
The scene in the street had calmed down, and the armed man standing over the now seated tall woman was obviously telling her something. Aubree had seen many men lecture at women. Once in a while, they had even had a point,; but this man, he looked tense, and mad. Nothing reasonable would be coming out of his mouth at the tall woman tonight.
Aubree glanced back at the barkeep, who mouthed what Aubree hoped was "on their way now!" at her. She would admit to anyone who asked that lip reading was not a skill she had, and the woman had possibly said "Ornery gay snow." She didn't think that was it, but with Scottish people... who knew? They had more weird, folksy colloquialisms than elderly Grannies in the Rockies.
The man in white suddenly jerked back like he had been punched. And he turned toward where Aubree watched, showing, of all the fucking things, a very long arrow sticking out of his right eye. He jerked again, and began tumbling forward, to faceplant in the street. She saw the other of the remaining men turn, also with a ludicrously long arrow now stuck in his chest. There was one final "POP!"
Aubree slowly sat in the other chair at her table, suddenly very tired. She sighed as she saw the man in the baggy clothing walk slowly from the shadows at the far side of the hospital. From the farther side, as if he had run around the building.
Closer to her, her eyes refocusing, she saw there was a small hole in the glass of the window she had just been leaning against. It was getting harder for her to breathe. She thought it must be the stress of what she had just seen.
The bartender started screaming.
She saw the woman move around in front of her, mouthing more words Aubree wasn't following. She thought she must have had too much to drink, and the stress of the street drama, and the incipient jet lag were all conspiring against her.
Her last thought was that she wished Dee had been down here with her to see all of this; telling her daughter about all of this ruckus was going to be exhausting tomorrow.