The blood is pouring out of her arm, and she knows she’s got a brief window of opportunity to ditch the State Trooper car before the situation gets too messy. Already, she hears the officers that she’d trashed making a scene on the radio, giving out details of the car and what direction it was headed.

                “Perp should be considered armed, dangerous, and extremely violent…”

She drives for about another two hours, sirens off but going about 130 km/h on the highway before she notices the tank pit-pattering itself out of gas slowly. Her shoulder has subsided into a dull ache by then, and she looks for opportunities to ditch the car and maybe patch herself up. A truck stop looms up in the distance, a veritable road side dive with a barn and house attached sloppily to the side of the diner. She creeps up in the car and pulls around back, turns off the idling engine and comes back around the side of the diner nonchalantly. She eases the door open for one of the outdoor access washrooms with her foot and steps inside, wipes all the blood off her arm, though the wound still oozes when she pats it with paper towel. She grabs a wad of the paper towel and departs, blood swirling down the drain amongst the phlegm and dirty water marks.

In the small convenience store, she stalks impatiently up the isles, finally finds the gorilla tape and opens the package, dumping the box at her feet in the aisle. Padding the wound with the paper towel she carefully wraps the hole with the tape, cutting off the piece with her teeth and patting it down gingerly. Someone coughs and she looks up to behold a man behind the counter gawking at her.

“What?” She snaps, “it’s not like I wasn’t going to pay for it.”

“What …uh…what happened there?” he meekly ventures.

“None of your concern,” she replies, marching up to the counter and dumping a wad of bills on the counter before brusquely turning to leave. Halfway across the pavement, her knees buckle a little, and she stumbles.

“Not good…” she mumbles, shaking it out and getting up to the shoulder of the highway. She pulls out her sunglasses and jams them on, starts walking next to the lane going north, thumb jammed into the air, smoke dangling from her lips as her reddish black hair trailed behind her. A few cars honk their horns enthusiastically as they roar by, and she flips the bird more than a few times as she saunters purposefully along, wincing at the throbbing in her shoulder. Nearly forty-five minutes pass of her walking, the sun beating down, heat waves radiating off the asphalt and dissipating into the vivid blue sky. As time passed by, a sense of urgency overtook her, building up into a simmering anxiety and rage as her stomach turned. She took a swig of her flask in the heat and felt her cheeks warm to match the warmth of the sun. A low rumbling could be heard in the distance, and she watched as a lone motorcyclist came up over the rise of the hill she’d just climbed. A sleek black Harley with dual chrome exhaust pipes rumbled up. 

She swung her hips a little as she continued to walk, watching him approach out of the corner of her eye. She was desperate to not walk any further. The guy on the bike growing closer in the distance was a weekend warrior, she could see his Reeboks gleaming whitely in the sun as he drove. She waggled her behind a little more and stretched a little, revealing her taut creamy white belly in the sun as her shirt rode up.

“Come on ye motherfucker,” she murmured, watching him. It was nearly indiscernable at first, but she heard him slow.

“That’s right baby, I would make ye look hardcore on that bike with ye,” she swears lowly as he slows down fully and pulls up ahead of her on the shoulder. She trots over to the bike and sizes him up as she comes alongside him. Mid-forties middle life crisis divorcee, with a huge gut to boot.

She grabs his head by the helmet before he can even stammer a greeting and slams it into the fiberglass windshield of the bike. He’s not unconscious, but it gives her enough leeway to haul him by his leather breeches off the bike and throw him into the ditch with her good arm.

“I’m really sorry,” she yells, jumping on the bike and revving it up before she shit-curls off the shoulder and back onto the highway.

Fucking insane. She’d apologized back there, and the words had flown out of her mouth before she’d been able to think. Weird foreign words that apologizing business. She was not the type usually, had only apologized once before in her life, she was sure of it. She’d stolen some kid’s bike once when she was drunk and tired after a fight. She hadn’t even been truly sorry, it was a nice bike until she wrapped it around a tree mysteriously. Niggling doubts about Shane began popping up in her mind. She’d always been so horrible to him, thinking he didn’t need her to be nice to him. Wondered almost out loud if she perhaps owed him an apology.

She’d walked away from him. Perhaps she did, although if it had affected him somehow intrinsically, he’d been careful not to let her know. Pissed her off is what it really did though; it meant that she really was as expendable as all the other women he’d been with. She did not want to be some floozy on the side for any man, something she had used to question about him. Did he want an action figure, or an equal? As friends, she’d felt they were equals, but crossing that threshold… Her stomach flipped at the thought.

After what seemed ages of non-stop driving on the Harley that had only logged about 200 kilometers on its odometer before she’d usurped it from its owner (thus having a full tank), she crossed the border into Montana. Further along, the bright lights of Missoula rose in the distance as she drove furiously on, recklessly speeding and weaving amongst any traffic that impeded her along the way. 

Missoula at dusk was rose colored and dusty as she pulled into the edge of the city. She had no idea where to start looking for that boy, but had the feeling she was in the right neighborhood, feeling her hands loosen on the throttle and slow down. Relaxing.

Driving down the main drag, she began feeling extremely dizzy, began shaking her arms and legs as she could while she drove. Lighting a smoke, she noticed that her hands were shaking badly, and put them back on the handles. She needed to stop this shit or she was going to pass out. Bronwen turns off onto a side road into  residential zone as the sun grows closer to the horizon. To her right is an ancient cemetery. As she idles by slowly, she sees a flash of red.

Shane.

Lets face facts here. Sean, you’re a waste of space, you knew this wasn’t about you to begin with anyways. Knew your time was up at the beginning of the game. I want the real fight, the real hardcore. Shane can offer me this, and you cannot, it’s just that simple. I need to be in a match with someone who will let the blood flow, and still smile as it runs over his teeth like a madman. So here I am Clemmens, I’m all yours if you’ll bring your end of the bargain to the table.