Outrun Stories #22

Hope’s a funny kind of pain. I mean, in comparison to everything else it holds its own.

You can be bruised and battered and hammered into the fucking ground with bullets and bats and fuck, that all hurts like hell, but hoping that it will end. Hoping that something better is coming. Hoping that you’ll get out. That’s a different type of pain all together.

“What have you got to be afraid of?” She asks as I flick the cigarette away and walk up to the F40, jump inside, lean over to the passenger seat, grab my Beretta and open the door. Hell, she might be right, what the fuck do I have to be afraid of?

I’m Frank Dune, they call my fists crime and punishment, I’ve killed more men than cancer, but I guess I’ve always stood at the edge of it all, once the job’s done. Once I’ve completed whatever dirty fucking job I’ve had to do for whatever scumbag was offering the highest price in this pit of a city, I’ve stood at the edge and hoped I might be able to get out.

“I’ve got things to lose as well, you know,” I say back to her as I start the engine and push down my Raybans.

“You’ve got shit, let’s fucking get on with it, what am I paying you for?” it’s fuckers like her that won’t let me out, that I can’t escape from. Sure, I’ve done some bad things, but I’ve always made sure I’ve done them to bad people. Who makes me judge and jury? Time and pressure.

“We’ll get this done, don’t you worry.”

“Just fucking get moving will you, and what the fuck sort of car is this? It’s 2017 not the 80’s, I can’t be seen driving around in this shit in the future, just make sure you know that.”

“Sure thing.” I buckle my seatbelt and grip the steering wheel and grit my teeth and squint and for a second there, a flash, that funny kind of pain, hope rising in my gut. Something that makes me think that one day I won’t have to deal with this sort of shit, these sorts of people.

But what’s the way out? Make the change in yourself, right? Some dumbshit inspirational poster is sat somewhere on a wall behind some asshole executive and it reads in big white letters ‘Be the person you know you can be.’ But what do I know? I take orders, I kill, I maim, and I spare a thought in between that I might get out.

I hammer the accelerator and the car spins into the night of the city, there’s fear in the air, I can smell it as the neon lights flash past and I her hand reaches over to my leg. She squeezes to let me know I’m hers, and that I’m never getting out and that hope, it’s hope that’s the hardest sort of pain there is.