The Innocents

ugliest. If Ryatt pointed his finger up the food chain, he’d most certainly be made an example of. Either Michelin didn’t have any brain cells or he didn’t care about Ryatt. Both irked him because he liked the man.
As Ryatt watched the pigs, he rested his hands on his lap. He shook the paper clip free and tried to straighten the twisted mess on its end, but the result was it became too flimsy. Even if he made another L-shape with the same end, it wouldn’t be firm enough to work.
Hold on a sec…
Out of the blue, an idea popped up.
He quickly whipped out the other end of the paperclip and inserted it into the keyhole, starting the process all over again.
But they had already entered the precinct’s parking lot, now reversing between two other cruisers. Ryatt looked around. On the wall behind them, he found something peculiar. A vivid graffiti of the American Flag but with forty-five stars missing. He also found two pigs standing akimbo at the doorway, one of them lean and young.
Shit.
Michelin got down and walked to the rear while the lady cop began her one-minute struggle to get out, jerking the cruiser while at it. Just as Michelin opened the back door, the other cuff came loose. Ryatt put his hands behind and bundled the chains and the cuffs together into a steely lump.
“Come on out, kid.” Michelin extended his arm. “I pray this is the last time I see you here in this godforsaken place.”
“Oh, that I can promise you, sir.” Ryatt put his legs out. One of his shoes had a hole, exposing his toe. He slightly leaned forward and balanced the weight on his calves, accumulating the tension like a depressed spring. “This’ll be the very last time you’ll see me here.”
The lady pig now successfully dislodged herself from the car. As Michelin tried to grab Ryatt’s arms, he jumped forward like a rattlesnake, head-butting the pig in the nose.
“Son of a…” Michelin’s hands shot up to his face as he stumbled back. Ryatt took aim and pelted the handcuffs at the woman pig’s face. It caught her square on the bridge of the nose, and she held her face, too, and doubled over. Ryatt slid across the hood of the other cruiser and took off like a bat out of hell.
Unsurprisingly, he heard someone shout, “Hey, stop.” It was followed by the thundering and disheartening sound of shoes on tarmac.
So the chase began.
Since Ryatt could see only through his left eye, he tended to choose escape routes on that side. As he reached the entrance, another cruiser drove into the parking lot, blocking his way. It braked when the driver saw Ryatt, who climbed onto the hood and ran over the top of the car, leaping the strobe lights, finally sliding down the back windshield.
As Ryatt sprinted and built up to his full speed, he glanced back. To his dismay, the young pig had performed the same trick on the cruiser and continued to chase Ryatt. And worse still, the cruiser had reversed and turned on its sirens.
Shit! Shit! Sh— wait a minute!
The end of the street merged into a main road, and Ryatt decided to improvise. He threw his body forward, swinging his arms, and put himself into it. As he reached the busy road, he took a left. Police cruisers would never chase him in on-coming traffic.
Ryatt ran a good two-hundred meters, and the sound of sirens was slowly taken over by one of screeching tires and angry horns. He took a road not unlike the one the precinct was located in. This street was familiar to Ryatt. He zoomed past ‘Love Juice’, a pulp store his seniors bought porn magazines from. Beside it stood a VHS shop where Iris used to take Ryatt to buy cartoons. Not anymore, and not because Ryatt was older—he still preferred animated creatures over real people—but they didn’t own a TV or a video cassette player anymore. Only childhood nostalgia remained.
Ryatt glanced over his shoulder to find the pig was still running after him. He needed to do something. And quick. He scampered into a seedy alley that led into a shadier part of the neighborhood. Sure enough, he heard the unmistakable click clack of a pair of boots echoing behind him.
Ryatt rounded the corner, and his eye quickly scanned the vicinity. Like he expected, several small groups of rowdies stood haphazardly on the street. Ryatt narrowed his options by picking three groups with at least one guy or girl wearing the same jersey as his. He selected a gaggle loafing at the corner of an intersection as two among that group wore the same jersey. He decided on this group because a few of them were of a similar height to himself.
He knew for a fact that almost all of them would have weed or crack, and at least one would be carrying.
Ryatt risked one last look behind. The cop hadn’t come out of the alley yet, but he would shoot out of it any second now.
Ryatt faced the gang again. As he darted towards them, he crossed his arms and grabbed the hem of his jersey.
When the gang saw the fastly approaching Ryatt, their faces expressed confusion and anxiety. Ryatt ran through them, shouting, “Pigs!”
The rule of thumb in the streets was, in scenarios like these, everyone must take off in a different direction. Like how a triangle of colored balls scurry because of one white ball.
In the resulting jostling and clamor, Ryatt pulled the jersey over his head and dropped it on the curb. When he neared a parked hippie van, he crouched and hid behind it. The pig had exited the alley and stood on the road, scratching under his chin. Then he pointed in a totally different direction, not even close to