Glitch (The Write Awards 2013 Winner)

Glitch - Chapter 4

The Patrollers were exactly what Freya had expected. The two of them transformed the familiar setting of the living room into an unrecognisable haze of absurdity. The Government's authority on the streets very rarely passed over the doorstop of Freya's house; her family had been careful to never invite trouble into their home. In fact, a Patroller had only passed into the house once in her memory, and that was to deliver the news that her father had died. It was a memory she would rather keep subdued and questions she would rather keep unasked.

Her mother had spent years asking questions. Freya tried not to blame her. A sentence dense with agony but delivered with echoing emptiness, no body and no explanation, did not allow for much closure. But people like her father did not just dwindle into nothingness. Everything her father did was planned with precise accuracy; he did not have accidents and he was not a coward. There was a reason they were never told what became of him. Freya just assumed it was better to not know. It would have taken something extreme to finally silence her father and she wanted to be spared the details.

Since her father died no trace of mischief had ever guided reprimand over their threshold. They had always been so careful. A widowed mother with two children to care for did not make for a strong front to face the Patrollers with. To make things worse, Freya’s mother had been left with two children who both shared an insatiable appetite for speaking their mind. Whether it was intentional or by accident, both Ben and Freya had dangerously loose tongues.

Freya had lost her temper, loosened her tongue and lashed out at injustice many times in public. It happened more frequently than was safe. She had merely never allowed herself to be tracked back to her home because of it. The rotation of Patrollers to keep the enforcers of law a nameless blur of force made it very easy to avoid notoriety. Freya was a fool when it came to guarding the dangerous fog of her inner thoughts. But she was sharp and skillful when it came to dodging the punishment. She had been taught by her father for the brief stint he spent in her life. He taught her hideaways to wait out the storm of Patroller’s rage, knowledge of a few remaining legal rights to outwit and when all failed a quick tongue to talk a path out of harm. He had taught Freya well.

Yet now the Patrollers stood before her; a direct invasion of the safety she had fought so hard to conserve. It somehow seemed worse to be foiled by an occurrence outside the sphere of her control. Muscles strained underneath their uniforms of gloomy navy and black; they wore the Government’s colours of dismay with such pride and cruelty contorted their expressions. A middle aged man with a pudgy round face stood to the left. There was a scattering of hairs struggling to maintain a grip amongst his bald head, which led Freya to believe that nothing sustained their growth underneath in the barren contents of his mind. To the right stood a younger man with an oddly square and angular facial structure. His sullen eyes suggested little was occurring behind their dull glare.

They were the usual thugs hired to enforce order in the streets. As with most things touched by the Government they had a distinct lack of originality. Ignorance ignited with brute force made the Patrollers particularly vicious. They cared little for considering the victim to constitute their next punch bag. It was not their concern to worry for the fragility of a chosen victim; the frail from the agile it made no difference to them. As long as the subject made their pain apparent beneath the rage it made no difference at all.

But every so often, when her hate became unbearable, Freya forced herself to consider each dimension of the story. Everyone had their own way of coping with the tensions knotted by the Government. The Patrollers justified their miserable existence by extracting their anger on those around. That was how the Government operated. Fault lines across society shattered unity and without unity change was aborted in the early stages of dissent. Their grip was suffocating. And so reluctantly she often admitted to herself that the Patrollers were not evil. They were merely swept along in a wave moving faster than their own sphere of comprehension. It was a struggle to locate those rational thoughts when faced opposite them.