Chapter 1: Patrice Walker

Chapter 1: Patrice Walker

 

            The streets were slick with rain to the point that everything reflected off of the ferrocrete in an obscene impressionist vision.  Widow reached up and wiped a soaking wet blond strand from her forehead as she rummaged through her metal lunchbox purse for her eCig.  ‘It’s always fucking rain.  We’re two weeks from Christmas and its fucking rain,’ she thought.

            Taking a drag on her eCig and letting out a puff of vapor, she sighed.  The sight of the Christmas tree in Pioneer Courthouse Square was beautiful, even if the whole thing was surrounded by a chain link fence topped with razor wire.  ‘Fucking assholes.  You’re even trying to keep Santa away from your goddamned tree,” she laughed.  Looking back down she went to put her eCig pack back in her purse when she felt a pressure on her chest that knocked her back three steps.

            “What the motherfucking shit….?”  Widow asked, as her purse tumbled to the ground and spilled its contents.  Looking up, as she reached up to press the switch on her Sony sub auditory implant to mute the music blaring in her head, she saw a Portland police officer.

            “…Your Ident right now or I’m going to haul your ass in, little miss.”  The fat cop was talking with an obvious overconfidence in his authority.

            “Why don’t you just scan me?”  Widow said with the smirk of a well practiced asshole.

            “The rain is messing with our equipment,” he said with a smile that screamed of bullshit.  Widow smirked again and leaned down to find her SmartTab.

            In 2020, all state and local governments figured it would be a good idea to just chip their citizens with RFID tags on the back of their left hand.  The chips contained all pertinent drivers’ license information, arrest history, Social Security Number, medical records, blood type, names of your parents, and literally every other piece of information they could possibly want.  Most of it was information you didn’t even know they had on you.  In addition to this, you were required to keep a SmartTab app that would save the data, as well.  This was supposed to be in case of an equipment malfunction and the politicians told everyone that it would help to protect them.  In reality, the app seldom functioned properly, was slow, and was an excuse for the local police to give you shit for no reason.

            Finding her SmartTab, Widow pulled the app up.  Luckily, it worked and connected on the first try.  “Here you are officer,” she said with a smart ass smile of victory.

            “Let’s see what we have here.  Walker, Patrice.  25 years old, four foot and eleven inches tall at 92lbs.  Wow!  You’re a little shit, aren’t you?”  The cop said with a chuckle.

            “You needed my ident to see that?  You’re looking right at me idiot,” Widow said as she pressed her tongue against the capped tooth in her mouth, causing her HTC/Google mirror shades to snap back into the recessed housings at the creases of her eyes.

            “What the fuck did you just call me, you little slut?”  The cop snapped her a teeth baring frown.

            “Nothing officer, you’re just doing your duty.  Is there anything else I can help you with?”

            “It says here your street name is ‘Widow.’  Come on; show me the ink so I can document it.”  The cop said with a grin while looking at the information on her SmartTab showing where her tattoo was.

            Widow sighed, “Jesus H Christ.  Fine,” she said as she took off her jacket and tossed it on the ground with contents of her purse.  Lowering the waist of her low-rise faux leather pants with one hand, she lifted her black wife-beater tank top with the other.  A 3D black widow spider, legs extended down to either ass cheek, leapt out from the small of her back.

            “Holy shit!  That is some damned sexy ink!”  Exclaimed the cop as he licked his lips and Widow felt the least bit of a blush come to her porcelain features.

            At the age of 13, Widow’s father took and unseemly liking to her posterior.  He decided that it would be “hot” if she got a tramp stamp.  Mimetic reflective ink was just turning all the rage, which allowed for a full one and a half foot deep three dimensional image to be tattooed to the human body.  Why a black widow was hot, Widow would never know.  But then again, daddy drank a lot.  Ever since the early days of middle school, her classmates had called her Widow, along with a multitude of other names.

            “It says here that you did 15 months of supervised probation for not turning in your father for owning a firearm,” the piggly cop continued.

            “Yeah, when I was 17.  You read it yourself.  I’m 25 now.”  Widow said, as she picked up her faux leather hipster jacket and swung it on.

            In 2015 the federal government repealed the second amendment and made it illegal for civilians to own personal firearms.  This didn’t stop most people but the penalty and punishment was carried out to all family members, friends, and acquaintances of anyone owning a firearm that didn’t turn them in.  When this law was passed, there were a few uprisings by rebel militant types in Montana, but for the most part everyone just laid over and took it in the ass.  Ironically, a drug czar from Mexico hired his own private merc army in 2018 and took over the state of Texas.  The local state police forces were quickly overrun and the National Guard was too underfunded to do anything about it.  Nobody in what was left of the United States seemed to give a shit about Texas as FEMA was supposedly sending all additional money to the states of California, Oregon, and Washington after being hit with five separate hurricanes in less than five months.  Oddly, six years later, most of the west coast was left ass raped with nary a dollar spent towards repairing the infrastructure and the government once again complaining about needing and influx of tax revenues to fix it all.  ‘Global warming is a myth, they said,” thought Widow.

            Handing the SmartTab back to Widow, the cop said, “Here’s your ‘Tab.  Seems that everything is in order.”

            “Well, fanfuckingtastic,” Widow said as she leaned down to start picking up the contents of her spilled purse.

            “Wait, wait.  What’s this?”  The cop said suddenly as he leaned over and picked up her Hitachi/Reynolds eCig pack.  “It’s illegal to smoke these in a public space, you know.”

            Widow sighed and rolled her eyes, “Fucking seriously?  You want to bust me for vegetable glycol and water vapor?  You’re standing in the fucking rain and you want to tell me that water vapor is bad for you?  Really?”  A group of skateboarders clickety-clacked down the Courthouse Square sidewalk behind the cop.  “Why are you fucking harassing me?  What about those punks on the skateboards?”

            “Don’t change the subject.  Besides, they’re white and they paid the toll fee.  You’re looking like your part Hispanic.  You don’t get a toll; you just get the shit end of the stick.  Deal with it.”

            “Fine.  You caught me.  I’m busted for smoking in a non-smoking area.  What’s the fine for that?”  Widow said throwing her hands up.

            “Don’t be so hasty.  Give me one of your batteries and a new cartridge.  I’ll let you slide.  This time,” said the cop.

            Gathering up her belongings, Widow then screwed a new cartridge onto her eCig.  “Deal.  Can I go now,” she asked as she handed it over.

            Taking a drag off the eCig the cop said, “Who the fuck are you and why are you wasting my time?  Do I look like an information kiosk?  Move along you fucking tourist.”

            Pulling her jacket collar closer, Widow smiled.  Piggly cop didn’t know that she had modded her eCig and filled it with her own special mix.  When going out to a club, she liked a hit of Ecstasy, THC, Tobacco, and Vanilla flavoring.  Mister police man was going to be tripping balls in about ten minutes.  Pulling her other battery from the eCig pack, she took a drag as the heels of her knee-high boots could be heard clacking on the brick walking away from the grinning cop looking at her ass.