slumber talk

10: Fault Lines

There was a weird sound when I woke up in the morning. My cheek was pressed up against the car window and my hands were sweating inside their gloves, tongue tasting the cold and moist open air, whilst a slow, frequent sort of thudding resounded in my periphery. I heard sluggish whispers and muted mumbles and a couple of rough belly laughs, and then three heavy knocks that reverberated sharp and musical through the glass.

Jumping in my seat, I realised what the weird sound was. It was the lack of background noise. For the first time in the last 3 days, I couldn't hear a drop of rain.

I drew away from the window shoulders first, my neck twinging on a trapped nerve and body waking up with the burning in my muscles. Between the clammy unsheathed fingers that rubbed at my eyelids I could see Hassan stirring in a similar fashion – chin craning back from his chest, strands of his hair getting trapped between his eyelashes.

His groan came out guttural and demonic, and I honestly couldn't have agreed more.

"Where the fuck –"

"I don't know."

Squeaky knocking against the window interrupted our croaks and grunts, Hassan jerking his head towards the sound and narrowing his sleep-addled eyes at the policeman stood outside. A strong and audible gust of wind blew suddenly across the landscape and buffeted the high-visibility jackets of the officer and his companions, who were leant up against a small silver police vehicle with the same neon-coloured chevrons pasted across its surface.

"Alright you two?" The policeman crouched to peer at us, his voice muffled as it struggled to penetrate the glass.

"Yeah, yeah." Hassan folded over wearily and let out a slow sigh. "We're good."

The officer gestured for him to roll down the window. A line of tension rippled over Hassan's jaw, but after a second's pause, he obliged.

"What happened to the car, son?" he asked.

"We, uh, we crashed it into a telegraph pole. Last night."

"How'd that happen? Get caught in the storm?"

"Yeah ... I mean, it were an accident, but ..."

The officer paused in his examining of the car to study Hassan's face. "You wasn't intoxicated or anything, was you?"

Hassan snorted. "No."

His lack of a follow-up prompted the policeman to flatten his lips on a sigh of his own. "I'm gonna need you to step out of the car, son."

Despite his hushed and muttered protests, Hassan did as he was told – ditching the cushions of the driver's seat for the gales that continued to whistle on outside. I drew my coat closer around myself as the cold filtered in through the open window and watched them walk the 4 feet to the police vehicle in lazy, languid shuffles. The whole thing seemed highly unnecessary, but then again, I could only imagine what the car looked like from the outside. It was a miracle we were able to get it out of the dip in the road and facing oncoming traffic.

The police officer continued on to dig around for something in his dashboard as one of his lounging cohorts came forward, saying something to Hassan that had him rolling his eyes. I waited apprehensively for the conversation to continue, but the officer seemed quite content to let Hassan lean into the support of his Nikes and tilt his face to the shrouded heavens.

There was a gradient in the clouds that hadn't been there yesterday; lots of bright whites and thick, smoky charcoal, bound and tied together in licks of cinerous ash. It debunked every myth of a silver lining and renegaded every attempt at optimism I had at my disposal. And yet, with his eyes closed, and his hands entrenched deep inside his coat pockets, Hassan looked almost peaceful.