Acid Rain by R.D Rhodes (ebook reader txt) 📕

“I’m just going to get some supplies from here. I’ll be twenty minutes at most.”

“Supplies? You make it sound like crack.” Harry smiled.

Alex smirked. “Yeah, that’s what I’m getting. They keep it next to the rucksacks.”

Harry’s smile widened. “Nah. I’m okay. I’ll come in with you, though.”

The eyes in the rearview mirror turned on me.

“Yeah, I’ll come.” I said.

“Cool. Ah, here’s one!” Alex reversed to go into the space. “I can’t be bothered with the town centre today if I’m honest. The crowds will be mental for Christmas. I’ll just go here, and Tesco?”

“That’s fine with me.” Harry told him. “We just need food, that’s all.”

“Fine for me too.” I said. “Watch the wing mirror.”

“Oh, shit!” He pulled the car back out and reversed in again, snuggling tightly between the cars on either side of us. He killed the engine. An old man with a walking stick went by the back window.

We all squeezed out and headed towards the store, Large, Long and Little in a line with Alex on my right, me in the middle and Harry to my left. Queues of cars crawled the lanes, the faces staring out a combination of stress, sadness and exhaustion. One of the drivers let us cross and we walked over to the entrance of the store as its huge electric mouth opened and closed. It was eating and spitting out hundreds of people a minute, in their jackets and boots and winter hats, and their many shopping bags. Those people had to push and squeeze through the crowds standing chatting in the doorway over their Christmas plans. I saw the advert on the window- 50 percent off.

I changed my mind and held back. “Actually, I’m just gonna wait out here.” I said.

“You Sure?” Alex asked.

Harry gave me a quick, searching look.

“Yeah. It’s like feeding time in the zoo in there. Just meet you back out here?”

Alex’s lips pinched into a smile. Harry’s eyes still searched me, but he seemed satisfied that I was okay. He nodded, “Aye. Back in twenty minutes.” And they meshed into the crowd then I saw the top of Alex’s head disappear through the doors.

I turned back to the car park, looking at the sprawl a mile left and a mile right and half a mile ahead of me to the motorway. The Shoppers streamed past on their way to and from the other three stores and their cars, stampeding in a line on the right of the pavement and stampeding back the opposite way on the left. I waited for a pause and quickly stepped through to the side of the building, out of the way of the door.

I pulled my beanie hat low as people gabbed away on what toys they were going to get, and what phone was the best, and how they were just glad it’s the holidays. The lines kept coming and going. It reminded me of London, just before me and Mack had left. I was surprised such a small city was so busy, but there was only four days left till Christmas.

Most of them didn’t pay me any attention. But then one man in a business suit noticed me as he came forward with the line. He looked me slowly up and down-in my muddy hiking boots, baggy jeans, my greasy hair loose under my beany hat- in obvious disgust, like I was a piece of shit on his shoe. I held his stare. I knew it was just because I was free and he wasn’t, and his sneering face eventually looked away as he went off somewhere with the crowd. At that moment, I heard Bullet in the Head by Rage Against the Machine playing, but I couldn’t see from where, or from which car amongst the armies of patrolling traffic.

Those cars were blocking everything. Humans were blocking everything. All bobbing along everywhere like floating debris in a concrete sea. I felt like an alien. The distant buildings reached up to swallow the sky. The machines on the motorway tore away at the world. Hundreds of bulging plastic shopping bags bumped against my legs, and these crowds, crowds, crowds coming and going in and out and in and out. The smiling couple in the window behind me were advertising new camping equipment alongside white-teethed families promoting identical designer jackets. I felt sick, yet again, and anxious. All those months of meditation, and for what? I thought I was past this! I thought. Fuck’s sake, Aisha. What was the point in you going out to nature if you can’t reintegrate? This is the world now.

No, it’s not! I just wish they could see and feel what I have.

Oh God, what was I thinking, coming back here? It’s one extreme to the other- The peace and quiet and greenery. And solitude and sacredness- To the crowds and the noise and the superficial and greed. But what’s superficial? Ah, I don’t know. I know nothing. I am fucking nothing.

Yes, you are nothing. They’ll be a while yet. Go for a walk.

Why am I so sensitive? Why can’t I handle this? Because you know where all this is headed. No, I don’t!

I filed in with the people on the left in their stampeding factory processing line, along the building's side, towards the other stores. The next one up was a bookshop and the window displays were full of Buy One Get One Half Price stickers on all the books. Someone coughed and spluttered to my right and I glanced at him as he covered his mouth, and my eyes were drawn to the parked Land Rover next to him, and at the Indian Dreamcatcher hanging above its dashboard. An image of the Tar Sands spurting black oil everywhere slammed into my mind, and I thought of the stinking hypocrisy that everyone was guilty of but couldn’t see.