Page 47 of Nearly Roadkill: Queer Love on the Run
Goddamn parking tickets. Do they have nothing better than to go after people with parking tickets? Did you know when a cop sees the warrant in the database the arresting officer has no idea if it’s for illegal parking or murder?
I got this flash of jail, then my stomach went totally cold when I realized it would be worse for Winc.
Hir license still says male, so she wouldn’t be sent to a women’s prison.
Totally fucked. All I could think of was to run.
We quietly slipped out of the car and took off down the alley like our shoes were on fire. NO ONE WAS WATCHING US!
Yeah, I know I just yelled that. But really, all the cops were just standing there, yelling at each other, so we got a head start before someone noticed. I really thought we were going to make it. Then shots behind us, like firecrackers only louder. Then Winc fell down. They fucking shot Winc!
END SCRATCH JOURNAL ENTRY
To: Editor, They/Them magazine
From: D.I. Drew
Subject: Who’s what where?
Hi Asa,
I had to study more than a few archives to figure this out: At this point, Toobe is with his dad, Scratch and Winc are staggering around near the EcoTech building, and Gwynyth and Jabba are in their respective lairs.
Cheers,
Drew
TRANSCRIPT: NPR ALL THINGS CONSIDERED, SPECIAL EDITION
Shoopman: Apparently shots were fired at Scratch and Winc just moments ago, when they tried to run after a routine traffic stop connected them to a warrant for Scratch’s overdue parking tickets.
Officers had been instructed to proceed with extreme caution. Nevertheless, one officer drew his weapon and fired. It is not known at this point if anyone was hit, but for all intents and purposes, Scratch and Winc are still at large.
This places the balance of the hunt-and-chase in the hands of Lieutenant Wallace T.
Budge of the Federal Bureau of Census and Statistics…
the man responsible for the Coney Island fiasco only weeks ago.
His was the first in a series of fruitless government raids on the nation’s amusement parks.
We will keep you posted as we await further developments.
SCRATCH JOURNAL ENTRY
I didn’t give a fuck what happened next, I just wanted Winc to be right where ze was, lying in my arms. The cops were nowhere to be seen. I don’t think they knew they’d hit hir because ze just kept running. I didn’t even know until ze fell down, and I thought ze’d just tripped.
Suddenly there was absolutely no hurry. I remember a watery beam of sunlight somehow peeking its head over the tops of the skyscrapers.
We found a little hollow in a pile of cardboard, me leaning against a brick wall with hir collapsed into me.
I could feel hir blood, sticky and hot against me, like I’d always imagined. But not this way. Not this way, no!
Ze was murmuring how much ze loved me and looking into my eyes. I got all panicky and yelled, “No! No!” I knew ze was blissed out beyond all comprehension, hir little self happy to be lying in my arms, frozen for all time, just like that, with me.
“How I always wanted it to be,” ze said.
And hir eyes were so near, so deep and changing colors every five seconds to a shade more beautiful than the last. I knew it was a perfect moment, too, but I also got really pissed—like I always do when I feel everything’s going down the path of least resistance without trying to change itself into something better.
I got pissed at hir and the police and the Net and people and subways and cars and skyscrapers, and even my beloved NPR.
I practically hauled Winc to hir feet and made hir walk, willing some hospital or medicine man or something to be around the corner.
My survival instincts kicked in: Just get out of there.
And obliterating everything else, all our silly fights and misunderstandings, it was like this big cartoon dialogue balloon appeared over the two of us that said: live, Winc, just live.
END SCRATCH JOURNAL ENTRY
TRANSCRIPT, NPR SPECIAL EDITION
Shoopman: Well Bob, it’s a mass of confusion around here. Impossibly, the fugitives appear to have slipped away.
All I know is that at one point an officer took some shots as they fled down the alley, and the taller of the two fell to the ground.
We have to assume it was a result of having been hit, but I’m not sure of that, either, because when the smoke of the general confusion and hollering cleared, the two had vanished. And they’re gone, Bob, just gone.
SCRATCH JOURNAL ENTRY
Winc was having a lot of trouble walking, so we took a break, sitting up against a pile of boxes in an alley, hir back against my chest, my hands doing their best to stop hir bleeding. Ze looked so pale.
Then I looked up and saw him. Standing just a few yards away at the mouth of the alley. He wore a shabby suit, good shoes but worn to hell. He was so close, I could see his nicotine-stained fingertips.
I knew who he was; of course I knew. If he’d spoken I would have recognized the voice.
We locked eyes for one of those long moments.
My mind started formulating some acknowledgment, a warning, a thank-you, a quip.
But there was only that silence, Winc and I looking at him, him looking at us. Then, he turned away. Yes, he did.
He walked very fast, very deliberately to the other end of the alley. He went up to the crowd of cops, but I didn’t panic. I took my time, getting Winc to hir feet, adjusting hir against me, and kept walking the other way.
Down the alleyway, I heard him, and he was telling the others he’d seen us. I could see his thumb stabbing the air, and then I heard him bark the classic line.
“They went thataway.”
He never looked back at us, but he kept his gaze steady on his retreating troops. Then he, too, was gone. I heard his footsteps following the others, and then it was very, very quiet.
We were alone again, Winc and I, and I knew there was no place else I’d rather be, nobody else I wanted to be. We were together, alone, as we’d always been, and that was enough. Hip to hip, we walked slowly, me half holding hir up, my Winc, bleeding hir life into mine.
END SCRATCH JOURNAL ENTRY
TOOBE ENTRY
I can’t even type this. I saw them, ran to them. Like slow motion. But…
Winc!
Scratch and Winc were running. I heard these shots, and then I saw Winc fall. And ze was bleeding way bad.
My dad held me back, kept saying it wasn’t safe, telling me they’d be okay. Right!
Then they kissed each other. Usually I don’t like looking at people kissing, but this was such a lovely kiss that I couldn’t stop looking.
And I had no idea if this would be their last kiss ever.
I just fell into my dad’s arms.
Love,
T.
END TOOBE ENTRY
To: Editor, They/Them magazine
From: D.I. Drew
Subject: The end?
Hi Asa,
This is where the story that everyone knows ends. Despite my conviction that someone must know what happened to Winc and Scratch after that fateful day, I’ve failed to find a reliable source. That said, there’s one more installment of this tale.
Cheers,
D.I. Drew
N EARLY R OADKILL : E ND N OTE
Dear Reader,
The whole world’s gone mad, I tell you, upside down. I am the storyteller become the story.
I set out to tell a story about the mad, crazy, queer, sexy love of (quoting Toobe here) “… two idiots who don’t know anything.
One’s confused, and the other’s a ditz.” This love brought the Internet to its knees.
End of story, right? The two of them escape through some back alleys in New York.
Winc’s bleeding, but Scratch has got hir, and they’re limping off into the sunset. The End.
But no! There has been a plot twist… or three.
So, here’s the rest of the story, brought to you by me, D.I.
Drew, your friendly neighborhood nonbinary journalist. I’m the nerd behind the “Nearly Roadkill: Scratch and Winc” series, published here at They/Them magazine.
I still have two huge questions: What happened to Winc after the big chase, and where are the lovebirds today?
There are no definitive answers to these questions.
Every scholar I talk to today has their own theory, but back in 1995 after the shutdown, all the usual suspects went strangely silent on the subject.
No one was talking. Not Toobe, not Jabba, not Scratch or Winc.
The mainstream media covered the political story surrounding the Internet shutdown, but the love story of Scratch and Winc got lost in the process.
Only the tabloids were talking—in their usual fashion.
I Was Winc’s Gay Lover!
Pregnant Transsexual Man Claims: It Was Me and Scratch and the Couple Next Door!
or
Scratch Becomes Luddite, Is Spotted Living in the Desert as a Bearded Lady
The following scenario is not proven fact, but it’s plausible. I’ve pieced it together from some of the more rational theories, blog posts, docs, chat logs, bulletin boards, and the few eyewitness accounts I found using the Freedom of Information Act.
Warning: it’s sad as all fuck.