Page 46 of Twister

Dingo

Another car zoomed past me, laying on their horn as they went. When the driver pulled back in front of me, they slowed down enough to wave their middle finger around until they were sure that I’d seen it through their rear window before they sped up again to disappear over the horizon.

I resolutely ignored them, just like I’d done to the twenty other drivers who’d done exactly the same this morning alone.

American drivers were both impatient and short-fused, but generally harmless. If they pulled a gun on me as they drove past, however, then yeah, I’d stop ignoring them. Thankfully, that hadn’t happened yet.

Australian drivers were much the same, but at least they were more creative in their abuse.

Why use a middle finger when you could call other driver’s cunts and threaten public humiliation by sending their dash cam footage to popular YouTube channels so you could be lambasted by thousands of strangers instead of leaving it up to one single driver with an errant middle finger?

In some ways, Aussie drivers were far more frightening, even without the guns. Social media destruction of a person’s online footprint was often violent and brutally instantaneous.

“God, Dingo. You really are terrible at this, aren’t you?” Murph was sitting in the front passenger seat next to me keeping up a running commentary of my driving skills, or lack thereof, even as we drove past a large sign welcoming us to our small-town destination.

With my knuckles white as they gripped the steering wheel, I chanced a quick glance at him before I refocused on the road. Driving in America was proving to be somewhat challenging for me. “Shut it, you.”

The fucker cackled. “Honestly, if I’d known how shit you were, I wouldn’t have let you drive when we were out on patrol. I could’ve died .”

I rolled my eye. “Like you’re worried about that now.”

“Hey, I could die again. You don’t know.”

“You’re a ghost. I’m pretty sure that means you’re safe.”

“Not safe from your atrocious driving.”

I glared at him. “Oh, fuck off.”

His tinkling laughter warmed my cold, shrivelled heart. I’d loved the sound of it when he’d been alive, and I adored it even now when he was dead. I thanked the gods above that some higher power had allowed him to stick around after his untimely death.

Just like me, the stubborn bastard had never backed away from a challenge, and he’d always said I’d been the biggest one he’d ever conquered. I was not surprised in the slightest that he hadn’t let a little thing like dying keep him from me.

Flashing blue lights accompanied a siren from behind me wrenched me out of my thoughts.

“You’ve done it now.”

Choosing to ignore him, I glanced in the rear-view mirror and saw that, yup, I was indeed being pulled over. I sighed and slowed down, drawing over to the side of the road when it was safe to do so.

“Don’t do anything stupid, Dingo. Like getting out of the car. You know how trigger-happy American cops are, especially when you’re as Black as you are. As much as I’d love to be able to touch you again, I’d really prefer you not to have to die for it to happen.”

Pressing my lips together so I didn’t snark a response, I kept my hands on the wheel and watched the cop in the mirror while she sat in the driver’s seat talking into her radio, presumably running the plates of my rental.

After what felt like forever but was probably only a couple of minutes at most, she opened the door and sauntered towards me, her right hand resting lightly on the gun at her hip.

She was a giant of a woman, tall and with a sturdy set to her shoulders that reminded me of the Black Ferns, the national female rugby team of New Zealand.

Wavy black hair was pulled back in a severe ponytail before it flowed halfway down her back, swinging from side to side with every step she took.

Mirrored sunglasses sat easily on her nose, a subtle intimidation tactic I was all too familiar with from my days on the force.

She was terrifying.

But the one thing that made me breathe a little easier?

Her skin was as brown as mine.

Chances were if she did end up shooting me, it wouldn’t be racially motivated.

I hoped.

She could always have a hatred of Australians.

The thought had me second guessing myself enough that my fingers tightened on the steering wheel again until I jumped when she tapped on the window to get me to wind it down.

“Licence and registration.”

I coughed. “Sure. Just a sec.” My fingers slowly unclenched from the wheel before I reached up to the visor where I’d stashed all the rental paperwork earlier. I grabbed everything and thrust it all at her through the open window, sure that what she needed was somewhere in the pile.

She tilted her head to the side but didn’t take hold of what I was trying to give her. “Um…”

Murph laughed. “Way to play it cool, Dingo.”

It was only because I was staring hopefully at her that I saw her stiffen. It was subtle, but I could’ve sworn that she’d heard Murph speak.

Which was impossible. If the past couple of years had taught me and Murph anything, it was that although people could feel the icy effect of him trying to touch them, not one person had been able to hear his snark or see his gorgeous face.

If my boss, Davo, hadn’t reacted so vividly that first time, as well as the dozens of people Murph had revelled in tormenting during my stay in hospital, I would have assumed that his ghost was nothing more than a figment of my grief-riddled imagination.

But no, Murph was really there, presumably choosing to haunt me because there was nothing else in his afterlife to counter his boredom.

And yet, unless I was very much mistaken, this gigantic woman had just heard him sass me.

Huh.

“Do you know why I pulled you over today, sir?”

Bringing my attention back to where it should be, I stilled, my hands still holding the paperwork out the window. “No, ma’am.”

“You were driving too slowly.”

“Uh… I was?” I blinked. I hadn’t been going that slow, had I?

The signs had said forty. I knew what forty kilometres felt like, so that’s what I’d been doing.

I closed my eyes when I realised my error.

Suddenly all those speeding, middle-finger-waving arseholes made more sense.

“Sorry… I keep forgetting that you guys operate under miles, not kilometres.”

“Unlike most civilised nations,” Murph said under his breath.

I winced, praying she wasn’t actually some sort of medium who could hear every word Murph uttered from the passenger seat.

“Please step out of the car, sir.”

Nibbling my bottom lip, I watched her step back from my door, her hand now lightly gripping the handle of her gun instead of lightly resting on it.

“Shit. Now you’ve done it.”

As I brought all the paperwork back in the car, I pressed my lips together to stop myself from yelling at Murph and making the situation even more weird.

When I dumped it on the passenger seat, it fell through Murph’s lap, setting his form swirling, something that he hated because it reminded him how incorporeal he was.

I still didn’t know how he was corporeal enough to sit in a car seat, but incorporeal enough that paperwork could fall through him.

Ghosts were weird as fuck.

“God, you’re such a dick sometimes.”

I glared at him and tried to subtly shake my head at him to shut the hell up.

“Now, sir.”

Sighing, I slowly swivelled and opened the door to get out, locking my left knee before I rose. “Officer, if I need to remain standing for a while, I’m going to need the cane that is in the footwell behind the driver’s seat.”

She nodded once in acknowledgement. “This shouldn’t take long.”

Okay, then. I pushed up from my seat and stumbled two paces from the car, making sure my hands were always in clear sight.

The officer waited until I was clear of the door before she shut it firmly.

She turned around to lean back against the back passenger door, slipped her sunglasses off to sit them on top of her head, skewering the handles through her thick hair to hold them in place.

She then crossed her arms in front of her and narrowed her eyes before casting them up and down my form.

I felt weirdly exposed. It was not something I appreciated or wanted a repeat of if I could avoid it.

“You were also weaving from side to side which leads me to believe that you’re under the influence.”

A scoffing bark of laughter erupted from inside of the rental, easily heard through the still-open driver’s window.

Well… at least to those who could hear ghosts, that was.

“Americans and their stubborn insistence of doing everything opposite to the rest of the world.” Murph shifted over to the driver’s side and peered out the window at me.

“I told you that driving on the other side of the road was going to fuck you up over here, especially when you’re down a fucking eyeball and your depth perception is worse than a plank of wood. ”

Wishing Murph would shut the hell up and praying that I could continue to act like he wasn’t there and I wasn’t listening to him reaming me out for potentially driving on the wrong side of the road, even though it was the right side of the road and no-one would convince me otherwise, I raised an eyebrow, feeling the scarring tug in the same places it always did when I manipulated my face in a way it didn’t like.

Unfortunately, the simple act of raising my eyebrows was an ingrained habit at this point in my life.

It had always been the simplest interrogation technic I’d utilised when questioning suspects out in the field and was proving to be a hard habit to break even after being off the force for a couple of years.

Officer Giantess raised her own sleek eyebrow in retaliation, obviously having gone to the same police seminars on silent intimidation and interrogation tactics as I had, even though we were from vastly different continents and cultures. Some things were universal.