The radicalisation of Rachel (by Heather)

You wake up in jail and have no memory of how you got there. As you pace around the cell, you find five items in your pocket from the night before. As you look at each piece, the night slowly comes back to you. Write about your night, why you have these five items and how you ended up in jail.

A big nug.

That was her first thought. Her second was that she felt pain everywhere and wished someone wasn’t shaking her. As consciousness seeped in, she realised it wasn’t a nug she was staring at, it was a gun, settled on a hip, and it was likely attached to the voice that was penetrating the fog.

“Rachel! Rachel Bourke. Here’s your things; you can wash up at the sink in the corner and clear out. You’re lucky no charges have been pressed. Get your sorry hungover butt outta here.”

“Wum?” she asked, but the gun, the shaking and the voice retreated. She’d have to find out some other way where she was.

Okay.

One thing at a time.

She peered around her, trying to focus. For a moment everything looked like Strawberry Fields Forever, until she rejigged the wiring on her audios and visuals. Strawberry Fields receded and she could see benches, bars, a metal sink, an open door. Jail. She was probably in a jail cell.

Well, it was a start.

She stared at the little tray that had been shoved at her, trying to get the objects on it to take shape.

First object: her pocket book. Good. Credit cards there, drivers licence there, some cash there. But where was her handbag? That triggered the first memory: standing by her bed at home, deciding to leave the handbag behind to be safe. Safe? She tried to snag the context but gave up.

Her mobile phone was there too. She lifted it to her face. 5 missed calls from Toby. Okay. That released a flood of memory. Her brother Toby ringing to demand she come to the march with him. That’s right, the anti-Bush march. At the Opera House forecourt. “Time you got political,” he’d said. She’d wondered why you’d bother to get political about someone as void of intellect or principles as George W Bush, especially when he wasn’t even your country’s problem. But she’d agreed to go along to protect her radical little brother and his mob of activist uni friends.

So that’s where she’d been. At the march.

This was confirmed by the next object that lurched into her view: a scratched button labelled, “Go home Bush” and in smaller letters, “Oz says NO to police state.”

The next item on the tray sent a chill.

It was her watch, and the face of it was shattered. She remembered, oh, she remembered, she remembered in sharp images the sudden chaos: the police battling their way into the surging crowd, the bullhorns, reaching out for Toby, a baton striking down on her arm, flailing toward Toby, something, something happening...

Her hand flew to her ribs; she lifted her shirt to reveal a circular purple bruise with two small red spots in the middle of it.

Holding her breath, she reached for the last object in the tray, a business card.

“Peter Finch, Attorney at Law”, it said. She flipped it over. On the back, dashed in a hasty scramble of black letters, were the words, “I saw you get tased. Ring me.”

She leaned back against the wall to quell her trembling. The haze of concern and confusion worked itself into a laser point of fury. She reached for her phone and dialed.

“Peter Finch, please? Tell him this is Rachel.”