The Series of Unfortunate Events (pt. 7)

So let me tell you why I was walking through a gas station with my hood up and face down and why my car was parked in the middle of the bushes and why fifteen police cars sped by with their lights flashing and sirens wailing.

Remember how I said it was best not to run? Yeah, fuck that. The cop knew my documents were faked. He either had exceptional equipment, or he was simply in a bad mood and decided to single me out, but he declared my documents as fake and ordered me arrested. Isn't that fun? It's so fun!

Anyway I ripped the documents from his hands and since my foot had never once stopped hovering over the gas pedal, I stomped on that bitch and sped off. The car was flying at its maximum speed and I was very far away by the time I slowed down enough to actually steer other than just keep the car on the road without flipping it. Thank the Virgin the road was straight. So anyway I knew they would be coming after me full speed as well, so I did the only thing I could and turned off my lights before delving into the fields. It was nighttime and the car was black so that advantage made it easier for me to hunker down and hide.

Once the police sped past me, I waited for a while until it seemed safe for me to exit the fields and continued driving until I saw a gas station. First, I had to pee, second, I needed coffee to keep me awake because driving through the entire night was exhausting on the eyes. I wasn't sleepy, but my eyes physically could not look and send the image to my brain, so after grabbing a bunch of bottled coffees and paying for a petrol refill, I made my way back to my car pumped it full, then got in and proceeded to continue my route.

Considering that I had managed to get all of Sicily and some guards in mainland Italy searching for my ass, there was no other option except to make my way up to France by using roads other than the main road. Was it impossible? No. I could weave my way in and out of the roads at random so that they wouldn't exactly be able to track where I was going next if anyone reported any sightings.

By now they had probably figured out that I was going north, so it would be prudent if I anticipated a road block upon arrival to the border. The phone in the passenger seat rang and I quickly picked it up. "Hello?"

"What the hell did you do? You're on national news!" Lina seemed frantic on the other side. "The police already came here and questioned me about the hummer."

"And?"

"And?! Katarina, you have the entire country of Italy looking for you! Also they never arrested Marco and he came to my restaurant after the police left demanding to know where you were. He threatened to burn the place down if I didn't tell him."

"WHAT?" I planted evidence on him! What the fuck! How incompetent was the police force in this country?!

"He's cooperating with the police to find you. You're known by the alias on the documents."

This changed everything. I already knew I had to avoid further checkpoints but to have my face plastered on the national news with my alias this time? This was twice that I'd made the news in Italy and sooner or later people were going to make the connection! The fact that I was thinner didn't have any impact on people's ability to recognise me, and when that happened, it would be over.

Also, Marco cooperating with the police?

"How do you know this?"

"I'M WATCHING THE FUCKING NEWS!"

Oh, right. SHIT!

"OH FUCK NO! If my father finds out Marco is cooperating with the police to find someone who looks like me, he's going to put all the pieces together and burn Italy to the ground looking for me! Fuck!" How could I not have thought this through?! I needed to get to France and IMMEDIATELY! If I was on a tight schedule before, now I absolutely had no time to waste at all. Life was creeping up on me and if I didn't cross that border before it got within hitting distance, everything would fall apart. Damn it!

"Wait what?"

Oh that's right, I hadn't told Lina about my plans.

"Never mind, get that politician to do something about this immediately." I hung up and hit the rim of the steering wheel angrily. Everything had been going so well and suddenly they weren't. This had to be bad karma catching up to me from the time I didn't give that street performer my spare change of ten cents when I was eight. I knew it was coming for me sooner or later!

Weaving in and out of the roads added extra time to my journey, but I had absolutely no choice. I was now running from the police, the Italian Mafia, and the Spanish mob. Life was peachy. Absolutely peachy.

Time went by and I was starting to fall asleep at the wheel again. My body was begging me for rest and I wanted nothing more than to just pull over and sleep for a few hours, but I couldn't. Every second I wasn't as close to the French border as I wanted to be was a second that the police risked finding me.

Even though I wanted to save them for later, I had to make due with necessity at the moment, so I cracked open a bottle of coffee and literally chugged it in seconds. It was such a shame that I was aware of the fact that caffeine took twenty minutes to enter the bloodstream. I wanted nothing more than to be wide awake and speeding through the rest of the way.

When I finally saw signs that I had arrived to Asti, the relief that flooded my body made me feel like I was floating. I was so close to France now! The French air was basically up my nostrils. Oh but the spirit was short lived when I realised that I still had hours to go after crossing the border to get to my house.

Great.