WORKING FOR THE KNIFE ━ lando norris.

II. Escaping Inertia

   

   

( ACT I. ── The Becoming )
chapter two / Escaping Interia

   

   

    

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March 4, 2013

They say the brain functions quicker when it's falling, as if the sudden explosion of kinetic energy forces the brain to accelerate until the exterior world goes into slow motion.

Annika had been scrapping with Patrick all race, so when he took a corner wide, lost control of his steering, and he flipped her kart with the force of their collision, she was not surprised in the least. Her previous speed became a sudden, jarring lack of motion, and the ground rushed up to meet her. She slammed into the ground and tasted blood, feeling nothing for a moment except the impacts of hard metal and earth against the softness of her pliable twelve-year-old body, again and again as the skirmish sent her all the way across the grass to the barriers. It took all of two seconds to be over, but Annika felt like she had aged a year before she even came to the realization that she had crashed. The rumble of passing karts woke her to the world.

She was in the dirt, her kart upended beside her. Her mouth tasted like metal, and her entire body had taken a beating. If she had let go, she would have been ejected from the kart in the safety of the earth. But she hadn't. Foolishly, she held on.

"Goddamn," she said to herself like an englishman.

"Are you okay?" Patrick was running up to her from the carnage of his own kart, his young voice muffled by his helmet.

Annika pushed herself up from the ground and spit the liquid from her mouth, letting it disappear somewhere into her helmet. Patrick grabbed her arm and repeated his question, and she shrugged him off. The world righted itself just as she did, settling back onto its axis.

True blind rage and true blind courage are one and the same. You will know this if you have ever seen a caged squirrel or a butterfly trapped in a jar. It does not matter that the squirrel's claws cannot bend the metal, or that the butterfly's wings cannot break the glass.

Continuing to ignore Patrick, Annika grabbed the front of her kart and strained to flip it back upwards, digging her heels into the soft earth as she pulled, pulled, ─ it collapsed down the right-way-up, sending Annika crashing back to the ground with a small grunt. She got back up.

Patrick stood still as he watched her drag the kart back to the asphalt, climb into the seat, and restart the motor.

In seconds, she was ripping back across the track with the wind and the engine keening in her ears. Blood continued to pool in her mouth from her bitten tongue. She swallowed some of it, and then spit the rest out when she could no longer handle the sickening taste.