Rowan’s near death collision when he was 15 had had a massive impact on his life thereafter.
Travelling with his parents to the same holiday resort they visited every year, Rowan slumped in the backseat of the car watching his mother adjusting her makeup in the mirror. She had noticed him watching her but avoided eye contact, tutting whenever the car went over bumps causing her kohl pencil to smudge the perfect line she had created under her eye. His father stared straight ahead, the cogs of thought clattering soundlessly into the stuffy air of the car. It was always like this the day they left for holiday. Last minute packing and rushing caused the Colby family much frustration, and then having to sit within close vicinity of each other in the car for several hours after always made it worse.
Rowan looked out of the dirty window. The sun was high in the sky and shone down onto the glass exposing all of the smears and old swear words he’d written across them with his finger. Bin bags full of clothes and bedding pushed against his body on the backseat, sticky and hot making him feel a bit sick. “Mum?” he asked trying to catch her eye in the mirror. A noise came out of her mouth, that sounded somewhere between acknowledgement and concentration.
The car began to scream, a high, nails on chalk grinding noise merged with a woman’s shrill cries. It sounded to Rowan like an orchestra playing the Devil’s work, fast and slow, no particular beginning or end. The direction of the sunlight began to change angles very quickly filling the car with light and then shrouding it in shade. This happened many times. He caught a glimpse of the swear word he’d written on the window on the way to school last Friday before it exploded into a thousand pieces, spreading his expletive all over the backseat of the car. It tossed in with the strewn clothing like a salad in a washing machine before suddenly, everything came to a stop.
From that point on, every person who knew what had happened to him wore the same, pitiful expression on their face. The teachers at his school. The parent’s of his best friend Nick. His new foster parents. It did not make him feel any better, they didn’t make him feel any better. It made him want to be more reclusive, more alone with his thoughts, alone in his room, just left alone.
We he turned 17, Rowan’s foster parent’s decided to buy him a pet. They’d been slightly hesitant over his choice of companion but soon Rowan’s bedroom was sporting a gleaming vivarium home to Solomon, the milk snake. One night, Rowan laid down on his bed and let his head hang upside down off the edge. He watched as Solomon eyed up a cricket resting ignorantly on a leafy twig. Poor thing didn’t have a clue. Rowan began to feel drowsy as he lay there watching. His mind drifted back to the phantom of himself riding in the back of his parent’s car. He could almost feel the heat of the thick summer car air on his arms, the stickiness of the bags, the rhythm of the engine. He turned his head to the side, a movement of anxiety to try and lessen the emotion that would follow with the next memories. The car spinning, his mother’s cries coming to a sharp end, the silent cogs of his father’s mind slowly churning to a halt. He opened his eyes and they fell on the cricket still existing blissfully on the leaf. Solomon had died.
At 18, Rowan had leaped at the opportunity to move away from his foster parents. It wasn’t that he wasn’t grateful for their efforts over the time that he’d spent with them. Hed just found that he’d had to grow up pretty quickly in a child’s body and now that he was of age, he needed to get the hell out of there. He’d ended up in a ground floor flat in a pretty awful area, but not having any form of solid income left him with no other choice. Somehow, he was managing to survive on (with quite a disciplined attitude) the money his parents had left to him, but knowing it wouldn’t last forever he had taken up night work in the pub not far from where he lived. It wasn’t what he’d expected to do when he’d grown up, he had always pictured himself as a famous footballer or some Lordy Lord in Castle Lordsville. He was constantly late and somewhat abusive to the customers, but for some reason
To the present day, Rowan had undertook the name of “Redneck Rowan” or just “Red” for short. He’d let his sandy hair grow down past his ears and donned a close-cut beard that made him look quite rowdyish. His amber eyes looked back at you with a depth that surpassed his 35 years on Earth. Friend to no one, he existed only because it was slightly better than being dead; and also because of all the free booze he could get from work.
