The Driver's License Photo of Todd

 

Another of the daft impositions placed by governments on citizenry is the bad driver's licence photo. Anyone hoping for vehicular mobility is mandated to take a single picture that serves as their legal introduction for, at least, the following year. The photographed is legally required to rest into bitch face and is allowed to choose from one option, which is not how choice or options works. Death, taxes, bad driver's licence photos - all supposedly inevitable, but that has never stopped people from trying.

Perhaps one may find, on the pop-up community market circuit, the arts and craft stall of Abby. Feign interest in the weavings, the sculptures and other utterly useless art until one is alone at Abby's stall and ask her to make you a fake I.D.. This is what Todd, bowl-cut academic fresh off completing his PhD in cryptozoology, does, Abby leans back her chair to better appraise this prospective customer.

The usual patrons for Abby's illegal side hustle are middle-aged women. Two decades ago, at a craft-sale school fundraiser, fellow Mums inspired her foray into fake I.D.s by complimenting her small art works and then sharing joints behind the change rooms. A consumer base of parents necessitates certain moral restrictions - specifically, that all of Abby's fake I.D.s give completely true information but have a more flattering photograph. (Although, in cases of more complicated I.D.s such as airport access cards, she can outsource digital mischief to Jessica to have flattering photograph inserted into government databases.)* It is mere vanity, but Todd has a more complicated vanity in mind:

'I want my driver's licence photo to change appearance in lieu of my own.'

Ummmm: 'You mean like The Picture of Dorian Gray?'

'Bingo.'

'But.' Contingencies run behind Abby's eyes. 'Sooner or later you are going to pull it out, see it, then die.'

'I believe you are confusing the novel with the film adaptation of The League of Extraordinary Gentlemen. Or my dick.'

April crosses arms: 'Why?'

'Because you said "pull it out".'

'No, why do you want this magical I.D.?'

'I have a skin condition that flares up in summer.'

Also, last visit to the barber revealed, reflection in reflection, the beginnings of a bald spot.

Abby has raised three daughters and the middle one was a particular shit, so Abby has developed a nuanced bullshit detector. In this case, the bullshit detector detects no bull. Well. Shit.

Abby considers: a magical side hustle to her illegal side hustle to her artsy side hustle to her job, plus feeding the third child who has just started uni. Imbuing Todd's drivers licence with the requested properties would require proper witchcraft. Abby would have to get the old gang back together - school friends with whom she extracurriculared in channelling esoteric feminine energies by dancing in forestries under the full moon and shouting 'cunt' a lot. They got pretty good at it.

Bringing the old gang back together is not as socially difficult as it sounds. Dear Felicity did so two years ago in order to hex whoever her husband was fucking, making for an interesting Christmas where all four of her brothers painfully vomited upon entering her premises. However, middle-aged witchcraft has expenses:

·         The booze must be stronger and better quality, all relevant witches having outgrown West Coast Coolers.

·         Then there are the hangover cures, because adult women have shit to do.

·         A mattress on the floor no longer cuts it, everyone will want their own room, which means glamping.

Which brings Abby to the taxed brass: 'How are you going to pay for this?'

Matter of fact: 'Quetzalcoatl feathers.'

'I dooon't really need Quetzalcoatl feathers.'

'No, but someone will, and they have gone up in value after Amy's, um, episode.'

Meaning Amy's hunting trip where she did a lot of peyote in the hopes of contacting (and killing) her spirit animal. No luck there, but she did mistake the I.S.S. for a flying saucer and fired about four dozen arrows, fletched with gravity-defying Quetzalcoatl feathers, at the satellite. Only two hit, the rest drifting into space. This scarcity has tilted the usual supply and demand.

Todd has an ample supply of Quetzalcoatl feathers because he wingmans for them, the serpent dragons using human networks much like how people use hook-up apps. Whilst human sex leaves sweat and other fluids, Quetzalcoatl fornication leaves their feathers and other body fluids, quite often blood. Todd has been saving feathers in the hopes of purchasing a bouquet of blue roses to gift to Elise, another wingman, as a beautiful statement of their impossible love. Todd changed purchasing preferences when he realised that he could just ask Elise:

'You wanna' just fuck already?'

So now Abby feels, in a swell rising from her tum-tums, the epiphany of opportunity. The Quetzalcoatl feathers will be exchanged for The Driver's Licence of Todd. Feathers will then be traded for Ghost Tobacco, cigarettes which give form to spirits yet to pass onto the other side. Abby's youngest is studying psychology at uni and so this ghost tobacco will pay for her informal tutoring by Sinead, who is hot-shot counsellor, ghost and also a smoker.

 

*As an aside, does anyone else think that these Chinese/North Korean/ Russian hackers operate like privateers i.e. they don't work for the government, per se, but the government gives them free reign to digitally loot and pillage foreign assets?