Someone touches your arm. There’s literally nobody around though. You were walking casually down a side street in a small mountainside town.

Then with extraordinarily delayed reactions you jump into the bushes. You scream as if you’re about to be murdered.

Suddenly you notice the new station wagon hooning off down the road with a group of howling teenage boys.

You’ve been a victim to the touching game.

This is the game we used to play. We’d cruise the streets looking for victims, then one of us would reach far out the car window and softly touch them.

This was until one day someone taught us a lesson. This is our story on how the game comes to an end.

Mark, reached out to touch a big round looking fella as we approached from behind. He actually missed the touch. We all watched in anticipation for the big fella’s extraordinarily late reaction. It was a face of terror. Then it was complete rage.

At the same time we all realised he was donning a leather gang vest.

Oh shit.

The big fella jumped into his car. It was an old Holden. He caught up so quickly that he almost crashed into the back of us.

My other mate Scotty was driving. He whipped up the handbrake and onto a neighbourhood paddock. We skidded around in doughnuts almost getting crashed into multiple times.

This was the big fellas game now. He wanted to touch us. But he wanted to touch us with his car and smash us into pieces.

The cars screeched back onto the main road. Speeding through pedestrian zones as the big fella pulled up beside us waving his fist in hatred.

Scotty ripped up the handbrake abruptly to take us up a new side road. For a second we thought we’d lost him. Then all of a sudden he showed up. It was the perfect timing.

We just discovered we were jammed in a dead end with no way out.

He had us cornered.

He got out of the car and approached us. Then he raised a fist as if he was about to smash it through Scotty’s window. He was about to touch his fist with our faces.

His gang tattoos climbing up his neck were now present more than ever. We fucked with the wrong guy.

All at once we pleaded “we’re sorry, what can we do? We’re so sorry”.

He yelled at us “I’ve got ten gang mates out looking for you!”.

He said that we were toast. He uncontrollably spat out “I’m going to torch that car if I see it again”

We droned on apologising like a broken record.

Then all of a sudden something seemed to come over him. His demeanour went from rage to darkly opportunistic.

He obviously realised that our car was actually a pretty flash sports wagon. He worked out that we were obviously rich kids in their parent’s car.

Almost immediately he must have worked out that a big fella smashing up a few kids, in a small mountainside town, was not going to bode well for him either.

He continued with some less aggressive taunting. Then he somehow pulled himself together and politely asked us for money in exchange for release.

Neither of us remember exactly how we wound this all up. The adrenaline was pulsing through our veins in shock.

We scrounged through our pockets and handed over everything we had. It was $60.

He left with an ominously cheeky grin and said “well, you boys have a nice day then”

We sat in silence. Burned rubber tingling our noses. I think it was about three years before we ever spoke about the touching game again.

Lesson learned. That’s the last time I ever try to touch someone without their consent.