by Perrin Briar
“As you can possibly tell by my boyfriend’s cold dead corpse, there’s nothing convenient about any of this,” Dana said coldly.
She’d lost patience with Torres.
“Look,” she said, holding up her cuffed hands. They clinked against the table. “I know how it looks, but I’m telling you the truth. Darren has never been the violent type. I don’t know what got into him, but he attacked me. The last I heard, we were living in the land of the free and we have the right to protect ourselves. That’s what I did.”
“Protecting yourself doesn’t usually mean beating the victim so badly with a blunt instrument that he’s no longer recognizable, nor stabbing him four dozen times either,” Torres said.
“I’m the victim here!” Dana said. “Me!”
It sounded feeble even to her own ears.
Torres tapped his cigarette on the lip of his plastic coffee cup. His eyes glanced up and locked onto hers.
“Here’s what I think happened,” Torres said, clasping his hands together and resting his elbows on the table. “You came home and found your boyfriend in bed with another woman-”
“It’s not my home,” Dana said.
“They were right in the middle of things,” Torres said. “You were shocked, angry. Anyone could understand that. Hell, so would I. Something happens to the brain during those moments. A red mist descends and you can’t think straight about what you’re doing and why you’re doing it. I see it all the time. It’s human nature. We’re not so different from our ape cousins when it comes down to it, especially during times of great stress.
“You probably weren’t even aware of what you were doing. You may have even made up this whole story to protect yourself from the truth. But deep down, you know you did it, and there’s a part of you itching to tell someone.”
He smiled kindly at Dana, like he was a confiding friend. Torres waited a moment, letting it sink in.
“I’m not an idiot,” Dana said. “I know what happened, and that’s the truth.”
“I’m just trying to help you,” Torres said.
“Sure,” Dana said, unable to keep the sarcasm out of her voice. “That’s all anybody around here wants to do. Help people.”
“Tell me about what your boyfriend tried to do to you in the kitchen,” Torres said.
“I’ve told you a hundred times…” Dana said, voice rasping with exhaustion.
“I have a bad memory,” Torres said.
Dana sighed, took a deep breath, and began to extol her story again.
“I ran in and hid around the back of the table,” Dana said.
“Why?” Torres said.
“Because I thought he would head around one side and I could run around the other, escaping him,” Dana said.
“Why didn’t you try to do that in the living room?” Torres said.
“Because it’s too small,” Dana said. “He would have caught me for sure.”
“So you’re in the kitchen,” Torres prodded.
“I’m in the kitchen and I’m waiting for him to come in,” Dana said. “He does. But he’s stumbling, struggling to find his way inside. He bumped into the island. He got distracted by the pot and pan noises-”
“Pot and pan noises?” Torres said.
“He walked into them,” Dana said. “He didn’t seem to know what he was doing, like he was sleep walking or something. I’m preparing myself, ready to run in the opposite direction to the one he comes toward me at. He sort of falls across the table and crawls toward me.”
“‘Sort of’ falls across it?” Torres said. “Care to be more specific?”
“I’m sure if you listen to the hundred other times I’ve told this story it’ll all come clear to you,” Dana spat. “I tried to run down the sides, but I can’t. He’s always there, reaching for me. I backed away. I don’t know how I’m going to get out of this. He fell on me and we wrestled.
“He tried to bite me, tried to hold me down. We fought for a long time, but it probably only lasted a few minutes. I thought he had me, that he was going to bite me… And then he climbed up my body and started… He…”
Her voice was full of fear and anger and desperation, the memories hitting her hard. She looked across at Torres, and she thought she caught sight of something there…
A flicker of apprehension? He believed her? Finally! But Dana didn’t let her hope show. She didn’t want to lose the toehold she had on him.
“He would have raped me for sure,” Dana said. “If he knew enough to pull my panties down. But he didn’t, and instead he kept rubbing and thrusting against me. I had to wait for him to finish before I could get the knife sticking out of his back and attack him with it, to stop him.”
“And when did you receive that?” Torres said, dragging on his cigarette and nodding at Dana’s bite wound.
“At the end,” Dana said. “After he… After he had finished with me, and before I managed to stop him. I had to let him bite me, feed off me, before I could attack him.”
Torres was silent a moment. Dana couldn’t guess the thoughts going through his mind. She wanted to speak, but was afraid of disturbing him from his potentially friendly thoughts.
“At what point did you slash the girl’s throat?” Torres said.
Dana’s body folded. Torres had slid back into the disbelieving police officer routine again.
“I didn’t slash her throat!” Dana said, banging her fists against the table.
Torres didn’t even flinch. Dana calmed herself.
“Are you being deliberately dense?” she said. “There must be lots of things you can look at that will show you I didn’t do it. Look at the girl’s body. Look at her wounds. I’m pretty sure your experts will agree a knife didn’t do the damage to her body.”
“What did?” Torres said innocently.
“A Transformers accessory toy,” Dana said, straight faced. “What do you think?”
Torres just looked at her. Dana rolled her eyes.
“Darren did it,” she said. “He was eating her, as I’ve told you one hundred and one times already. Why? I don’t know. Go and ask her. On no, wait. You can’t. She’s dead, as I would be if I hadn’t stopped Darren.”
Dana was panting, angry and out of breath. She leaned forward and rubbed her eyes. They felt like they were made of sand. Torres pursed his lips and tapped his cigarette on his coffee cup. The ash hissed.
“Say I accept your story,” Torres said. “Say if I agree with you that your boyfriend became some kind of enraged monster. That doesn’t mean the court will. In fact, they’re almost certainly going to decide against you. They’ll trust their instincts, which will believe in human nature, and human nature would have gone berserk at seeing a lover in the arms of someone else.”
Dana’s ears perked up. This was new. A rogue line of reasoning from the endless series of mundane questions. Had they just passed onto the next stage of questions?
Dana was hopeful Torres believed her, but she was also cautious. She needed to be wary in case he tried to catch her out. It might be a trap.
“But it’s the truth,” Dana said.
“Even so,” Torres said. “The law is not infallible. All the evidence points to you having committed the crime. You even admit doing it. And then there’s the little issue of your history.”
Torres slid a file across the table. It was probably a replica of the one in Miss Jenkins’ file cabinet. Dana shut her eyes in despair. Miss Jenkins was right. She had graduated onto more serious crimes, though it was no fault or intention of her own.
Who was going to believe her? She was the girl who had cried wolf, the girl with the tarnished reputation of her own making. She was known as a thief, a liar and a juvenile. They were never going to believe what she said.
“You’re going to be locked away for a very long time,” Torres said.
His voice was free of emotion. He was just stating the facts, just as the newsreader had done earlier without inflection. It chilled Dana to the bone.
>
“And this time you’ll go to a prison,” Torres said, “not some soft touch juvenile detention center for children. You’ll get a wake up call then. Clearly juvie hasn’t given you one up till now. You’re eighteen. You’re in the adult world now.”
In the eyes of the law she was indeed an adult, and an adult was responsible for her own actions. The world had just become a dark and sinister place.
“Self defense is a flimsy argument in this case, don’t you think?” Torres said. “Your boyfriend comes at you, wang swaying, the same way he has dozens of times before, only this time it’s someone else’s lipstick around his cock. You saw red and murdered him. Self defense is murder by another name.”
Dana’s brain hurt, pounding like it was trying to escape. She felt dizzy and her head swam. She shook her head to remain focused.
“What are you on?” Torres said. “Have you taken something? Wouldn’t surprise me with your rap sheet. Is it the same thing that’s sent the rest of the world bat shit crazy?”
“I don’t feel so good,” Dana said.
She wasn’t lying. She felt sick to her stomach. Her head pounded and sweat slicked her head to foot.
Torres clicked his fingers in front of Dana’s face. She blinked. The sound faded and sent ripples through her mind. Deep down inside her, a monster pried at her, like it was attempting to open the gates of hell. She heard a groan, resonating and deep. Then she realized she wasn’t just hearing it, but feeling it.
It was coming from her own throat.
The click of fingers faded in and out like she was underwater. The lights were so bright and overpowering that Dana had to squint to keep her eyes open. Torres said something, but his voice was slow and distant.
“Dana,” Torres said. “Look at me. What have you taken?”
Dana started, the world snapping back into focus again. Her head darted side to side, looking at her surroundings as if surprised to see them. She panted, out of breath. Her arms jolted at her restraints.
“Hey,” Torres said, snapping his fingers in front of her face again. “Welcome back.”
Up close, Dana saw all the pimples on his face. It was not a face to wake up to.
“Are you all right?” Torres said.
Dana put a hand to her head. She had to twist her neck at a funny angle to do it. Her fingertips came away wet.
“Yeah,” she said. “I’m fine. I don’t know what came over me.”
“Are you on drugs?” Torres said, peering closely at her pupils.
“No,” Dana said.
“Are you sure?” Torres said.
“Yes,” Dana said. “Am I going to have to answer this question a thousand times too?”
Torres stifled a smile.
“You’re fine,” he said. “A mean temper, but fine. You’re not on anything?”
“What did my blood results say?” Dana said.
“Forget about your blood results,” Torres said.
“I’m clean,” Dana said.
“So, your story remains unchanged?” Torres said.
“Yes,” Dana said. “It was self defense.”
“Okay,” Torres said, a hint of sadness in his face and voice. “It’s not going to go easy for you, you know that?”
“I’ve been through a lot of shit in my life” Dana said. “I suppose a little more won’t hurt. I think I want my phone call now.”
“You said you don’t have a lawyer,” Torres said.
“I lied,” Dana said. “My father’s a lawyer.”
Dana had been asked earlier if she wanted to call anyone. She had declined, thinking this whole thing would be over quickly. Instead, it had taken a turn for the worse, into some very serious territory. She needed all the help she could get, even from her scumbag father. How had things gotten so dire so quickly?
But things were about to get worse. A lot worse.
Chapter Eight
DANA SAT in the corner of the holding cell. It was the farthest she could get from the other inmates without appearing to be a total loner. She kept her eyes level and straight, looking out, aware of her surroundings, but making sure not to meet anyone else’s gaze. She also didn’t look down at the floor.
She’d learned from juvie that there was a thin line between strength and weakness you had to walk. You didn’t want to look belligerent, unless you had the balls and muscle to back it up. But neither did you want to appear weak.
Juvie was not a nice place. Neither was prison or a holding cell. Dana supposed many of the other occupants had attended juvie too. It’s not like anyone got up one morning and suddenly decided to break the law. It was a way of life for them. They did it because they didn’t know how to do anything else. It wasn’t an excuse, it was just the truth.
People liked to believe those who broke the law were somehow intrinsically bad. They’d been taught to think that way from a lifetime of movies and TV shows. There were good guys trying to restore the world to its natural equilibrium, and bad guys trying to mess it up. It was the way the world the worked, or so they liked to believe.
In actual fact, the world was a much more complicated place. The line between good and bad was less distinct to someone with no other way to feed their children.
Some of the women chatted in hushed whispers, sat on the wooden benches around the room. A short skirt, no wider than a belt, and a torn pair of fishnet stockings with more holes than fabric, appeared in Dana’s vision. The woman had turned to look in Dana’s direction. Dana kept her face unemotional, her eyes down. If someone wanted to pick a fight, Dana didn’t want it to be with her.
Don’t come toward me, Dana muttered like a mantra. Don’t come toward me.
She couldn’t see the woman’s face, and she didn’t need to. There would be more than a hint of aggression in it. The woman, for whatever reason, perhaps deciding Dana wasn’t worth the trouble, turned and headed away toward someone else.
Dana’s arms were still cuffed behind her back, like all the other prisoners. No doubt to help prevent fighting in the cell. Instead it only promoted creative aggression with tooth and nail.
Momentary relief. But if she didn’t get out of there soon, she was going to be approached by someone. Dana wondered whether Miss Jenkins was right. Perhaps bad luck was drawn to her, like a moth to a flame. It had always seemed that way. She would be in the wrong place at the wrong time with the wrong people, and would end up being the one getting into trouble.
She had to break free of this vicious cycle, get out and make a clean break for herself. Max deserved a sister who was there for her, someone who could protect her from her father should he ever step out of line. What good was she going to be stuck behind a wall of concrete?
A woman in blue overalls took a seat beside her. Dana hissed through her teeth and shied away from the woman, shrugging to protect her injured arm. She’d been careful to keep it concealed. Nothing drew sharks like injured prey. It ached with a dull pain. Even the cool touch of her leather jacket brought searing pain. It itched, but she daren’t touch it for the same reason.
“Hey, shut up!” a woman standing at the front of the cell said to those whispering amongst themselves.
She had her face pressed to the bars in an effort to hear the TV mounted to the wall. The prisoners she’d spoken to carried on talking.
“I said shut up!” the woman said.
“Who you telling to shut up?” an Asian woman with a spider web tattooed on her face snapped.
“It’s the riots,” the woman at the bars said. “The riots have spread to downtown Seattle.”
The cell fell silent. No doubt many of them had friends and family in the area. They got to their feet and approached the bars, watching the news as it played out. Dana watched from the back.
The first woman at the bars turned to the officer on duty.
“Hey,” she said. “Can you turn it up?”
The officer considered, and then shrugged. She didn’t see the harm. She turned the volume up.
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sp; The Seattle police department had locked the city down, but at the expense of trapping many innocent people in the bargain. Those trapped were now fighting to escape their imposed prison.
There was a frantic undertone to their aggression, Dana thought. Not like Darren’s mindless violence, but like the people were in a panic. A hive of bees out to protect themselves from invading hornets. It was in their faces, in the way they comported themselves. They met the riot police and clashed, like two waves coming to blows.
“Riots have continued to spread throughout the nation and the world today,” the same harried newsreader said. “Reports have poured in of whole cities being lost to violence. The riots have spread to the west coast, affecting Los Angeles, San Francisco, Las Vegas, and even as far north as Seattle.”
The prison inmates muttered to themselves. They were transfixed by what they were seeing on the TV screen. Their world was coming to an end. They all knew it, felt it in their bones. And the worst thing was they couldn’t do anything about it from where they were.
One of the prisoners appeared to be taking it worse than the others. It was the woman in torn tights and micro dress Dana had seen earlier. She paced up and down the cell, taking no heed when she bumped into someone.
“Hey!” they said. “Watch it!”
But Micro Skirt kept pacing. She kept shaking her head, mumbling something under her breath. She was lost, her mind gone, Dana thought. Then she suddenly stopped and fell to her knees.
“My head!” she screamed. “My head! It hurts!”
“Get up!” one of the others said, kicking her. “Isn’t it bad enough the city’s turning to shit that you have to start kicking up a fuss?”
“It hurts!” Micro Skirt said.
Tears streamed from her eyes. The others turned to look at her.
“All right, all right,” the officer on duty said, tapping the bars with her truncheon. “What’s going on?”
“My head hurts!” Micro Skirt said. “It’s so painful! I feel like my head’s going to explode!”
And then she did explode.