Microstory 1315: Fear For Life

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Bad Cop: Stop crying!

Little Girl: Wha?

Bad Cop: STOP CRYING! Big girls don’t cry!

Little Girl: I’m not a big girl.

Bad Cop: You got that right. How old are you?

Little Girl: Six and a quarter.

Bad Cop: You should be able to stop crying once you turn six and an eighth.

Little Girl: What does that mean?

Bad Cop: Oh my God. Get in the car.

Little Girl: I can’t reach up that high.

Bad Cop: Why not.

Little Girl: My hands are handcuffed behind my back.

Bad Cop: They’re not handcuffed, you idiot, they’re zipcuffed.

Little Girl: Okay.

Bad Cop: Fine, I’ll pick you up.

Little Girl: Please don’t arrest me. I wanna go home.

Bad Cop: I’m taking you to the police station. We’ll call you parents from there.

Little Girl: Nooooo!! Just let me go!

Bad Cop: It ain’t gonna happen, Elsa. You’ve been a bad girl.

Little Girl: I just wanted to wear my hat. I didn’t do anything.

Bad Cop: Why did you need to wear the hat?

Little Girl: It’s the last thing my daddy gave me before he went to sleep.

Bad Cop: You mean he died?

Little Girl: Mom called it going to sleep.

Bad Cop: Well, that’s not what happened. He died.

Little Girl: ...

Bad Cop: What did I just tell you about crying!

Little Girl: Please! Just let me go.

Bad Cop: No. I’m taking you to holding, so you can think about what you did.

Little Girl: Holding what?

Bad Cop: Holding is a place you go when you do bad things, before a judge sees you, and sends you to prison.

Little Girl: I don’t want to go to prison.

Bad Cop: Well, you may not have to, if you promise not to hurt people again.

Little Girl: I didn’t hurt anyone.

Bad Cop: Your teacher said you screamed so loud, you hurt his ears.

Little Girl: I didn’t mean to.

Bad Cop: That doesn’t matter. You did it.

Little Girl: Pleeeeeeeaaaaaaassssseee-uh!!

Good Cop: What’s going on here?

Bad Cop: I’m dealing with it, Good. I don’t need backup.

Good Cop: Are you arresting a seven-year-old girl?

Bad Cop: No, she’s six. Youngest I’ve ever arrested.

Good Cop: You say that with such pride.

Bad Cop: I’m just stating a fact.

Good Cop: Bad Cop, you are not under arrest for assaulting a minor, but I still recommend you keep your mouth shut. Anything you say will definitely be used against you when I talk to the captain about this. A union rep will be provided to you, but I don’t think she’s going to be pleased with what you’ve done. Let the girl go, and follow me back to the station. That’s an order. Decent Cop, please handle things here. I’ll check in with you later. And find out who called the cops on a kindergartner.

Decent Cop: Yes, boss.

Microstory 1093: Clyde

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So, I’m driving in the big city—well, the suburbs—when I find myself behind this guy who just won’t drive fast enough. I mean, the dude’s going fifteen miles and hour on a thirty-five. I just can’t stand it, so I finally pass him. It wasn’t technically legal for me to do that, since there was one lane each one, and the street was adjacent to neighborhoods, but I hate driving that slowly. I didn’t have anywhere I needed to be, but he didn’t know that, right? What a jerk. So now I’m in front of him, which pisses him off; enough to make him start tailgating me, and honking his horn nonstop. It’s funny that he couldn’t go over twenty while he was in front of me, but now all the sudden, he wants to go fifty. Well, that sort of thing might have concerned me back when I was driving a little sedan, but I have a gigantic SUV now, so I’m not sure what he think he’s accomplishing. We keep going, and he stops honking long enough to whip out his phone and take a photo of my license plate. Whatever, man. The cops aren’t gonna hunt me down and arrest me for a minor offense they weren’t around to see. They have better things to do, and I don’t even think that’s legal. They have to catch you in the act when it comes to a traffic violation. Anyway, we keep going, and it’s starting to get a little suspicious that he’s still following me. It’s not completely out of the realm of possibility that we’re still heading the same way, but I have to be sure. I make a sudden right turn into a neighborhood. He does too. I make a right turn out of the neighborhood, onto the next main street. He does too. I make yet another right turn; he’s still there, which is insane, because we’re literally going in a circle. I start thinking the guy’s a serial killer, or a CIA assassin, and I’m not meant to know who I’m messing with. But he’s the one who doesn’t know who he’s messing with, because I’m a diagnosed sociopath, and I just don’t give a fuh. I lure him to an abandoned part of town, and pull over. I keep thinking he’ll just drive off, because he don’t want no confrontation, but he’s not that smart. We both get out of our cars; him with a tire iron, and me with nothing. He pulls into a golf backswing, and prepares to knock out my taillights, but his weapon doesn’t make it that far. I take it off his hands, and swipe his chin with it. I’m fully prepared to leave it at that, but then he has the nerve to cough blood onto my new shoes.

One man was there as witness, and I’m thinking I’ll have to take him out too, but he approaches from the darkness with a smile, and I realize it’s none other than Homer Durand. That’s right, Viola didn’t save me; he did. All the way out here I run into a kid I go to high school with. He tells me he appreciates my work, and wants to know if I would be interested in collaborating on a project with him. I have no clue what the hell he’s talking about, but I’m intrigued. When I tell him I’ve never hurt anyone before, he says that’s okay, and he can teach me how to do it better. He likes that I managed to find someone I was motivated to kill, but who I can’t be tied to. He warns me the building we’re parked in front of has a security camera, though, so I need to be more careful next time. Don’t worry, he took care of it, so that’s all over. Why am I telling you all this when I know it could get me in trouble? Why did I not listen to Sidney when he told me you have the ability to make people tell you the truth? Why am I not freaking out that it’s working? Because I know you can’t do anything about it. You wanna hear the truth, Alma? Here’s the truth. Viola interrupted a delicate ritual Homer and we were performing. It’s important, but not irreproducible. We’re going to do it again, and this time, we won’t fail. This interview series you’re working on won’t see the light of day, Alma, because Homer has chosen you. You won’t be in any position to stop us, and once it’s all finished, neither will anyone else. You’ve been wasting your time. This is it for you, Julius is here to escort you away. We just need to find one more victim. Any ideas?

Microstory 33: Livewire (True Story III)

In third grade, I lived in the same town as my grandparents. Before that, we lived in a different state. After that, we moved about an hour away. My sister and I would spend a lot of time at their house, especially after school. One day, my grandfather and I were walking down 7th Street to get some ice cream. I hear some sort of loud noise and look up. An SUV is flipping over, twisting to its side, and crashing into a utility pole. A power line breaks away from its connection and swings down to the ground, landing about ten feet from us. It sparks and shakes around a bit. My grandfather shoots his arm out as a useless barrier between me and the wire, but we don’t move back from it. Looking back, I can’t imagine why we didn’t run. It quickly died and stayed in one place. I can recall only bits and pieces of what happened next. At some point we left, but I remember seeing the aftermath from the same vantage point the entire time. The man in the sedan opened his door and stuck his bleeding leg out while waiting for help. The two women in the SUV that had crashed into him and hit the pole had to be removed through the sunroof, and carried away using backboards. I distinctly remember thinking how lucky they were that their car even had a sunroof; and being sickened by the knowledge of an alternate reality where they didn’t, and died because the rescue took too long. I don’t think we ever discussed this with anyone afterwards. I can’t be sure we even ever told my parents. But I do think about it every once in a while, and mourn for the alternate reality where we left for ice cream five seconds earlier, only to suffer the wrath of that livewire.