The Trial Of Alyssa Miller (Teen Thriller)

7. Detained

Present Day

***

She had a view of life that was dark and gloomy. It's what she's made of and would not change for the world. She was bored and she would play the game laid before her until all participants had exhausted their pawns, officials, or whatever.

Despite having her eyes closed and the room pitch black, she knew whoever entered her room was not a family member. She has spent most of her childhood days studying and picking every vibration her family's footsteps made, so with undoubted certainty, the person, or should she say people who were by then standing near the railing of her bed were strangers.

"Alyssa, are you awake?"

What a stupid question, she thought to herself. She always wondered why people deemed it necessary to ask something opposite to what was obvious. Hilarious.

"Look, the doctor said you're fine and though this is against our better judgment, we have to take you in and keep you inside the town's precinct."

Hilarious. Stupid. Comical. She played with various adjectives in her head before she snapped open her eyes, rose from her bed like a corpse-which in the process startled the two officers who were there and murmured, "My father made bail, didn't he?"

It took a moment for the officers to respond, and when they did, all she heard were murmurs of incomprehensible words. It was as if the two adults had suddenly forgotten the sounds of the alphabet or how to construct a sentence. They mumbled, and she hated when people mumbled. Talking was a natural thing, unless one was born without the ability to articulate.

"Was my brother informed?" she replied, already knowing what the answer would be. If they had, her brother would have been there, staring and yelling at the officers.

"Ye... Yes, he was."

"Lousy liars. What a meaningless existence it was to live their lives. They have chosen to serve the Tarika community for what? To obtain a few bucks a month? To be the receiver of the scraps from corrupt officials and follow their bidding like some dog on a leash?

"W-Well, that's it. We need you to come with us right this..."

"Officers, I'm not going anywhere without a guardian. I'm seventeen, well almost eighteen but still, I believe my guardian should be present. Don't you think so?" Alyssa interrupted.

"Alyssa, this is a small town. Everyone knows everyone. What's the point in having them here? We see no reason to..."

"Yes, you don't understand reason or logic. Perhaps, you're even incapable of independent thinking. One must spoon-feed you the answer so you wouldn't have to carry the burden of thought or..."

"Hey, we're not stupid."

"That's not what I mean, sir," Alyssa answered as she gazed at one of the officers whose hand was clutching the railings of the hospital bed. It was dark inside her room. If it weren't for the open door and the illumination from the fluorescent hallway, she wouldn't have perceived the silhouette of both men.

. "Well, it sounded like it. But enough of this. You're discharged and you're coming with us."

"Why?" Alyssa questioned. Though her tone held no resistance, something in the way she shifted her body from the middle of the bed to the side of it made both officers step back and be wary of her.

Officer Frank Langley had worked for the Tarika police department for nearly three decades, and in those years, he hadn't experienced anything that made him not want to continue being a cop. But at that moment, or should he say, from the moment seven kids went missing in their town, something inside him warned that trouble was brewing in the corners of his town. He wasn't a person who relied on instinct or believed in intangible evidence, but something wasn't right. It felt like an invisible and silent thunder was striking the very ground that Tarika stood on. He felt it in his gut for years but never said a word about it. Things would fix themselves. Pieces always found their matches, and mysteries had always unraveled themselves without so much as a lift of a finger from the authorities. Those were what he believed. However, when the kids were never found, his prerogatives and beliefs became comfortless narratives in a daunting manner. Yet, even if his insides had raged in the past four years, he remained silent.