Walking the Gallows ✔️

Chapter 14

Not much had happened in the days since the meeting between Detective Miller and Andy. A thorough investigation and inspection of his house were done. He hadn't heard any news back from the search. So it continued, the days passing in the grimy prison cell where men came through and left. Hauled by guards either in or out of the precinct, he sat in silence. The toilet in the corner was almost never used. Even the lowest of the criminals who came through thought it better to urinate on the floor. It smelled to high heavens. There was no sink or access to any kind of clean water. It was very likely an illegal way to keep prisoners. Maybe they had let him out once or twice before for air but if they had, he couldn't remember it.

He was a silent observer of his own life, watching absent-mindedly as every change that occurred around him happened over and over again. After a while, he learned not to flinch at the sight of a black baton being used against the occasional thief, unprovoked. Andy thought it was strange that he was never on the receiving end of the violence. It was almost as if they didn't notice he was there at all.

After so long of his soul hovering over his body, he had forgotten how to move. The soul that floated around him returned. It lowered itself, sinking back into the stiff corpse-like body it had originated from. Like glue, it stuck in place. He didn't move immediately. The movement started when his head had stopped spinning. The feeling returned. It started first at his toes, working up towards shoulders. He cracked his knuckles, cringing at the noise that seemed to resonate through the rest of his skeleton. The movement of his jaw grinding against his skull made him shudder.

Feeling the blood pulse through his body once again was relieving. After so long of being cooped up, he had pins-and-needles all over. Stretching his legs, he felt the numbness finally subside. The most satisfying part of the experience came when he cracked his back. Turning side to side, the sounds came all at once. His spine that had been begging for tension release finally received it, and it was wonderful. He spent the next few hours walking about the empty cell. No one had been brought in to it in a very long time.

After so long in solitude, a guard came to get him. He was a lot bigger than all the other guards before him. His bulk intimated him at first glance but Andy found it confusing that he was so wary and skittish. Every movement he made would result in the guard jumping slightly.

He expected to go back into the interrogation room where he had first seen the files of the dead. The man had pulled him right past it. Instead, he was lead to another room. The door was a lot fancier than any he had seen in the precinct. No paint chips peeling off or butchered wooden doorways. It was clean and white. He couldn't remember stepping through it, but he remembered being inside it.

A man who looked in his sixties looked up while sitting behind his desk. A much younger woman sat off to the side with a notepad in her hands. It was similar to the on Detective Miller had. She read through all the slips thoroughly even after he was brought into the room. The guard left soon after. He didn't have to be told that the man was a lawyer.

On the desk was a nameplate reading "Arnold Mullins". It was almost humorous how much the name suited the man himself. His scalp glittered with the odd grey hair or two that were noticeable beside his otherwise bald head. It seemed like he refused to look up at Andy. The woman also kept her head down. Neither one of them seemed to want to give him the time of day.

He didn't mind. Frankly, other than going home, the one place he wanted to be was back in his cell. It may have been vile, stained with human fluids and littered with the remains left behind from loose fingernails and even sometimes teeth, but it was what he had become accustomed to. He hadn't been in the mood for tolerating changes in his environment.

Since the first day he found himself behind the solid metal bars of the confined prison space, he felt a small part of him slipping away. He didn't think of himself as a nice person ordinarily. However, seeing the person he once was and who the person he had to become in order to survive himself was enough to send him over the edge. A small part of him desperately hoped that he would return to himself after everything had blown over and gone back to normal, though there was no absolute guarantee that things would ever be the same again.