Doctored Chance #NaNoWriMo2019

15 | The Cover-Up

Waking up in a holding cell is one of my least favorite experiences. Especially when surrounded by troublesome people with grubby fingernails and aloof tough-guy or gal demeanors who look at you like a sack of toothpicks if you aren't built as a beefcake. It is especially unpleasant because they often smell and have poor general hygiene. In my experience, every time that I have wound up in a cell, I have consistently thought that every criminal in there shouldn't be admitted until they had cleaned their bodies, and their filthy mouths, with soap.

Alas, simple prop stations, designed for simple typical wrong-doers, are not funded enough to consider bulk supplies of hygiene products for mostly temporary grunts like beaten-up drunks, hit-and-runners, and misunderstood reporters with blood on their hands.

When Tobias woke up in the cell of the East End Police Station, he felt enormously out of place. He was a temporary misunderstood bomb threatener amongst the company of an ear-picking gang member, a chanting spastic, a moaning businessman without any trousers, and a very smug teenager with red eyes and white hair.

Tobias rolled his shoulders and felt his ribs over his shirt. The hoodie was gone, but thankfully, so was the hospital gown, and he was left with his awful Team Defiance merchandise. Tight and itchy bandages wrapped around him beneath the fabric. The silicon mask smelled like smoke and sweat, heavy and uncomfortable. The cell smelled of alcohol and tobacco. All the scents mingled into one malodourous draft.

"What are chances of you winding up here?" the teenager purred.

Tobias frowned and looked over. He narrowed his eyes at the girl's red irises. "Excuse me?"

"I said, what are the chances?"

Tobias shook his head and looked away. He clenched his gloved fist, feeling a sharp shock of pain through his arm from the raw burns on his palm. His head cleared a little, and he did it again, harder. They would collect him soon, he thought. It was difficult to see when in the morning grog.

"I don't belong here," moaned the pants-less man.

The leather-clad gang member grunted and flicked a gob of earwax to the floor, and the chanting woman raised her voice and stroked the prison bars. The teenager blew a bubble of gum and popped it obnoxiously, watching Tobias with her smug, smug smirk.

Tobias looked around the bench for his crutch. It wound up among the photographs in the Higher Defense Headquarters records room, dented, blackened, and blown into two pieces. Tobias would never see it again. What he found instead was a sleek prosthetic, donated by an anonymous pair of parents and a very much alive little girl. He stared at it, lifting his jeans' leg to see the smooth new titanium. It was simple, like the end of a crutch—almost closer to a peg leg, if it weren't for the joint at the ankle.

Engraved into the slim steel shaft were the words THANK YOU. Tobias pulled off an attached tag and squinted at it through his dry contact lenses. They hurt, they blurred, and he was sure that they would soon fall out.

"For saving our little girl," the teenager read over his shoulder. "Well, ain't that adorable, huh? We've got a hero in our midst."

Tobias closed the note in his palm and glared at the girl. "Mind your own business."

The teenager sat back against the wall and shrugged apathetically. Tobias swallowed, expression slack. He clenched his fist again and stood resolutely. The prosthetic frightened him, for he could not feel the floor, and he stumbled a step. The rubber-capped foot caught him and, feeling a jolt up his knee at the landing of it, he stepped more confidently towards the cell's door. He wrapped his fingers around the bars and peered around the outside. There was a hallway to the left, lined with doors, a desk in front where a prop sat, and the exit into daylight to the right.