Category : Books-Non-Fiction

Sub Category : Biography

From my memoir:



September 2009
      


       The officer flips on the parade of flashing red and blue lights, informing other drivers to clear a path. What's the rush? I want to ask him, but my quivering bottom lip won't allow it. The thick plastic divider supported by metal fencing blocks any air from reaching me in the backseat. Both doors are locked, as well as the windows that magnify the sun's rays onto my face. Forcing my eyes shut, the baseball-sized lump crawls up my throat. It takes everything I have to hold it all in. 
        Back at the nightmare wrapped in yellow police tape that's now my former apartment, I cried with my Dad when he showed up a few minutes after the paramedics, but before the police. Any grief or agony quickly turned to guilt and anger once the detective began to accuse me of an incredibly heinous act. My cries of denial were then matched by other false accusations and shouts calling me a liar. 
       I had everything going for me: I was back in school studying music, living in my own place that my parents had agreed to pay for as long as I was enrolled, and to top it off, my best friend lived two flights above me. 
        Now, all of that is gone… forever. 




I'm scared and I need help. 
       I could repeat these words over and over again in my head. But, the thought of ever letting them escape the confines of my insecure anxieties of my mind was impossible. looking and speaking to me, you could never tell, but inside, I'm shaking in fear. I've never been this scared before. Nor, this sad…


       I sit down on the plastic chair as instructed by the officer before he walks out of the dimly lit room. The click of the lock slowly diminishes like a dying metronome, struggling to be heard. The room holds an unsubtle charge. It's not an unfamiliar feeling. I can feel it manifesting from the chair underneath me, making my heart tremble with a fear greater than when I first sat down. It's the same fear shared by every murderer, arsonist, junky, rapist, and criminal who's sat in this very chair. 
     God, please don't make me share the same fate as them. 
     A bead of sweat slides down my warm, flushed cheek. My whole body is warm as if I'm having an allergic reaction. The room begins to suffocate me as the walls seem to inch closer each time I look away. I close my eyes and try to escape into an alternate reality. Another world. Any place where fluorescent lights don't exist. 
       Almost there. 
       I take one last breath of the stale air; my last taste of this world. 
       A flash of light illuminates the back of my eyelids as if a picture was taken. I am shaken back to reality from the jarring door being opened. Immediately, it brings me back to a dull office; brighter on the back of my eyelids than before. 
       Without opening my eyes, I know where I am. The musty air of foot odor that blows through every jail cell vent gives it away. The officer takes a seat at a computer I never noticed. I know I'm going to have to tell him everything that happened. I didn't do anything wrong, but I can't prove this, and based on what they found when ransacking my apartment, I know I'll be their criminal scapegoat. I sit and wait for him to tell me what I'm being charged with and the sentence that'll go along with it. 
       I take a deep breath, through my mouth to avoid the stench. This is a mistake I realize when I can taste the sweaty feet. 
       I cough. 
       An earthquake rolls through my body as the anticipation grows by the second. I stare at him until our eyes meet. When they do, I raise my eyebrows silently asking him to sentence me already. 
       Whatever my it is, won't have any effect on the wall of apathy and truth between us. The truth that I’ve already been sentenced to a life of misery.