Silence | Book 1

4-1: Arrest

Tristan blankly stared in front of him, his mind desperately trying to get a single thought out. Yet every sensation was another disruption that shut him down – the policeman opposite of him constantly watching, the handcuffs around his wrists, the inside of the unfamiliar police van, the fear of what would happen when he would arrive wherever he was going.

Kinapped? He asked himself for the hundredth time. I can't... this is all a mistake.

"I didn't do it..." Even his own voice sounded strange and foreign. The police man didn't appear to listen, and he felt his heart sink. He only noticed he was shivering by the rattle of the cuffs, and waves of deep nausea washed over him as he was overwhelmed by everything.

"You're going to be interrogated once we arrive, it's standard procedure." The voice of the policeman made him jump, and it took him a second to realise that it wasn't an order nor an accusation. The only thing that registered in his head was the interrogation, and it felt like the entire world had started to sink. He felt distant and floating, like he had been pulled back inside his mind. His mind could barely function. Everything was frightening and too much to handle, so why even register it at all?

He hadn't even noticed that the van had stopped, until a hand around his upper arm went to pull him along. It all felt like a dream, so dull and dim. He didn't fight or protest, as walking was a task in and of itself. One foot before the other. A little off centre. A little dizzy. He wanted it to be over.

The inside of the police station barely registered. Hallways and doors. Hallways and doors. More police. He felt as pale as the white walls. Cold. It reminded him of snow somehow.

"Do you want some water?" The question confused him, because he didn't know if it was real or if he had imagined it.

"Huh?" He responded weakly to the bobby beside him, half expecting the question to have been his imagination.

"Some water? While you wait for the interrogation."

"No?" He asked quietly, not knowing what he didn't want. He didn't want any of this. He wanted to go home.

"We are going to undo your handcuffs and put you in a holding cell until the interrogation. Understood?"

He nodded, but didn't know for what. Even simple English confused him, as if they were speaking a different language altogether and his mind tried to search for words that make sense to no avail.

The restraints fell away from his hands, and he didn't know what to do with them. It felt like they had been turned into rubber, heavy and unwieldy. But it wasn't like he had to do anything, pushed into a bare, white room and unto an iron bench. Before he knew it all the officers had left and suddenly he was left alone. Locked up. Like a criminal.

He slowly wrapped his arms around himself, as that word sank in even to the very deepest of his head where he had previously thought himself safe. Criminal. The worst he could be. Like mum...

It felt like his head had shifted, tilted into a space he had never been before and it nauseated him just from existing like that. Every mistake she had ever made spun through his head, all the pain she had caused him with her crimes. Homeless. Drugs. Places he never wanted to be again in his life.

He'd fought so hard to climb up through the one lifeline he'd been handed. Studying and studying for years. Every day since he had been twelve just crawling up that thin rope out of his mother's grasp. To not repeat those same mistakes. A-levels. Oxford. Against all odds, and it would take only the slightest for that to all come apart. The prospect of a bad grade ruining that was enough to make him throw up.