‘Tick tock. Tick tock.’ The sound that is slowly driving you crazy. Those two little sounds are all it takes to make you go mad. The sound coming from the only clock in this massive room is hardly even noticeable to everyone else, but to you it is all you can hear. It is like a drill going through your head and it is getting louder and louder. It is driving you insane. ‘Tick tock. Tick tock.’ It is the only thing you can hear as you wait for the words to be said. The jury walk in and you start to see everything in slow motion. These are the people who decide your future. You know that you’re innocent. You know exactly what happened that night, but they don’t. There is a whole load of evidence stacked up against you, but it is wrong. It is making you look guilty, but you’re not, and you’ve got to try and get a whole court room to believe what you say and not believe the evidence. It’s not very likely that you’re going to win. You start to play back the events of what happened that night.
You were in the middle of having an argument with him.
“I blame you for all of this!” He yells at me.
I'm screaming back, “me?! How is it my fault?!”
“It wouldn‘t have gotten worse if you hadn‘t interfered!"
“Interfered! I didn’t interfere. You’re the one which came to me asking for help!”
“Yeah, well if you hadn’t of made me tell someone, then they wouldn’t have threatened my life!” Unfortunately that’s all he thought it was. A threat.
Alex had been getting bullied and he’d told you. You’d told him to tell someone. Someone who could help. A teacher, or a parent. So he did. He told a teacher, but that made the bullying worse. They said that he would regret telling someone. That they would kill him.
As you were in the middle of screaming something at him that you later wish you hadn’t, one of the bullies bursts through the door. He’s got a gun. You don’t want to see your one best friend die, so, without thinking, you lunge forward and grab the gun. You try to point the gun away from Alex, but the gunman is too strong. He fires. BANG! BANG! BANG! The first two shots miss, but the third hits Alex in the head. At first you don’t realise, but suddenly the gunman lets go of the gun and runs out of the house. You turn round to make sure Alex is okay, but he is lying on the floor with a pool of dark crimson round his head. “No!” You drop the gun and run towards Alex. You drop to your knees. “Alex! Alex!” You grab his limp body and shake it. You don’t want to believe it. You don’t want to think that it is true. But it is. He’s dead. There is nothing you can do to save him.
A few hours later and you’re sitting in the police station. They think you shot Alex. They’ve found your fingerprints on the gun, but nobody else’s. That’s when you remember. He was wearing gloves. That’s how his finger prints aren’t on the gun. How could you have been so stupid?! You’ve told them that you had an argument with Alex just before he was shot and they think that that is why you shot him. They think that you got angry because he blamed you for everything and you shot him.
Suddenly you come back to the present. You’re in the court room again. You’re about to be told whether you’re guilty or not. The judge asks the question. “Do you find this person guilty or not guilty?” One person from the jury is standing. You take a deep breath in. You know what they are going to say, but when they do, it still hits you hard. One word.
“Guilty.”
You can’t take it in. You’ve just heard that you’re going to prison for a crime you didn’t commit. You start to feel dizzy and suddenly, your world goes black.
