The Domino Effect

What if...

Outside the window, the trees swayed mockingly. They stretched their arms towards the unending sky and uncurled their fingers as they boasted and tormented passersby . The birds sniggered as they danced through the air and joined in the trees' torments. They were free. They were bound by neither walls nor law. Their only restriction was the unending, blue sky.

A fly buzzed in through the open door and buzzed around the claustrophobic room. Up, down, upside-down, over the table and back out the door, unfazed by the glares and swishing hands that chased it. In the room of sixty or so people, no one heard the trees' insults, the birds' sniggers or the fly's liberated buzz louder than Lucy Sheen.

Lucy peered down at her shoes. A sophisticated pair of heels she had received from her grandmother for her eighteenth birthday, last September. Her toes peered out of the end of the shoe and her painted-white nails perfectly contrasted the black leather of the shoes.

"Perfect for a job interview, my grown-up girl," Grandma Jean had told her. How Lucy wished she was at a job interview right now. She wished that the light sweat beneath her arms was caused by the sharp voice of an interviewer as she nervously sat clutching the sides of her chair. She wished, from the bottom of her heart, that the harsh, judgemental states that were shot from all angles of the room were merely the stares of interviewers ready to see if she was worthy of the job.

Slowly, with an air of artificial confidence, Lucy bit her lip and lifted her head further upwards. After all, impressions were everything.

Suddenly, Lucy felt her head begin to spin and faces began to blur together. While she was unable to identify the exact cause of her lightheadedness it was most likely a result of the sheer nervousness pumping around her veins or the fear mutinying her very soul or as a result of standing up for so long. How she wished to sit down, or lie down and have a snooze, sleep her problems away. What she wouldn't give to enter a dream world without problems, choices or even walls. Nothing that would prevent her from flying to the stratosphere and then the mesosphere and never coming back. A world without sophisticated heels that felt like lead and restricting ceilings that sentence innocent souls to a lifetime in the prison called 'Earth'.

However, no matter what the cause of Lucy's light-headed spin was, sitting down right now would not be appropriate. And the last thing Lucy needed right now was a few more judgemental glares. Today Lucy had to be a charismatic ray of sunshine that earnt as many sympathetic smiles as possible.

Nervously Lucy peered through her eyelids at the twelve faces that mattered the most. Searching manically to see one or even two smiles in the ocean of cold glares that stared unrelentlessly back at her. But as Lucy's eyes met each of the twelve pairs of eyes before her, she knew that the sympathy she was looking for was hidden behind layer upon layer of hatred, mortification, anger and, most prominently, judgement. Each of the twelve faces was as stone-cold as the Easter Islander Statues.

Lucy glanced once more out of the large, hostile window at the tormenting trees and sniggering robins. The grass was green and lush. How Lucy longed to run barefoot on that grass again. Or have a picnic with her friends. But Lucy knew that there was a better chance of the dead walking than having one last picnic.

Almost unconsciously, Lucy sat in unison with everyone else in the shrinking room. Lucy's heart sped up as her lungs constricted and her eyes opened wide in fear. Deafly, Lucy stared at the ageing judge seated comfortably before her. Solemnly the judge turned to the jury. Hundreds of thousands of thoughts rushed through Lucy's head. Possibly her last thoughts as a safe woman. But, as the forewoman stood from the jury box and glanced firmly at Lucy before turning to Justice Williams, one thought shoved its way past all the others and into the forefront of Lucy's mind.

The forewoman's mouth opened, slowly and confidently.

"We, the jury," she said, peering over the top of her glasses at the old judge, "find the defendant..."

However, all Lucy could think, hear and comprehend was the sole thought that filled her mind.

"What if I had just chosen 'Truth'."