THE DEVIL || Castle Rock Original Plot Line

i.

before you start reading, i want to address a few things.

1. castle rock is not a real town (under my knowledge) and therefore is not on a map, so I will create it by the coast near Rockland.

2. I am fully aware penitentiaries and prisons are gendered and separated, but for the time being please understand this is my story and I have altered it to work in my favor. any comments about how something regarding this is impossible, will simply be ignored. thank you.

i. sheriff bradley. 

AZREAL

It couldn't have been more than a week before I realized my mother had gone missing. Since we live in Waterville, we couldn't really figure out where she might have gone, especially without notifying me first. Ever since I was five, when my father had mysteriously vanished (much like my mother), it had always just been 'me and mom'. Maybe a pet or two, which always seemed to run away, but never another person. Just 'me and mom'.

You can imagine, standing in my sleeping shorts and a ragged sweater- half drenched in soap water with my sleeves rolled up to my elbows sloppily, that my twenty-three year old self couldn't, by god, understand why the police were at my front porch. After three and a half hours of the department searching my house under a warrant, the sheriff sits me down to question me.

"Why were you doing dishes?" He peers over his glasses, which set on his round nose like the dwarf from Snow White. Squinting his eyes suspiciously at me, I calmly take a sip of my lemon water, licking my lips and gently setting it back down onto the coffee table before responding.

"I beg your pardon?" I reply softly, taking a short and brief glance down at the same outfit I had answered the door in, since the officers refused to let me be alone to change behind a closed door before they searched everything. My hair, which is aching to be washed, rests in a very messy bun on the top of my head, while my now equally as disgusting sweater clings to my body, now dry.

The sheriff, Bradley, chuckles humorlessly at me. Leaning back into the old chair my mother used to knit in, he clasps his hands over his beer belly, now looking amused. He stares at me like the way you stare at someone when you know they are trying to hide something from you, and you know exactly what it is.

"Why, in the middle of the evening, where you washing dishes when your mother has been missing for a week? You have only called in to the police station once, a week ago. Why are you so calm?"

I scoff, becoming very irritated very fast. "Maybe, Sheriff Bradley, because I am a fucking woman and we are expected to do everything in this damn town, especially cooking and cleaning! Is it so hard to comprehend that maybe- just maybe- I had finished eating my dinner and had to do the dishes?"

Slightly out of breath, I cross my arms as Bradley raises his eyebrows at me. "And what about the lack of care that your mother has gone missing?"

I jump out of my seat, towering over the cop that is just begging to be smacked across the face. "How fucking dare you! Why the hell would I be worried?! I am sure as hell she is just out of town hitting it up with some bar drunk like yourself! In fact, I could have sworn you were one of the men she brought home over the summer. How was that 'quality time', Sheriff? Was it worth the pain in the ass punch you're about to receive in the throat?!"

I knew what I got myself into the second the words left my mouth, but I didn't regret them until another officer shoved me onto my dirty hard wood floors and handcuffed me so tight I could feel the skin tearing and bruises forming. Sheriff Bradley, now smug, bends down and pats my head like I am a dog.

"It is unfortunate your mother will have to come home to clean dishes and a dirty daughter in prison, Azreal Monica."

With another push of my head, he stands to his feet and saunters off, ordering his men to take me into the station to stick me in a cell for a few nights. I groan when I am pulled off of my stomach by the chain of my handcuffs, causing my body weight to scrape the harsh metal against my delicate skin.

Still barefoot, I am shoved forward and out of my house, which is still littered with police officers and people in related fields to take pictures of my house and 'evidence'. Surprisingly, when I stumble through my front door, I am blinded with flashes of cameras. Dozens of photographers and reporters, paparazzi begging to know the answers to my questions. 

How long had we been stuck in there searching my surely clean house? What was the big deal? Me and my mom weren't any more well known than the other people of my small town, everyone knew everyone but I didn't know these reporters snapping photos of me. How did they know me?

"You'll regret the day you stepped foot into this town, Azreal Monica." Was the last thing I heard before I was shoved so hard into the cop car I nearly fainted. Staring out the foggy window, I watch as my house- overcome by strangers- fades farther and farther away.

. . .

word count: 943