Take Me Home

Identity

  "You can take a seat in here. And my partner will be in in a minute," the scrawny young officer with the name Randall on his badge explained to me as he led me into one of the interrogation rooms at the police station, and I slowly took a seat at the wooden table in the room. The scrawny officers partner was the bald bulkier one, and he seemed nice enough on the street when I met him. The officers had told me they just wanted to ask me a few questions down at the station, and the last thing I wanted to come across as was suspicious, so I simply agreed to go with them.

  The whole car ride there was silent, although it turned out I didn't end up far from the station, and it was only a few minutes away by car. I wasn't in trouble or arrested they assured me. I guess they could tell how spooked I looked on the street and in the car. They only wanted to ask me a few questions, what ever about I had no clue though. However they said they would explain it to me once I was in an interview room. They would explain everything. And that made me a bit more calm. But not much.

  As I sat behind one side of the wooden table, I looked around and saw nothing but white walls and two lights that were directed above the table. One light had been turned off, making it less bright in the trapped and suffocating room. It made the room darker, and that was better for my eyes to adjust from the darkness outside to the lights.

My nerves were real high up there, as both of my legs were shaking uncontrollably, and my finger was tapping away at the solid table. As much as the cops seemed pretty calm around me at first, that made me feel a bit better. If I was in serious trouble of some sort, I could imagine they would have told me what it was about, and would have been more harsh with me. I guess they could see I was only a young kid who looked scared shitless, and decided to take it easy on me. Which I was thankful for.

However, no matter how nice they were being to me, that still didn't calm my nerves or help me stay cool completely. I was still a nervous wreck. I hadn't seen one sign up saying I couldn't smoke in the building, and there appeared to be an ash tray in middle of the table, so I decided to pull out one of my cigarettes and light it up. If they wanted me to put it out when they came in, so be it. But as of the moment right then, I needed that smoke. As soon as the fumes entered my lungs, I instantly calmed down as I felt a release somehow. And it felt good.

  I wasn't too sure as to what made me think of him, but suddenly my mind went back to Martins, as I thought about what he could have been doing at that moment. Is he still unconscious on the floor? Has he moved at all? Is he in pain? I hope he is. A whole lot of it. But there seemed to be no amount of pain in the world for him to go through that would even come close, or compare to the pain he had put me through these past few years. No amount. Is he looking for me right now? But it was alright, because as long as I was in this station, around multiple officers who were loaded with guns, I felt almost safe in a way. The most safe I had felt in these past eight years, and it felt somewhat good. Great actually. And I knew as long as I was here, he couldn't hurt me.

After about ten minutes went by, the bulky officer returned back to me as he had one folder in his hand as he closed the door behind him. I watched his every move as he put the folder down on the table first and then sat in the chair that was across the table from where I was sitting. He looked over at the smoke in my hand, but he didn't say anything about it, meaning it was alright to smoke indoors. The older officer, who looked about in his forties or maybe fifties, and whose badge read Bates on the front, flipped through the beige coloured file as he took a sheet out and read from the top.

"Chris, do you know a kid by the name of Joey Millard?" The bulky officer by the name of Bates asked off the first question, which then was a dead give away that this whole this was surrounding Joey.