MINA [#Wattys2014]

Chapter 4

Chapter 4

Students were staring as she was unceremoniously stuffed into the waiting police car. Yes, she had accepted that this was nothing but a horrible dream, No a nightmare. There was no other possible explanation for the dramatic change in events. The real question now was that, since this was just a nightmare, surely she was thrashing around and screaming, so why wasn’t anyone waking her, considering she had indeed fallen asleep in the teacher’s lounge? Worst case scenario? She was home and would never wake…

One second she was going about her normal school business, maybe not so normal, considering who was involved; the next she was being hauled into a police car like she was a criminal. Her mind refused to accept any other explanation. This was not just any nightmare though, it was the Godfather of nightmares.

Out of the crowd she managed to pick out one familiar face before the police car pulled away. Tank Jr stood out like a sore thumb to her. He was staring. Though his face completely void of all emotion, when their eyes met she saw something that grounded her. Something that she could not quite comprehend then he ducked his head, almost tucking his chin to his chest and walked away with his hands pushed deep into his pockets.

The reality floored her, and had she not been handcuffed to the police door, unable to imagine away the feel of that cold metal, she probably would have willed herself to melt away into nothingness. But she was and she couldn’t. This was as real as real got.

Mina had her head against the cold metal table in the otherwise empty room. According to her watch she had been there for over four hours and since they had dumped her there no one had returned. Not even to get her something to drink, and she’d missed lunch because her day was full. She’d planned to grab something right before the detention with Tank, and eat while she graded more papers. But those plans had been made in vain. Now she knew why the criminals in the movies always croaked. Being locked up for hours in an airtight, sound proofed room, all by oneself was maddening. But it seemed that she was the only one who understood that she was no criminal.

No one had told her what it was that she had been arrested for, and for the life of her, she could not guess it. When four became five then six then brushed seven, yeah seven long hours in an empty, dreary room hand cuffed to a chair, wanting to use the lil' lady's room but there was no one around to escort her. She was thirsty and she was exhausted and not to mention, she was starving.  But when all those culminated into the fact that she was an English teacher with a wild imagination, things got very interesting.

Then when she thought all hope was lost, someone stepped into the room.

But as the door swung open light shone through and she realized that she could see right through it to the other side. THE FREAKING DOOR WAS MADE OF GLASS? Why hadn’t she thought of it before? Had she been so taken with shock she’d forgotten just where she was?

The door was tinted so that those on the outside could see the inside but to the eyes of those on the inside it was like they could have been staring at a solid metal door. After that realization hit, her prior relief was short lived. Surely she had watched enough television in her lifetime to know what that meant. That the frame on the wall was just another set of one way mirrors and chances were that those sick bastards had probably sat there slurping coffee and sucking on doughnuts watching while she sat there squirming, with hunger tearing at her insides. She had needed to use the bathroom really badly but there were a lot of things that one tends to forget in anger.

"You ready to talk..." the fat policeman pulled a chair up to the desk, and she could have sworn that right there was a fresh jelly stain on the front of his shirt. The sick son of a bitch...scare tactic or no, she hoped that last one gave him indigestion. The icing on her cake…he was the same one who had arrested her in the first place and turned her life into this waking living nightmare.