Back here again. Hauled in by that fat fuck Weller about some minor break-ins. Nothing to do with me since I’ve been warming bar stools for the past year. Nothing to do, but swim in my own bullshit. No money to be had in being a burglar these days. Everything gone digital. Fuck all to steal.
I’m led down a corridor I’ve not seen in previous visits. Previous visits having seen me serve time. Weller veers off and opens a door to my left. I’m pushed through by his young, but rumpled looking partner. Any belligerence evaporates when I see the metal doors on the wall. The covered cadaver in the middle of the room helps too.
“Come on. You know I’m not a fit for this.”
“Get in,” Said the young cop as he opened one of the doors.
I looked sheepishly at Weller, hoping he’d put an end to it. He just nodded at me.
“Go on,” he said.
I climbed onto the cold tray with goose bumps already rising down my arms and back. The cop rammed me into the drawer, slamming the door behind me no less gently.
I fought at first which stopped me feeling the cold for a couple of minutes. The futility of this quickly set in. It was then that I noticed the darkness. It crept up my legs with the cold, with the freeze.
Now that I saw the darkness, it doubled. It pulled. It taunted. Then from the corner of my eye, a flashing. The glint of a knife. A knife that I knew.
In the life of a petty crook, there is no last big job. There is self-preservation. There is survival. There is stabbing your best friend to save yourself.
The glint turned red. The glint turned almost to black. My hands sodden with blood. The screams, an accusation. The screams, an admission of guilt. The screams my own. And then the light poured in.
I was dragged back upstairs raving, staring at my hands. I laid out some sort of confession on tape in the interview room. Confessing to the things my hands had done. The thrusts of the knife. Over and over and over. Confessing to the robberies that were nowhere near as bad as what I had actually done.
That was all they needed to get me sent back to jail for another 2 years. I didn’t even get bail before the trial due to my previous.
At lights out, it was always there. Preening, flickering, seeming to smile. The glint, the sodden hands, the screams. Leading to an eventual limp, leading to my eventual death.
THE END
ABOUT THE AUTHOR
Scott Cumming enjoys reading too much to consider himself a proper writer. He resides in Aberdeen with his partner and two sons. Catch up with all his misdemeanours on Twitter @tummidge