Platform Zero: Excerpt II
Platform Zero: Excerpt II
Another door was opened up for Arthur to be pushed through, a light shove from the Rottweiler forcing him to enter what could only be an interrogation room, improvised as it might have been. Void of pretty much any furniture or other such things, a single table stood in the centre with two chairs placed at opposite sides. A handle – or something looking rather similar to one – had been welded to the very middle of the surface of the table, the metal around either hand uneven and discoloured, clearly a makeshift improvement designed by some creative mind. Overhanging from the ceiling was a bare bulb, indiscriminate in the light it bore out, its wire dusty and the glass smeared with dirt. The room hadn’t been used in a long time as much was reflected in its condition as with the light fixture. Either spring cleaning was quite some time away or the precinct didn’t necessarily have many interviews within this room. Arthur let himself be guided to the chair furthest from the door, a paw clamped upon his shoulder pushing him down to sit. He allowed Tyson to manhandle how he saw fit, undoing one cuff from the Labrador’s wrists but still not freeing him. Instead the other end was snapped around the handle at the centre of the table, Arthur’s arm outstretched so that the metal wouldn’t bury into his flesh as he was bound to the furniture – kinky for some, but only under circumstances not like these. Silently he watched the Rottweiler had back around the room and poked his head back out through the door, muttering something incoherent to the Labrador to whomever waited outside. Within seconds Tyson had resumed his position standing guard by the only entrance and ultimately exit, whilst a silhouette came into view beyond the glass pane of the door.
It came as no surprise as the uncanny figure of the Doberman entered, Cheryl composed of her usual brusque demeanour, but Arthur was by no means comforted as she took her seat opposite him. There was no file in her paws, nothing to suggest she was prepared or anything, but she sat so arrogantly and defensively away from Arthur that he feared she may just let her emotions run wild, just as Tyson had earlier.
He was sick of the silence, sick of the judgement and the cold stares he was getting. The Labrador broke the quiet first, voice bitter and desperate,
“I have no idea what the hell is going on.” Cheryl snorted, the Doberman amused by something it would seem, as she straightened herself out, Arthur already hearing the haughty tone before she spoke,
“I think you know damn well what you did.” We’re just trying to figure out why you did it and whether you’re going to be a danger to anyone else.”
“A danger? Why would I be dangerous? If anything, I have just as much right to suspect you of being the dangerous ones.”
“Us, the police? We’re the suspicious ones?” Another snort; it would seem to Arthur he was wasting his time trying to battle his corner from a moral high ground. Cheryl, and most likely Tyson too, would have already made up their minds.
“Given the circumstances, I’m ready to believe anything. You can’t say there’s never been a corrupt cop…” He tried to speak with as much conviction as he could, but he feared he faltered on the last words. The glare he got from the pair of them would have lived up to the phrase of ‘if looks could kill’.
“You’re accusing us of being corrupt now? You really are despicable…” Tyson spat the words like acid, piping up from his quiet position behind Cheryl, but he silenced himself again when the Doberman snapped a glance over her shoulder, pulling rank Arthur thought. But he felt like he was losing whatever semblance of trust he had left, and what remained was slipping away like the very sand that surrounded them, running through his fingers until he held nothing at all. The feeling of being alone and isolated in this strange world was mounting up on him like a fierce monster, with brutish fangs and a nasty appetite. With Tyson behaving so cruelly toward him, Arthur couldn’t help but throw his mind back to the night they’d shared. The Rottweiler had spoken of the people of Haven Falls needing an anchor, something real and alive to ground them to stop them from getting swept up in the madness of the landscape. Arthur believed, well and truly, that he was beginning to feel the first ebbs of that insanity: the overwhelming and crushing sensation of just being utterly afraid and alone in a world far beyond his control. As a man of science, he had been raised and been taught that so long as one could understand the world and relate to it on some level, be it physical, emotional or further, then one could find their footing. But Haven Falls had thrown everything out of balance. The people were stranger, the land stranger, and the atmosphere was quickly turning foul. As Arthur sat in the tight room, he felt like he was drowning, drowning in the middle of an acrid desert surrounded by smothering reality of faces and places he could never know, staring right down the barrel of the authority all the while under threat of something awful.
He had to do something.
“Alright!” There was no choice but to concede and admit defeat, if only in some small part, “Alright, let’s just say whatever you think I did, let’s put that aside. Let’s suppose you’re right and I did something horrible, but we’ll forget about that and we’ll play a game of pretend instead.” Cheryl shifted in her seat, confused and clearing not wanting to be any pawn in a game, but Arthur persisted, “Just… humour me, okay? Please? I’m very scared and just once, please let me have this…” There was a tiny moment of silence, the sort of tension that electrified the air in a feeling of horrible unease. Cheryl, with such a delicate and minute movement, turned her head to look back to Tyson, offering the decision up to him in an unusual turn of events. Perhaps she was aware of what the two of them had done – that would be embarrassing – and was allowing the Rottweiler, who theoretically had the better judgement of the Labrador’s character, to make the call. Stoically he said nothing, eyes bearing down at Arthur measuring him up, the gaze equally vacant as it was piercing. Arthur could only sit there and hope that deep down within the Rottweiler there was something still aflame and sparking, otherwise his efforts would be for naught.
The big dog gave a heave of his chest, inhaling sharply before a deflated, defeated sigh burst from his lips. His eyes shifted away, almost ashamed he’d betrayed his duty to gut instinct. For Arthur though it was a miracle as Tyson spoke flatly,
“Go ahead…”
“Okay…” Arthur took the chance to collect himself taking a breath too, fixing himself in his chair and wiping his brow before starting, “Pretend I’ve not done whatever it is you’re accusing me of. Pretend I don’t even know what’s going on. Pretend that from last night when I went to sleep to when I woke up that I had no recollection of how I’d gotten to the station. Let’s just pretend that everything I’ve been saying up until now has been true… Can you please just tell me why you think I’m dangerous and am a criminal of some kind?”
Both the stares of the Doberman and the Rottweiler were as inexpressive as the other. Neither of them really wanted to be the bearer of news, though Arthur feared that somewhere in the backs of their heads they were about the throw the towel in on this little exercise and be done with messing around. He supposed, to them, it was all a waste of time; things in Haven Falls from the sound of what he’d learnt so far would be fairly predictable. Little ever fell out of bounds of the ordinary, everything ran like clockwork and nothing ever surprised them. But since Arthur had arrived they had seemed on edge, almost as if people knew and realised he didn’t belong and didn’t fit the mould. It could be why the police were dealing with him so abrasively, and were just presuming on knowledge they knew but Arthur didn’t, and supposed he might just confess eventually and align himself to the truth in their heads they expected to hear.
It was the Rottweiler who surprisingly spoke first, his voice quiet,
“You died.”
The two words, two simply syllables, took many seconds for Arthur to fully process.
First there came the bashful dismissal. They were joking. It had to be a lie, some ruse to throw him off his guard and get him to cough up the truth. How could he be dead if he was sitting right before them, alive and well and not the least bit worse for wear? It was preposterous, outrageous even, ridiculous they would even try to pull something so obscenely stupid. What did he even mean, ‘you died’? How could they be so resolute in their answer? Did they genuinely believe, with absolute conviction, that he had somehow passed away by some means in the middle of the night, magically transported himself back to the station and resurrect himself from the dead? It was positively outlandish.
But then there came the second feeling, of dread and uncertainty. Why then would they suggest such a thing if it was immediately absurd and insane? They wouldn’t be sitting here with such grave expressions, treating him like some kind of monster, if they believed otherwise. They must be truly convicted in their assumption that Arthur died somehow and woke up at the platform. Reasons as to why and how they could believe that would probably remain a deeply seated mystery to him, not being within the fold, especially not now. Even if he dismissed Cheryl’s indifference as purely being her character, it didn’t explain away Tyson’s shift in demeanour, the cold fury, the venomous distance. If he was trying to hurt Arthur, he was succeeding. The quietly flirtatious and warm-hearted man he’d met yesterday was now gone and replaced with a husk he barely recognised. Arthur could only conclude than that at the very least Tyson believed what they were suggesting, as his actions thus far would be wildly out of order.
It slowly sapped on then to the third and final feeling of fear. If they believed what they were saying was true, then Arthur could only assume, for the time being if he was to work his way out of the situation, that they were correct. He had died, which left the rather terrifying question of how. How could he have died after falling asleep in his bed beside the Rottweiler? Could he have had an aneurism, heart failure, a sudden bout of some toxin he’d never encountered before? It was a strange land after all, but Tyson had informed him that physical injury and damage would simply vanish, that once forgotten they’d be immediately removed and void from existence as if they’d never occurred in the first place. Natural death therefore seemed implausible, which could only mean…
The last remaining conclusion Arthur reached was a chilling one.
“You… you think I killed myself?” His voice was quiet, nearly silent even. Arthur couldn’t even believe the words he was saying. He could feel his throat tremble as he spoke, coming to the stark realisation that the people opposite him genuinely believed without a doubt that Arthur had the capacity to end his own life after a night of love-making with the Rottweiler. Tyson stiffened as Arthur spoke, his expression bleeding for just a fractured second of absolute sorrow, or tormented heartbreak and infinite pain, before the stoic mask was replaced again with burning glares, “You think I killed myself, right?”
“That’s correct.”
“Why?!” He spat the words with such anger. How dare they call him suicidal! He was perfectly sane, of sound and reasonable mind! There wasn’t a single shred of himself that would even dare to contemplate the thought, “How the fuck did you come up with that?” Arthur heard his voice break before he felt it. He couldn’t stop it even if he tried, it just happened as he bitterly held back what might have been a sob of frustration. He was not suicidal. He did not kill himself.
“Because when people die, and they do die, they don’t simply drop dead. They disappear and then reappear.” Tyson was doing his best to keep his voice level too, Arthur’s emotions spiking his own. It was difficult, an ultimate betrayal coming to light as the pair felt either end of a double-edged sword neither saw coming, “They die. And then they reappear at platform zero, at the station.”
That was certainly new information, though it did little to shed light on the situation other than to confirm why the police – and now anybody else, for that matter – believed Arthur had killed himself. That was the unspeakable abominable act he’d performed that had left him isolated and ousted from their trust. He supposed he couldn’t blame them, but he was perfectly innocent. He’d done nothing of the sort!
“I didn’t kill myself,” Arthur said, the despondent emptiness claiming his voice as all the frustration and anger dissipated to nothing but a void of acceptance, “I didn’t commit suicide.”
“Then would you care to explain what you were doing back at the platform,” Cheryl folded her arms, a defensive posture, closed off and unyielding, “A spot of sight-seeing? Figured you’d skulk around town in the dead of night with no one witnessing you, only to then take a nap at the station?”
“This is all wrong…” Arthur slumped, his head held in his paws as he muttered under his breath. What was going on? Nothing made sense and now he was being accused of something awful. Did they truly believe that he had it in him to just kill himself after one night? Did they really think he was so mentally unstable that being uprooted in a strange environment would send him over the edge into reckless behaviour?
“That’s the understatement of the year.” She sounded so proud and assured of herself. It pissed Arthur off. Cheryl, and for some part Tyson, were both acting like they had already won, that they’d figured out his little game as if it were child’s play, albeit the Rottweiler’s attitude came with the sour note of dejection and dark depression that simmered behind his eyes. Perhaps this was a battle Arthur simply couldn’t win, not when his opponents had already decided what the outcome was going to be. There was no way he could fight back when they held all the power regardless of what he brought to the table. He could only sit back and allow them to judge him, mull over what was to be done with him, and then accept whatever was to come his way.
“So what now then,” even he could feel the acid in his voice, “What happens now?”
Cheryl cast a small look back over her shoulder, though what it was meant to mean was lost on Arthur. Even Tyson failed to really register her. His eyes were fixed firmly ahead, glassy like he’d just died on the inside. Arthur couldn’t blame him really.
“We’ll have to convene with the council, probably have to arrange a trial or something, that’ll be a first.” Cheryl sighed, finally shifting on her chair and turning to Tyson, “Contact Valerie, we’ll most likely need her professional opinion, although being just a nurse I don’t know how willing she’d be.” The Doberman rose up, getting to her footpaws, whilst Arthur was left cuffed to the table, simply resigned to remain in the room for the time being. He watched her, eyes blank but hiding a dark ferocity, as she made for the door, “You just sit tight, won’t be long now.”
That was the last that was said to Arthur. Even as he looked desperately to Tyson, hoping for some last slither of kindness and hope, he got nothing from the impassive gaze that refused to recognise him. The pair left, the Rottweiler perhaps lingering for a moment longer than he ought to, but he slipped out the door, letting it click softly shut, though it may as well have been slammed to achieve the same effect. The sounds of their footsteps moving away were as loud as if they were right in Arthur’s ears, each step a resounding deadening toll as his grasp on things slipped away. He could feel his heart thumping in his chest as a knot formed at the back of his throat, his gut twisting in such horrific ways as he considered what would happen. No, they wouldn’t kill him, that seemed illogically redundant and worthless, but indefinite incarceration seemed just as likely. Might he be confined to isolation and constant counselling for his supposed suicidal thoughts? But if they didn’t have a trained professional to deal with that sort of thing, would they even attempt to cure his illness? A nurse was many things, but someone capable of resolving another’s mental instability spurred on by all sorts of factors and complications from personal trauma to general sickness was something else entirely removed. Arthur wasn’t even sure he had the capacity himself to carry out such treatment. Certainly he specialised in neuroscience, though his application was more to technology and its integration with organics, but he was convinced he would be more qualified than a general practicing nurse, and even then he was in entirely the wrong field of study.
So he was to be treated like a cancerous tumour, to be handled as coldly and callously as a criminal but treated with the simplest of basic dignities. What kind of life would that be though, confined to a singular room and placed under constant watch, whilst the people whom he would come to rely on for sustenance and care judged him forever more. Even if he did convince them he was no longer a concern to them, would that ever silence their worries? Arthur doubted their anxieties would simply disappear overnight, somewhere down the line. He’d be under a constant state of surveillance, never to be trusted again. A grown man never autonomous again. He’d never have control of his own world, as bizarre as it was shaping up to be. It filled him with bitter anger, slamming his fist against the cold steel of the table-top whilst more hot sobs rose in his throat. What was happening to him? Was there no way out of this?
Just as he was about to break down to tears though, the strangest thing happened. Out of the quiet, quick to stifle his tears and snarls of frustration, came the uneasy chime of a phone ringing.
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Artwork by StalkerWerewolf
Click here to view the original: http://www.furaffinity.net/view/18283884/
Read the full story here: https://www.sofurry.com/view/927113
Another door was opened up for Arthur to be pushed through, a light shove from the Rottweiler forcing him to enter what could only be an interrogation room, improvised as it might have been. Void of pretty much any furniture or other such things, a single table stood in the centre with two chairs placed at opposite sides. A handle – or something looking rather similar to one – had been welded to the very middle of the surface of the table, the metal around either hand uneven and discoloured, clearly a makeshift improvement designed by some creative mind. Overhanging from the ceiling was a bare bulb, indiscriminate in the light it bore out, its wire dusty and the glass smeared with dirt. The room hadn’t been used in a long time as much was reflected in its condition as with the light fixture. Either spring cleaning was quite some time away or the precinct didn’t necessarily have many interviews within this room. Arthur let himself be guided to the chair furthest from the door, a paw clamped upon his shoulder pushing him down to sit. He allowed Tyson to manhandle how he saw fit, undoing one cuff from the Labrador’s wrists but still not freeing him. Instead the other end was snapped around the handle at the centre of the table, Arthur’s arm outstretched so that the metal wouldn’t bury into his flesh as he was bound to the furniture – kinky for some, but only under circumstances not like these. Silently he watched the Rottweiler had back around the room and poked his head back out through the door, muttering something incoherent to the Labrador to whomever waited outside. Within seconds Tyson had resumed his position standing guard by the only entrance and ultimately exit, whilst a silhouette came into view beyond the glass pane of the door.
It came as no surprise as the uncanny figure of the Doberman entered, Cheryl composed of her usual brusque demeanour, but Arthur was by no means comforted as she took her seat opposite him. There was no file in her paws, nothing to suggest she was prepared or anything, but she sat so arrogantly and defensively away from Arthur that he feared she may just let her emotions run wild, just as Tyson had earlier.
He was sick of the silence, sick of the judgement and the cold stares he was getting. The Labrador broke the quiet first, voice bitter and desperate,
“I have no idea what the hell is going on.” Cheryl snorted, the Doberman amused by something it would seem, as she straightened herself out, Arthur already hearing the haughty tone before she spoke,
“I think you know damn well what you did.” We’re just trying to figure out why you did it and whether you’re going to be a danger to anyone else.”
“A danger? Why would I be dangerous? If anything, I have just as much right to suspect you of being the dangerous ones.”
“Us, the police? We’re the suspicious ones?” Another snort; it would seem to Arthur he was wasting his time trying to battle his corner from a moral high ground. Cheryl, and most likely Tyson too, would have already made up their minds.
“Given the circumstances, I’m ready to believe anything. You can’t say there’s never been a corrupt cop…” He tried to speak with as much conviction as he could, but he feared he faltered on the last words. The glare he got from the pair of them would have lived up to the phrase of ‘if looks could kill’.
“You’re accusing us of being corrupt now? You really are despicable…” Tyson spat the words like acid, piping up from his quiet position behind Cheryl, but he silenced himself again when the Doberman snapped a glance over her shoulder, pulling rank Arthur thought. But he felt like he was losing whatever semblance of trust he had left, and what remained was slipping away like the very sand that surrounded them, running through his fingers until he held nothing at all. The feeling of being alone and isolated in this strange world was mounting up on him like a fierce monster, with brutish fangs and a nasty appetite. With Tyson behaving so cruelly toward him, Arthur couldn’t help but throw his mind back to the night they’d shared. The Rottweiler had spoken of the people of Haven Falls needing an anchor, something real and alive to ground them to stop them from getting swept up in the madness of the landscape. Arthur believed, well and truly, that he was beginning to feel the first ebbs of that insanity: the overwhelming and crushing sensation of just being utterly afraid and alone in a world far beyond his control. As a man of science, he had been raised and been taught that so long as one could understand the world and relate to it on some level, be it physical, emotional or further, then one could find their footing. But Haven Falls had thrown everything out of balance. The people were stranger, the land stranger, and the atmosphere was quickly turning foul. As Arthur sat in the tight room, he felt like he was drowning, drowning in the middle of an acrid desert surrounded by smothering reality of faces and places he could never know, staring right down the barrel of the authority all the while under threat of something awful.
He had to do something.
“Alright!” There was no choice but to concede and admit defeat, if only in some small part, “Alright, let’s just say whatever you think I did, let’s put that aside. Let’s suppose you’re right and I did something horrible, but we’ll forget about that and we’ll play a game of pretend instead.” Cheryl shifted in her seat, confused and clearing not wanting to be any pawn in a game, but Arthur persisted, “Just… humour me, okay? Please? I’m very scared and just once, please let me have this…” There was a tiny moment of silence, the sort of tension that electrified the air in a feeling of horrible unease. Cheryl, with such a delicate and minute movement, turned her head to look back to Tyson, offering the decision up to him in an unusual turn of events. Perhaps she was aware of what the two of them had done – that would be embarrassing – and was allowing the Rottweiler, who theoretically had the better judgement of the Labrador’s character, to make the call. Stoically he said nothing, eyes bearing down at Arthur measuring him up, the gaze equally vacant as it was piercing. Arthur could only sit there and hope that deep down within the Rottweiler there was something still aflame and sparking, otherwise his efforts would be for naught.
The big dog gave a heave of his chest, inhaling sharply before a deflated, defeated sigh burst from his lips. His eyes shifted away, almost ashamed he’d betrayed his duty to gut instinct. For Arthur though it was a miracle as Tyson spoke flatly,
“Go ahead…”
“Okay…” Arthur took the chance to collect himself taking a breath too, fixing himself in his chair and wiping his brow before starting, “Pretend I’ve not done whatever it is you’re accusing me of. Pretend I don’t even know what’s going on. Pretend that from last night when I went to sleep to when I woke up that I had no recollection of how I’d gotten to the station. Let’s just pretend that everything I’ve been saying up until now has been true… Can you please just tell me why you think I’m dangerous and am a criminal of some kind?”
Both the stares of the Doberman and the Rottweiler were as inexpressive as the other. Neither of them really wanted to be the bearer of news, though Arthur feared that somewhere in the backs of their heads they were about the throw the towel in on this little exercise and be done with messing around. He supposed, to them, it was all a waste of time; things in Haven Falls from the sound of what he’d learnt so far would be fairly predictable. Little ever fell out of bounds of the ordinary, everything ran like clockwork and nothing ever surprised them. But since Arthur had arrived they had seemed on edge, almost as if people knew and realised he didn’t belong and didn’t fit the mould. It could be why the police were dealing with him so abrasively, and were just presuming on knowledge they knew but Arthur didn’t, and supposed he might just confess eventually and align himself to the truth in their heads they expected to hear.
It was the Rottweiler who surprisingly spoke first, his voice quiet,
“You died.”
The two words, two simply syllables, took many seconds for Arthur to fully process.
First there came the bashful dismissal. They were joking. It had to be a lie, some ruse to throw him off his guard and get him to cough up the truth. How could he be dead if he was sitting right before them, alive and well and not the least bit worse for wear? It was preposterous, outrageous even, ridiculous they would even try to pull something so obscenely stupid. What did he even mean, ‘you died’? How could they be so resolute in their answer? Did they genuinely believe, with absolute conviction, that he had somehow passed away by some means in the middle of the night, magically transported himself back to the station and resurrect himself from the dead? It was positively outlandish.
But then there came the second feeling, of dread and uncertainty. Why then would they suggest such a thing if it was immediately absurd and insane? They wouldn’t be sitting here with such grave expressions, treating him like some kind of monster, if they believed otherwise. They must be truly convicted in their assumption that Arthur died somehow and woke up at the platform. Reasons as to why and how they could believe that would probably remain a deeply seated mystery to him, not being within the fold, especially not now. Even if he dismissed Cheryl’s indifference as purely being her character, it didn’t explain away Tyson’s shift in demeanour, the cold fury, the venomous distance. If he was trying to hurt Arthur, he was succeeding. The quietly flirtatious and warm-hearted man he’d met yesterday was now gone and replaced with a husk he barely recognised. Arthur could only conclude than that at the very least Tyson believed what they were suggesting, as his actions thus far would be wildly out of order.
It slowly sapped on then to the third and final feeling of fear. If they believed what they were saying was true, then Arthur could only assume, for the time being if he was to work his way out of the situation, that they were correct. He had died, which left the rather terrifying question of how. How could he have died after falling asleep in his bed beside the Rottweiler? Could he have had an aneurism, heart failure, a sudden bout of some toxin he’d never encountered before? It was a strange land after all, but Tyson had informed him that physical injury and damage would simply vanish, that once forgotten they’d be immediately removed and void from existence as if they’d never occurred in the first place. Natural death therefore seemed implausible, which could only mean…
The last remaining conclusion Arthur reached was a chilling one.
“You… you think I killed myself?” His voice was quiet, nearly silent even. Arthur couldn’t even believe the words he was saying. He could feel his throat tremble as he spoke, coming to the stark realisation that the people opposite him genuinely believed without a doubt that Arthur had the capacity to end his own life after a night of love-making with the Rottweiler. Tyson stiffened as Arthur spoke, his expression bleeding for just a fractured second of absolute sorrow, or tormented heartbreak and infinite pain, before the stoic mask was replaced again with burning glares, “You think I killed myself, right?”
“That’s correct.”
“Why?!” He spat the words with such anger. How dare they call him suicidal! He was perfectly sane, of sound and reasonable mind! There wasn’t a single shred of himself that would even dare to contemplate the thought, “How the fuck did you come up with that?” Arthur heard his voice break before he felt it. He couldn’t stop it even if he tried, it just happened as he bitterly held back what might have been a sob of frustration. He was not suicidal. He did not kill himself.
“Because when people die, and they do die, they don’t simply drop dead. They disappear and then reappear.” Tyson was doing his best to keep his voice level too, Arthur’s emotions spiking his own. It was difficult, an ultimate betrayal coming to light as the pair felt either end of a double-edged sword neither saw coming, “They die. And then they reappear at platform zero, at the station.”
That was certainly new information, though it did little to shed light on the situation other than to confirm why the police – and now anybody else, for that matter – believed Arthur had killed himself. That was the unspeakable abominable act he’d performed that had left him isolated and ousted from their trust. He supposed he couldn’t blame them, but he was perfectly innocent. He’d done nothing of the sort!
“I didn’t kill myself,” Arthur said, the despondent emptiness claiming his voice as all the frustration and anger dissipated to nothing but a void of acceptance, “I didn’t commit suicide.”
“Then would you care to explain what you were doing back at the platform,” Cheryl folded her arms, a defensive posture, closed off and unyielding, “A spot of sight-seeing? Figured you’d skulk around town in the dead of night with no one witnessing you, only to then take a nap at the station?”
“This is all wrong…” Arthur slumped, his head held in his paws as he muttered under his breath. What was going on? Nothing made sense and now he was being accused of something awful. Did they truly believe that he had it in him to just kill himself after one night? Did they really think he was so mentally unstable that being uprooted in a strange environment would send him over the edge into reckless behaviour?
“That’s the understatement of the year.” She sounded so proud and assured of herself. It pissed Arthur off. Cheryl, and for some part Tyson, were both acting like they had already won, that they’d figured out his little game as if it were child’s play, albeit the Rottweiler’s attitude came with the sour note of dejection and dark depression that simmered behind his eyes. Perhaps this was a battle Arthur simply couldn’t win, not when his opponents had already decided what the outcome was going to be. There was no way he could fight back when they held all the power regardless of what he brought to the table. He could only sit back and allow them to judge him, mull over what was to be done with him, and then accept whatever was to come his way.
“So what now then,” even he could feel the acid in his voice, “What happens now?”
Cheryl cast a small look back over her shoulder, though what it was meant to mean was lost on Arthur. Even Tyson failed to really register her. His eyes were fixed firmly ahead, glassy like he’d just died on the inside. Arthur couldn’t blame him really.
“We’ll have to convene with the council, probably have to arrange a trial or something, that’ll be a first.” Cheryl sighed, finally shifting on her chair and turning to Tyson, “Contact Valerie, we’ll most likely need her professional opinion, although being just a nurse I don’t know how willing she’d be.” The Doberman rose up, getting to her footpaws, whilst Arthur was left cuffed to the table, simply resigned to remain in the room for the time being. He watched her, eyes blank but hiding a dark ferocity, as she made for the door, “You just sit tight, won’t be long now.”
That was the last that was said to Arthur. Even as he looked desperately to Tyson, hoping for some last slither of kindness and hope, he got nothing from the impassive gaze that refused to recognise him. The pair left, the Rottweiler perhaps lingering for a moment longer than he ought to, but he slipped out the door, letting it click softly shut, though it may as well have been slammed to achieve the same effect. The sounds of their footsteps moving away were as loud as if they were right in Arthur’s ears, each step a resounding deadening toll as his grasp on things slipped away. He could feel his heart thumping in his chest as a knot formed at the back of his throat, his gut twisting in such horrific ways as he considered what would happen. No, they wouldn’t kill him, that seemed illogically redundant and worthless, but indefinite incarceration seemed just as likely. Might he be confined to isolation and constant counselling for his supposed suicidal thoughts? But if they didn’t have a trained professional to deal with that sort of thing, would they even attempt to cure his illness? A nurse was many things, but someone capable of resolving another’s mental instability spurred on by all sorts of factors and complications from personal trauma to general sickness was something else entirely removed. Arthur wasn’t even sure he had the capacity himself to carry out such treatment. Certainly he specialised in neuroscience, though his application was more to technology and its integration with organics, but he was convinced he would be more qualified than a general practicing nurse, and even then he was in entirely the wrong field of study.
So he was to be treated like a cancerous tumour, to be handled as coldly and callously as a criminal but treated with the simplest of basic dignities. What kind of life would that be though, confined to a singular room and placed under constant watch, whilst the people whom he would come to rely on for sustenance and care judged him forever more. Even if he did convince them he was no longer a concern to them, would that ever silence their worries? Arthur doubted their anxieties would simply disappear overnight, somewhere down the line. He’d be under a constant state of surveillance, never to be trusted again. A grown man never autonomous again. He’d never have control of his own world, as bizarre as it was shaping up to be. It filled him with bitter anger, slamming his fist against the cold steel of the table-top whilst more hot sobs rose in his throat. What was happening to him? Was there no way out of this?
Just as he was about to break down to tears though, the strangest thing happened. Out of the quiet, quick to stifle his tears and snarls of frustration, came the uneasy chime of a phone ringing.
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Artwork by StalkerWerewolf
Click here to view the original: http://www.furaffinity.net/view/18283884/
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9 years ago
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