Wisp

This flash fiction piece was written as a story companion to the day 2 drawing prompt Wisp from the 2020 Inktober prompt list. Click here to see the drawing.

Watching the smoke from my cigarette spiral upward in tiny wisps keeps me calm. I take a drag and let it flow out through my nose, stinging my mucous membranes.

At first, the officers said I couldn’t smoke in here, so I told them I wouldn’t talk. Then suddenly it was all get her a pack, and here’s a light, and do you need an ashtray, or will an empty paper cup suffice?

I actually hate smoking. It stinks, it burns, it tastes god awful. But I needed something to do with my hands, I needed something to focus on while I said the words because focusing on them directly would keep them from coming out.

“So … can you tell us what happened?”

“Seems like a rather general question,” I take another drag in time with the detective’s heavy sigh. I haven’t been very forthcoming, yet. Partially because I can’t get the story past the boulder sitting in my stomach, and partially because I don’t expect them to believe me anyway. Or even to care.

“Would you like me to be more specific?”

“What I’d like,” I say, turning toward Officer Krupke and tapping the ash off into the paper cup, “Is if it never happened and I wasn’t here.”

“Well, I’d say we’re past that, wouldn’t you?”

“Are you gonna ask me any relevant questions, or are we gonna keep going around in circles like this?”

He rolls his eyes. Or, rather, I can tell he wants to roll them. I can the skin around his eyelids twitch with the effort to keep them from rolling back. My mother used to do the same thing. He may as well, the irritation rolling off him is palpable. I want to tell him, I can see you already hate me so go ahead and treat me like you do, but that’s when I realize I’ve already burned through three cigarettes and I don’t want to be here any more than they do. Torturing them for disliking me without cause isn’t going to get me out of here any faster … even if they deserve it.

Krupke looks over at his partner, Ms. Good Cop, and raises his eyebrows. She nods in response and the delicate choreography of switching places begins. It’s very ceremonial, lots of shuffling papers and picking up manilla folders and soda cans. When they pass each other in the tiny space, they make sure not to touch even a little. It’s obvious to me that they’re sleeping together, despite the rings on both their fingers.

I light another cigarette.

“So does this …” I gesture to the space between the two of them, “Usually work on people?”

Ms. Good Cop (otherwise known as Officer Snyder) blinks in mock surprise, feigning innocence.

“Does what usually work?”

Now it’s my turn to stop myself from rolling my eyes.

“You stand there, he stands there, you switch, you look back and forth at each other, silently deciding who’s gonna take what tack to get me to tell you what you want to know, so that I’m all nervous and isolated compared to your strong, united front?”

Something in the air shifts a little and I wonder ifl she’s starting to hate me, too.

“Why don’t you just take us through what happened, okay? No games, no tactics. You said you wanted to talk, so talk.”

She’s good. Not like, she’s good at tricking people, but like … she’s a good person. There’s no more reason to stall, except my stomach, so I wrap one arm around my abdomen and lean forward, bracing against the pain. Snyder leans forward as well.

“Did he assault you?”

I swallow, nicotine sick.

“Not in any way you guys would categorize as assault.”

Her face softens, and her head tilts, almost imperceptibly. “Why don’t you stop worrying about what we’re gonna think and just tell us?”

That hits my ego like a gut punch. “Touché.”

She opens her folder. “Your co-worker has a black eye, a sprained jaw, and three broken fingers. He says you attacked him, and I quote, ‘Like a jackal, for no freaking reason.’

I stub out the half-smoked cigarette and look her straight in the eyes for the first time. It makes her lean back, like what she sees in there needs to be viewed at a distance.

“He liked to touch me.”

“In what way?”

Pushing my hands into my hair and balling them into firsts, I breathe out, heavy.

“Little ways. We’d pass in the hall, and he’d act like there wasn’t enough room to get by and brush against me. He’d call a meeting and schedule it in my office so we’d be alone, and when he got there he’d pull his chair right up against mine so our knees touched. He’d lean in over my shoulder to point at my computer screen so his chest touched my arm. He …” my voice catches, remembering how sick it made me feel, but how innocuous everyone acted like his behavior was.

He doesn’t mean it like that, Eve.

He just doesn’t understand social conventions, Eve.

Eve, he doesn’t act like that to anyone else,

You must be misinterpreting things, Eve.

Isn’t he from another country, Eve? You should be sensitive to other culture’s customs.

My head swims and I sway in my chair, dizzy. I can’t keep the tears out of my voice or my eyes, so I close them.

“His breath smelled so bad,” I croak out.

I’m waiting for Snyder to say, “What else did he do?” to say, “Is that it?” to tell me what they all told me, that it’s just not that big a deal. But it doesn’t come. Instead, I feel her hand on my shoulder, and a gentle squeeze.

“What happened next, Eve?”

I keep my eyes close. “He came into my office with his friend.”

A ruffle of papers from the other side of the room and Krupke pipes up, “Is this the witness, the other male employee?”

Looking down, I nod. I don’t tell them he was my friend, too. My friend first. I don’t tell them I thought, well, Robert’s in here, so I’ll be safe. I feel tears on my fingers curled in my lap, so I wipe them on my jeans. Opening my eyes, I see blue streaks on my fingers. The dye must not have washed out of these jeans yet.

Why can’t I focus? I shake my hands, and reach for another cigarette. The detectives don’t rush me, this time. All three of us fill the room with slow, even breathing, and I watch the wisps of bluish smoke travel upwards in little circles until they hit the return vent and get sucked out of the room.

“This time, he touched my leg.”

“Your leg?”

“My, uh … my inner thigh, to be exact.”

“And what did the witness do?” Krupke asks from the corner, and my head snaps toward him.

“Nothing.”

Krupke looks down at his feet.

“That was when I knew it would never stop unless I did something.” I shrug. “So I broke Hector’s fingers.”

Snyder’s hand, still on my shoulder, squeezes again, and then drops.

She pulls open her folder and starts talking about what’s going to happen next, but the sound dims out and my vision blurs. I tap my cigarette against the rim of the paper cup, and keep smoking.