Incelbordination, Chapter 11

“Oswald Roman Crow (ORC?), you’re under arrest for drug possession and conspiracy to commit terrorism. You have the right to remain silent. Anything you say or do will be used against you in a court of law. You have the right to legal counsel. If you cannot afford your own attorney, the government will provide you with a public defender. Do you understand each of these rights as I’ve read them to you?”

“…It’s eleven o’clock at night. Give me a fucking break.”

“Fair enough. Come on, let’s go.”

Still exhausted from his temper tantrum, Oswald couldn’t even find it in his soul to resist Detective Mia Barry’s arrest. Then again, how could he with all of his injuries? Even the tightness of his handcuffs counted as an injury to him. Things got so painful for him that he had to be given a piggyback ride to the cop car, which wasn’t nearly as humiliating under Nikita’s guidance. “Goddamn Nikita…” Oswald thought.

Mere minutes later, the dwarf found himself with fresh bandages staring across a steel table from Mia, whose arms remained folded and face remained stoic throughout this process. He could barely see over the table, but he felt every inch of his interrogator’s mile long stare. He didn’t have the disadvantage of seeing this horrifying look during their first car ride together. Now the dwarf’s lips were trembling as he tried his hardest not to break. He remembered the “making you sweat” line and tried to steel his nerves.

“…Drug possession…and conspiracy to commit terrorism…wow, Oswald. Wow! It finally gave me a reason to look at your file a little more carefully. I had no idea your middle name was Roman. Your initials are…”

“Save it, Detective, I’ve heard that joke a thousand times and I’m fucking sick of it!” The sudden loudness in his own voice sent a wave of hot pain through his body, bandages and antibiotics be damned.

“Okay, I can live with that,” said Mia, still stoic as ever. “But here’s what I can’t live with: locking up a young man like you over the world’s biggest mistakes. It’s my least favorite part of the job, but it must be done if we’re to get any answers regarding your connections.”

The dwarf gave a flabbergasted smile and shrugged. “Connections? What connections? I told you, I’ve got nothing to do with Incelbordination! We’ve been over this shit many times already! Sure, they gave me a chance, then I turned away as soon as I saw how sick these people really are! Write that in your little file!”

“Don’t worry, Mr. Crow, I plan on doing so. I also plan on writing all about how you refuse to cooperate with us because of your dirty little secret. You know the one. The secret you wouldn’t spill to one Nikita Johnson?”

“That bitch!” Oswald said in a low whisper.

“Excuse me?” said Mia with raised eyebrows.

“Look, I told her the same thing I tell everybody else when they see me smoke that shit: I have a prescription for it. I’m depressed and anxious. You can ask my doctor if you don’t fucking believe me!”

“Well, that’s funny,” said Mia as she gently cleared her throat. “Because when we tried to get in touch with your doctor, he appeared to be on vacation. His receptionist didn’t seem too eager to tell me where. I figured it was somewhere in Jamaica, South America, or maybe even Mexico. Maybe.”

“It’s one hundred percent legal, damn it!” Oswald pounded the desk with his fist and completely forgot it was bandaged up for a reason. The cries of pain suggested he was instantly reminded. “Fucking hell!”

“Well, if what you say is true, then you probably feel confident sharing this secret with Nikita. After all, she says you saved her life in that attack on your school. But it begs the question…why her life and not somebody else’s? There were other kids that needed saving just as much as she did. Why are you so attentive to Nikita?”

With high eye-brows, an offended Oswald asked, “Are you suggesting that I only rescued her because she’s hot? Do you think I’m that desperate for a girlfriend? I punched through a glass door just to get to her! My hands look like shit! They feel like shit too! I didn’t do it because I expected anything from her!”

“Of course you didn’t, Oswald. After all, she hardly notices you in that class. Well, she knows who you are now, but did she really know you at all during those first few weeks of spring quarter? She seemed to think the same thing everybody else thought: that you were just there to fade into the background. I bet that just eats you up inside. I bet that chills you to your involuntarily celibate bones.”

“This is fucking bullshit!” shouted Oswald, sending another tremor through his body. “Goddamn it!”

“You really should take the bass out of your voice, my friend. You should save that lung power for when you take another hit of Mary-Jane. I heard that’s a popular drug in prison.”

“No! You can’t lock me up! You can’t fucking do this!”

Leaning her face closer to Oswald’s, Mia angrily whispered, “I can do whatever I want to you, little man! I could ship you off to Gitmo if that’s what you so deserve. A terrorist is a terrorist no matter what color his or her skin is.” The dwarf took short, nervous breaths at that remark. He eased up a bit when Mia leaned back and talked in her normal voice again. “But I’m not going to do that to you. You already know too much about Incelbordination. You’re too valuable to me. Then again, I could always ask one of the chubsters in ski masks if you’re not willing to cooperate.”

Taking deeper breaths now, Oswald shrugged and said, “I don’t even know what I could help you with! If you actually did your homework on these guys, you’d know that they do their shit online! They don’t use the same chat room twice! That’s the whole point! They thrive on anonymity because they don’t want Dickless Tracys like you sticking their noses in their business! You act like you’ve never done this before, Detective!”

“And you act like you’ve never written an English paper before!” That shut up Oswald in a hurry. “You’re already chest deep in shit, which isn’t unusual for someone as tiny as you, but this time you’ve got to take shit seriously. We’ve seized your computer, just like we always do whenever we book someone. My tech guys are working diligently to see if there’s anything on your hard drive that will connect you to Incelbordination. If you’ve got something to tell me, say it now and make my tech guys’ job a lot easier.”

Oswald folded his arms and said, “Get me my lawyer.”

“Oh, don’t worry, you’ll get plenty of legal counsel in the morning. You’re probably going to need it.”

“What do you mean in the morning?”

“I’m glad you asked.” Mia stood up and knocked on the interrogation room door. “Take the suspect away.”

Oswald thrashed around in his chair as soon as two uniformed police officers entered the room with sadistic frowns on their faces. “No, wait a minute, you can’t do that!”

“I can’t what, Oswald? Get you your obligatory public defender? Are you sure you want to do this right now while you still know everything?” The dwarf said nothing and sunk in his metal chair. “You’re staying in jail for the night, my friend. Normally, you’d be back at your dorm in an hour or so, but you’re hiding something from me and I want to know what the fuck it is. Take him away, boys.”

The two cops grabbed Oswald by the wrists and guided him out of the room while snapping orders like, “Let’s go! Move it!” During his trek to the holding cell, Oswald tried to figure out what it was he was fighting for. He could have just confessed everything and hoped for an easy ending.

But he had dealt with cops before and knew it was all happy horseshit. The cops often took the side of his bullies during those more illegal assaults in high school. Apparently, the feelings of football stars and cheerleader girlfriends were more important than that of an involuntarily celibate midget.

Now his feelings mattered even less in this dark and dank jail cell. Just one puff of Mary Jane was all he was secretly asking for. One cloud of smoke to dry away his forming tears. One taste of sweet cannabis nectar to cleanse his palette and get him ready for the bologna sandwich he was sure to get. It would do wonders for his bodily pain as well as his emotional. Then again, pain was the police’s business and business was booming.