Chapter 15: Jailhouse Blues
The blanket was the kind of scratchy that felt punitive, like steel wool woven with regret. John clutched it around his shoulders, but it did nothing for the deep, marrow-level chill. The lingerie—torn silk and lace—was a pathetic barrier against the cell’s damp cold. He sat on the metal bench bolted to the wall, the chill seeping up through the thin material, making him shiver uncontrollably.
The two officers standing outside the bars weren’t even trying to hide their leering. The younger one, whose nametag read ‘Diaz’, kept shaking his head with a smirk. The older one, ‘Garrity’, had eyes that lingered like dirty fingerprints.
“Still no ID on her?” Garrity asked, not taking his eyes off John.
“Nothing. Prints came back zilch. No matches in any database. It’s like she popped out of a comic book.” Diaz chuckled. “A really messed-up comic book.”
“You picked the wrong night to dress up, sweetheart,” Garrity said, addressing John directly for the first time since they’d processed him. The term of endearment was a sneer. “Assault with a deadly weapon. Resisting. You’re going away for a long time.”
John kept his head down, his long, lank hair—his hair again, thank god—falling over his face. He focused on the cracks in the linoleum, the black grout stained with things he didn’t want to identify. The smell was a cocktail of industrial cleaner, old sweat, and beneath it, the copper-tang promise of violence.
Oh, this is rich, Amy’s voice chimed in his head, bright with malicious amusement. Your first arrest and you’re not even guilty of what they’re charging you with! Well, the technical assault, yes, but the frock and the heels? That was all me. You’re being blamed for my fashion choices. The injustice!
“Shut up!” John whispered, the words hissing through clenched teeth. He pulled the blanket tighter. “This is so humiliating.”
You think this is humiliation? Try being worn as a pendant by a Breton warlord with a goat cheese allergy. Now that was undignified. This is just… bureaucratic tedium.
“They think I’m a woman. They’re charging me.”
And when they put you in a women’s holding tank, the real fun begins. I wonder if you’ll change back mid-shower? Popcorn moment.
A fresh wave of panic, sharp and acidic, burned his throat. He hadn’t thought that far ahead. The processing had been a blur of mute terror—fingerprints, a mumbled refusal to speak without a lawyer, the surreal horror of being booked in a torn negligee while his male body shivered beneath it. The officers had exchanged looks, assumptions hardening in their eyes. A freak. A fetishist. A dangerously unhinged person.
Diaz’s radio crackled. He listened, his smirk fading. “Sarge says the victims are refusing to press charges. All three. Clamming up completely.”
Garrity’s head swiveled from John to his partner.