This is something that came to me a bit ago. It's a rough draft and I know it's not perfect, but I'd much prefer honest criticism to cankerous little nitpicks, so please try to avoid those--I'm sure if you just tell me to read over it again, I can find them myself. I know it doesn't seem to be any sort of romance yet, but you'll just have to wait and see, won't you?
The cold fluorescent light shone down onto a single plastic table, where two hands lay, one on either side. The first pair was darkened and manicured, in a manly, coarse sort of way, while the other pair was small, pale white, the fingernails dirty and broken, and a puckered pink scar across the back of one, a black-inked number across the other.
“Miss Rebecca Marx,” growled a voice, “date of birth, January twelfth, fifteen nine oh four seven six. Sex female hair brown, blah blah blah. Who are you really, Marx? And how do you expect us to believe you are what you say you are?”
“It wasn’t my fault,” mumbled a tiny voice, “none of it. Jake said—”
“—Jacob Anseril is the goddamn mayor’s son, if you will pardon my Udenese, Marx. And Mr. Anseril was in no way implicated in this crime, except on that side of the law that you will never see, the side that prevents crime, as opposed to perpetrating it. This, Marx, is what you will say at the trial tomorrow, if you value your pathetic life.” The growly voice was raised just slightly, still cold and stiff, but all at once commanding, as it had not been before.
“That’s what you want me to say? To lie under oath for the sake of some jerkoff’s son from the better side of town?” squeaked the tiny voice, horror in every word it spoke. “Never. Never, and you can’t make me.”
“Can’t I,” muttered the deep voice, and the coarse hands twitched, twirling a ballpoint pen around idly, its metal sides glinting in the ugly light. “Marx, if you understood the law as I do, perhaps you would be a bit more compliant.”
“I don’t think so,” the small voice said, a bit braver-sounding, if anything. “I didn’t do anything, and I shan’t say anything more than that, tomorrow or any other day ‘til the one I die on.”
“Hah,” said the deep voice, “perhaps that won’t be so very far away as you think.” A silence followed in which the only sound was the tip-tap of the pen on the plastic table. Then a grunt, like the noise a cruel revelation makes, or would, if it could. “Marx? Have you ever heard of cellblock 4A?”
“No. Should I? I’m n-not exactly studied-up on the layout of this horrid place.”
“Don’t try to get clever with me, kid. I’m not half as tolerant as you seem to imagine.” A slight pause. Tip-tap-tip-tap-tip-tap. “Cellblock 4A is where we keep the particularly depraved ones, the sort whose moral compasses not only do not point north, but probably are triangular-shaped and lack any sort of arrow at all—not getting any of this? Let’s just say the people we put in there for…disciplinary reasons don’t usually come out as they went in. Remember that woman a couple years back – what was her name – who refused to give the government any information about Hirslek VII’s plans for war against Cervero?”
“Maria Greshull? ‘Course. She was all over the news, right up until she…wasn’t,” the small voice said. “Wh-what are you getting at?”
“We put it off until it was our last recourse; that’s the general rule, with 4A. But she still refused to give us the information we required, so she spent a night in cellblock 4A, cell six, and d’you know? All that information we needed just came right out, next morning. In a bit of a mess, honestly.” A chuckle, the sort no one ever wants to hear from another sane human being. “Understand that due to your young age, it would be a bit of a liability to put you in there, but ah well, there are exceptions to every rule.”
“I don’t understand,” the tiny voice whispered, and it was a lie, as much as those three words ever could be.
“Yes you do, of course you do, and guess what, Marx? I’m giving you your last chance, now. Promise to admit it was you who committed this terrible crime, promise to insist that Jacob Anseril had nothing whatsoever to do with it, or I’ll just stop by cellblock 4A on my way out at five-thirty, and toss you in the door as I’m going past. Is that what you want, Marx? Are you really willing to subject yourself to whatever horrors lie in wait for you there, just for the sake of a relative truth?”
“It’s not a ‘relative truth’! It’s the truth, the only truth, and goddammit, I won’t lie for Jake or anyone else. Besides, it isn’t as if I’ll benefit from lying—what do I get, twenty years in prison? Don’t pretend it isn’t true, Mr. Ferd, I’m not that stupid. Jake doesn’t deserve to be saved, not if he’s willing to let me take the fall for this.” The little voice was trembling, but determined, and the small, pale hands came back onto the table, clenched into fists and not shaking a bit.
“Hmmm,” the deeper voice grumbled. “You leave me few choices. Think just for a moment more, Marx—just a moment more. This is what you want? I cannot guarantee in the slightest that you will come out unscathed in any way, shape or form.”
“I won’t lie,” the tiny voice said stoutly. “That’s the only decision I’m making, and the only one I can make.”
“Say what you like, little girl. I do not think you will be so very courageous, come morning.” There was a sound like a chair squeaking against linoleum, and then a squeal and the coarse hands caught the pale ones. The clatter of a struggle against the wall, the slam of a door, and the room was empty.
The fluorescent lights buzzed, flickered, buzzed. All was quiet once more.
