Happy Friday folks! Here’s a little story I wrote, hope you enjoy it!

Handcuffs by Adam Wright

When the handcuffs clacked onto Thomas’s hands, the cold metal biting into his wrists, he knew he made a mistake. He must have been begging on the wrong corner. Some places it was ok to beg. Other places they made you move on. 

The spotlight shone in his eyes, bright and unforgiving.  The sea air whipped against his cheeks and he could taste the salt on his tongue. His clothes were old and torn, with brown smudges and stains on them. He was wearing four jackets and two pairs of jeans. The knit hat on his head had holes in places and was unraveling in others. The gloves he wore had holes where the fingertips should have been.

“What’d I do?” he asked the police officer.

“Thomas, I don’t know,” he motioned his head toward the squad car, “Feds tell me to put cuffs on, I put cuffs on, that’s it.”

Thomas looked back on the ground where his sketchpad and pencils lay. He never bought alcohol with the change he begged, but art supplies were expensive and hard to come by on the streets. On the paper was the beginning of his latest sketch, a building that not only scraped the sky but penetrated the clouds. It was an exact copy of an office building most people walked by without thinking about. Stock traders and big businessmen were the only ones who ever entered the place. Even they never paused to look at the structure. Thomas knew what it must have taken to make the building. The height alone was a challenge to the architect, but the way the walls creeped up into the air with such imposing dominance was perfection.  He could tell without looking inside of the building exactly where the arch supports were, the floor plan on the inside, where the strongest and weakest points were located. 

“Can I take my pad?” He looked hopefully at the officer.

“No. Get in the car.”

“That’s my livin’, my pad. It’s all I got.” He tried to move his shoulder toward the pad and the officer nudged him to the car.

Thomas sat down in the back of the car; the upholstery was cold and unforgiving. His hands were uncomfortable behind his back and the metal dug into him. He looked out of the window toward the crowd, if you could call it a crowd in a busy city like this, and saw a heavy dark boot step down and snap one of his pencils. The shards of fine lead scraped across the concrete as the foot moved away.

“Ohh,” he squeaked.

“What’s the matter, you hearin’ them voices again?” The cop turned his head toward the back of the car.

“No.”

“You know I told you about places that can help. I told you about them free doctors and clinics. If you woulda gone, maybe you wouldn’t be here.”

“I just wanna draw, don’t want no one tellin’ me I can’t draw or what I should draw. Them doctors do that to you, they do it all the time.” Thomas watched the buildings go by outside the car. He knew which ones were art deco, which were gothic or glass box style. He could name them all. 

“Why didn’t you go to school, Thomas? I’ve seen your drawings, you coulda been an architect.” The officer kept his head straight forward looking at the road.

“I tried, sometimes I say stuff, talk to myself, can’t stop, said a bad word once, teacher thought I was cussin’ her.  I was cussin’ them voices, they tell me I’m stupid, can’t do nothin’, won’t be nothin’, so I cuss ‘em. They kicked me out, I never tried again.”

Thomas and the officer were silent the rest of the way to the station. He loved the look of the station house. It had high curved arches, a large flight of concrete steps going up to the door, and big bright lamp posts that lit up the sidewalk. He had drawn that building too. In fact, he had drawn every building in the city at least once. From the coast to the business district, he sketched them all. The police station building was not a big seller on the streets. Most people wanted really tall buildings.  Thomas could never get more than three dollars for the police station.

Inside the station, people were walking back and forth in a hurried fashion, ignoring each other. Phones rang and people shouted across the room. The officer led Thomas past the bustle and into a sterile, empty room with a table and two chairs.  A man in a dark suit sat at the table and gestured for Thomas to sit down.

“Who’re you?” Thomas asked.

“Special Agent Fields, counter-terrorism division,” he replied as he pulled out a tape recorder and pressed record.  The red light on it stared Thomas in the face. The agent was tall and thin and kept clicking the pen in his hand.

“Begin recording,” he said. “Interrogation of subject suspected of terrorist activities on February seventeenth.  Subject’s name is?”

“I’m Thomas.”

“Do you know why you are here?”

Thomas looked at the man. He had no emotion in his face; he just stared in Thomas’s direction. Click, click, went the sound of the pen. 

“I was at the wrong corner.” 

“No, sir. You are accused of aiding an elite terrorist network with vital information about the design and structure of several buildings in the financial district. Do you draw buildings?” he asked, pausing long enough to cross his arms and sit back in his seat.

“It’s my livin’. And beggin’ but mostly I draw. Some people, they like it and want to buy ‘em.” Thomas moved his hands around as much as he could in the handcuffs.

“We have stopped an attack on the building you were outside of. One of their recon agents had piles of sketches in his briefcase detailing every inch of the building. They even knew delivery drop points and service entrances. How long did it take you to learn the layout, sir?” The agent clicked his pen again waiting for an answer.

Thomas looked down at the hard metal table and thought for a moment. 

“I never been inside. I just know, I can feel the inside.  It comes out when I draw. That’s when the voices stop, when I draw.” He rubbed his shoulder against his face to try to scratch the itch on his chin.

“Subject admits to knowing the inside of the building,” stated the agent. 

“I never been inside,” said Thomas.

“Do you know what they do in that building?”

“No. People dressed all up in suits go there. They don’t give money even though they all dressed so nice. Some kinda office?”

“Yes. Some kind of office. It is the building that houses the nation’s foremost chemical weapons research lab. It is the most heavily funded lab on the west coast. You will be detained indefinitely, charges may or may not be pressed against you for your actions, you have been defined as a national threat, an aid to terror, and an enemy combatant. You should be happy. You won’t have to beg anymore for food, you will have a place to live and will be taken care of.” The agent set his pen down and pressed the stop button on the recorder.

“Can I draw?” Thomas asked.

“No. Never again, you are too dangerous to our security.  Now let me remove those handcuffs.” The agent motioned to a police officer to take the cuffs off.

The key released the cold metal from Thomas’s hands. 

“Now isn’t that better, sir?” asked the agent.

“Yes, sir, my hands feel much better now.”  As Thomas rubbed his wrists trying to get the circulation back he knew that even if he was released he would not ever be free again.  Not to draw was the same as cutting off his hands.