Criminal logo

Prologue

The Beginning to a Project I Might One Day Finish

By Jade FieldPublished 3 years ago 8 min read
Like

A court room was supposed to be brown. Deep mahoganies and wooden embellishments – grained features and jury stands made of oak as old as the laws themselves. They were supposed to be commanding, intimidating. These were, after all, the places where statute was made, where society was protected, where the entire world ticked.

It was not supposed to be white.

The sense of sterility that emanated from every corner of the room was as overwhelming as the reasons for being there. There were no corners, only curves – an attempt at modernity in a place where the world was meant to adhere to rules as old as time. The judge's bench was a dark grey, some sort of stone. It looked as cold as Emma Parkes felt. She curled her fingers into fists and sat them underneath her thighs. The off-white viewing seats were supposed to be in theme with the rest of the room, she figured, but in a cloud of greys and complete whites, an off cream merely stood out like an imposter. The visitors that were not meant to be here in the first place.

Was it to deter people from attending in the first instance? Uncomfortable, plastic seats made of an uncomfortably harsh colour, silently telling anyone who dared sit, you are not welcome here. This is not for your eyes. Emma shook her head. The government was not telling people they couldn't watch open court proceedings, the government wasn't even telling her. But, her mother had told her.

I don't know why it's an open court – that's absolutely ridiculous. I best not see you there, Em. I mean it. There will be consequences.

Luckily, Emma Parkes was not known for wearing headscarves and jeans. The girl with her closed fists tucked under her thighs was wearing exactly that. She had never been a very spectacular girl. Mousy hair, a plain face – she was as nondescript as an extra in a movie. The sort of person the eyes glazed over, recognising their presence, but not paying any real attention to their existence at all. She'd be surprised if her mother noticed her in this get up. Her mother didn't notice at the best of times – how could she, in a career as unforgiving as her own? The job always came first.

She was beginning to understand aspects of her mother; facets that she had never thought of before. Emma figured she, too, would gain some sort of emotional detachment from the world, having to represent the evil in it, in rooms as sterile as this. She hated herself for that. She didn't want to understand, because that led to change. And not the sort of change she was willing to accept.

She was not willing to accept the reasons she was sitting in this room. The straight A student who had never so much as skipped a class, let alone seen the inside of a court room before. She inhaled deeply, the room suddenly ten times too small.

Greys and whites and off cream blended in blurry vision that had Emma half wondering if she'd forgotten glasses she didn't own. She blinked, breathing and breathing and breathing, gripping the plastic edges of her seat to keep herself grounded as she worked to contain the hummingbirds in her chest. She was okay.

As the tension began to subside, the people around her began to stand, and she quickly followed suit, watching as the Judge entered the room, and the solicitors, and... She heard a sharp intake of breath, and it took the burning in her lungs to tell her that it was her own. She released the air she was holding.

There he was.

She fell back into her seat, the first to sit. There was a dizziness in her head that she could not shake. Perhaps her mother was right. She shouldn't be here. But, she could not very well leave now. People would notice she had been here in the first place. He might notice. And she'd done so well to avoid his contact until now. But then, he hadn't tried to contact her. She wasn't sure how far her self-restraint would hold if he did.

A small part of her was hurt that he hadn't tried. She was supposed to have been his world. His universe and everything in it. And he hadn't so much as given her a phone call. Did they have phone rights in prison? Had he been held in prison? Her mother had never answered her. Not properly.

When Emma tuned back into the events at hand, a small portion of time seemed to have passed, because there was a girl in the witness stand. Emma hadn't seen her enter. Emma's eyes burned into the girl's very being, taking in every inch of the mousy, blue eyed woman shaking before her.

"Three years."

Emma recoiled as if she'd been slapped by the very force of the woman's words. She could not have been much older than Emma herself. Emma swallowed hard, silently cursing herself. It would do her no good to pretend she didn't know anything about the woman in front of her. She knew everything.

Her name was Abigail Jones. She was a psychology major at the university. She was twenty years old. That was what every single news article since the coming forth had said. What the reporters didn't mention was that Abigail had long, mousy brown hair that had honey-ish highlights in the right light, and that Abigail wore a size eight, was between five feet and five foot one, and couldn't tan if her life depended on it. Every time she tried, she only ended up burned. The news recounted similarities between the Abigail and the three other girls lined up outside the door, and Emma. But they always forgot to mention the little details.

Emma supposed they couldn't have known. Who would think to ask a girl how easily she tans? He'd known.

Emma's eyes flickered towards him. Had he even looked up once? Would he? His head was in his hands and Emma's heart wrenched reflexively. All she wanted was to go down there and talk to him. As if she'd silently willed him, he raised his head slowly.

Abigail's words floated softly through Emma's head. "I was still in school...Art class...Fourth? No, sixth period...I—" Her words cut off with a sob as he straightened, their eyes meeting. Emma watched as Abigail immediately averted hers. He didn't, and Emma couldn't help but wonder:

When he looked at Abigail, what did he see? Did he really see her, or did he see Emma herself... And what did he think if that were the case?

She stood abruptly, no longer caring for the scene she'd make as she pushed through rows of people and disrupted proceedings to get out of the room. Idly, she wondered if that was a felony. As she was wrenching the heavy door open, she heard her name coming from a voice far too familiar. She locked eyes with her mother, and then bolted from the room.

In the bathroom, she emptied the entire content of her stomach, wrenching off the headscarf that seemed to be choking her now. But, even with the headscarf gone, Emma couldn't breathe. She couldn't breathe. Or think. Or move. She wondered if any of this was even real.

The door to the bathroom slammed open, and through hazy eyes she watched as her mother marched over to her; the shortest, most commanding presence in any room. Emma waited for the lecture that wasn't coming. Her mother kneeled on the tiled, once again grey, floor and pulled Emma's barely there body into her arms.

When was the last time her mother had hugged her? How many years had it been?

"I asked you to stay home for a reason, Em," she whispered, smoothing her daughter's hair. "It was for you. The situation is painful enough already."

The words floated into Emma's head and right back out again. All she could think of was Abigail, and the three other girls – Lucy, Jamie, Charlotte – that she'd seen, melancholy and scared, outside of the room as she'd stormed from it.

"They all look like me," she whispered, over and over again, her breath catching on air she couldn't breathe in fast enough.

Kathryn Parkes did her best to swallow the bile rising in her own throat as she rubbed her daughter's back in circles. She swallowed the bile with the venomous rage locked in her stomach. "But they're not you," she whispered back, every time Emma spoke.

And that was how the two women of the Parkes family stayed until the both of them lost track of time. Each of them whispering their own solemn lullaby to the other. They looked like me. But they aren't you.

And then Emma looked at her mother, with an expression so frail Kate half expected her daughter's eyes to break like brittle glass. "To him, they are."

As soon as the thought hit her, Emma was sobbing, and all Kate could do was sit there with that knowledge, and wonder how on earth either of them were going to live with that.

fiction
Like

About the Creator

Jade Field

Canada based Australian writer and classical history student.

Current WIP: Persephone + Orpheus and Eurydice myth retelling.

I can often be found in front of the fireplace with my glass of wine and two cats, curled up with my laptop.

Reader insights

Be the first to share your insights about this piece.

How does it work?

Add your insights

Comments

There are no comments for this story

Be the first to respond and start the conversation.

Sign in to comment

    Find us on social media

    Miscellaneous links

    • Explore
    • Contact
    • Privacy Policy
    • Terms of Use
    • Support

    © 2024 Creatd, Inc. All Rights Reserved.