Interrogation By Jacqueline Doyle

        Andrew Seaman CC



Interrogation

The cops say I must’ve seen my brother, and I must’ve seen the gun too, even though I don’t remember it. Posttraumatic stress the school psychologist says, spelling it out, P-T-S-D, but I don’t believe it, and I don’t believe he did what they’re saying. I know there was a gun, I know there was a shooting—sure, I was there, I heard it—but what I remember is everyone rushing for the exits, and how I was afraid I was going to lose my new sandals, which were kind of loose. I remember how the crowd lifted me and carried me along, how some woman near me was screaming, how I thought I’d be crushed, how I couldn’t breathe, and how much I wished my brother was there with his arm around me, watching out for me like he always does, because I thought it was the end. He never did nothing like that, I kept telling the cops and the psychologist and the reporters, but no one listened. He’s in county now and they say he’ll get ten years, maybe more. He was there, they said. I never seen him, I told them. We caught him red-handed, right there at the scene, they said. So where was the gun? I asked. You can do time for obstructing justice, young lady, the cop with the red face said. He banged his hand on the table, made the coffee cups jump. What happened to good cop, bad cop? Seemed like the other was just as bad. He never done it, I kept telling ‘em. I don’t remember ever seeing no gun. But what I remember isn’t worth jack shit.

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Jacqueline Doyle lives in the San Francisco Bay Area and can be found online at www.jacquelinedoyle.com and on twitter @doylejacq. She has a flash fiction chapbook available from Black Lawrence Press (The Missing Girl) and has published flash fiction and nonfiction in Wigleaf, matchbook, trampset, Tiny Molecules, Gone Lawn, and elsewhere. Often the voices animating her fiction feel familiar, as real as any in her nonfiction. Often they’re asking to be heard.

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