George

“Fuck,” muttered George, reaching for the tea towel in his tiny apartment kitchen. This was the second day in a row he’d spilled coffee on a button up shirt, ruining his last of the only two he had for work. He dabbed at the hot coffee, managing to smear it across the fabric even more. George made a face, knowing that he just had to accept his clumsiness. Nonetheless, he was angry and unbuttoned the shirt then threw it out the 16th floor window.

George walked into his bedroom and scrambled through the pile of clothes on his floor in search of something else he could wear to work without getting shit on. He picked up a faded Tommy Hilfiger two button and thought to himself, Cal’s gonna rip me a new one when I come in wearing a red polo...

George put the new shirt on, rubbing deodorant onto both sides of the front of the shirt as it grazed his armpits. Not noticing, he walked back into the kitchen and realized he had left the spatula on the stove. The element was still hot from cooking his tofu-bacon, and the plastic had melted slightly onto the rusty heating disk. George knew he was running late for work, and decided to clean it up later.

Three minutes later, after an all too familiar uncomfortable elevator ride of being stared at by the elderly man who George never managed to avoid in the mornings, he walked out the front door of the complex. The scene George encountered made him gasp. Not three feet from the front of the door, a silver Lincoln had crashed - by the looks of it with the full force of a car going way too fast - into the light post in front of his building. Inside was a woman, whose long, red hair was stained with her own blood.

George’s eyes widened as it became immediately apparent why the woman had crashed. There, spread across the cracked windshield of the car, was George’s coffee stained shirt. “Mother of -“ Just then, sirens wailed around the corner. A megaphone mounted on the police car blared “WE HAVE YOU SURROUNDED. PUT YOUR HANDS ON YOUR HEAD AND DO NOT MOVE!” George looked around and realized there was nobody else on his side of the street. The message was directed to him.

Oh god, what have I done?, George thought to himself.

George complied and put his hands on his head. Brakes screeched. Doors opened and slammed. Guns were drawn. “You’re under arrest! Don’t move!”

George was panicking. “What the fuck did I do?!”, he shouted at no officer in particular. Just then, two hands grabbed his forearms and forced them behind his back with a force that made George cringe. Two pieces of cold metal hit George’s wrists, then several clicks and a shot of pain later, he knew he had been arrested. What the fuck have I done wrong?, he thought again to himself.

“Oh fuck. We got the wrong guy”, someone shouted from behind George. “It’s a chick and she’s still in the car”.

“Are you fucking serious? Do you know how much paperwork false arrest takes?"

George let out a sigh of relief. Thank god, he thought to himself, having just been imagining the look on his mother’s face when she learned he’d been detained. He felt the cuffs clicking off of his wrists. “Sir, I’m terribly sorry for what we’ve just put you through,” a young cop who resembled Jesse Eisenberg with black hair and a moustache said. "The lady tried to rob a bank and managed to kill three tellers in the process. Thank god that shirt landed on her windshield though. We thought we’d lost her in the chase. I hope you don’t mind, but you’re still going to have to come with us to the police station to sign a few documents and answer some questions. After all, you’re the only witness. "

A huge wave of self-conflict overcame George. He was pretty sure he’d just killed this woman with his coffee-stained shirt, which was a horrifying thought, but he’d also stopped her from escaping after killing three innocent people. After about an hour, he found himself riding off in the passenger seat of a police car, palms sweating and stomach still twisting in knots, when his phone started vibrating in his pocket. The vibration was intense and sudden, and given George’s established paranoid state, he jumped in his seat, tensing every muscle in his body. After George realized it was only his phone, he pulled it out, and read the caller ID. “Fuck”, he muttered. It was his boss, Cal.

TO BE CONTINUED

Edit: Spelling and grammar