The Wrong Man (Patreon)

So this is another one of those story ideas that crosses multiple political lines that makes me uneasy to write it out properly, but I want to write down the outline if I decide to come back to it at some point. To some degree everything I write about comes from uneasiness with authority, prejudice, socio-economic tensions, racial tensions, and abuse of roles within those themes.

Prologue.

A black man wearing a black beanie, white hoodie with an 80s-looking pattern of neon geometrical shapes, black sweatpants, and black, white, and red Nike Air Jordan sneakers is running for his life down the street. Realizing the gun in his right hand is visible to everyone he puts the hand inside the front pocket of the hoodie and changes direction, running down a side street. In the background police sirens are screaming in the distance, seemingly in every direction. He crosses a small square, makes a quick decision, and swerves into one of the coffee shops. As calm as he can be he walks past the front, past the back seating area, and into the restrooms in the back.

Act 1.

Our protagonist for the story is washing up and getting ready to leave the restroom when the door opens and he is pushed away from the sink, past the urinal, into the toilet stall, and pushed against the wall. Something hard is pushed into his back and the man behind him demands "What's size you shoes?" in an authoritative but agitated voice.

"9" he answers, confused and with thoughts running through his mind faster than he can inspect them. "Strip!" He complies, unbuttoning his shirt and khakis. "Faster!" the man tells him. He quickly get out of his shirt, shoes, trousers, and T-shirt. "Everything. Socks too." He pulls down his briefs and socks, then steps out of them hastily. "Get down, face down!" the voice continues. Naked he lies down on the toilet floor. The man grabs his hands and pulls them behind his back as if he's about to be cuffed, but instead he rubs his hands and lower arms. Metal is pushed against some fingers, and then it stops. "Stay there!" he says.

Our protagonist can hear the ruffle of clothes, but in no time the man leaves the room and he is left in silence, naked on the floor in the toilet stall of whatever I decide to name the coffee shop. He gets up and sees the heap of already mentioned streetwear on the floor., and no trace of his own clothes. He quickly grabs the sweatpants and puts them on to be less exposed. Then the T-shirt and hoodie, apparently stripped off in one motion as they are still in each other. He decides against touching the boxer briefs, and has a bit of a pause debating with himself what is less disgusting to him. Putting on the socks or wearing the sneakers without socks. He goes with the socks.

He has barely stepped into the sneakers when the door opens again and he is pushed all the way back against the same wall as before. Multiple people are shouting at him, but "Police!" and "Don't fucking move!" stands out. The toilet stall is crowded, him and at least two officers. It's hard to see with the head pushed against the wall. He is patted down and then has his arms twisted back and locked in handcuffs behind him. Someone gives him a small, hard punch in the side as he is twisted around and led out. As they step out of the restroom he's facing a coffee shop full with only police officers, all staring at him. "Found the gun" someone says behind him. "In a hat in the trash"

He's led outside, but just before they push him into one of the waiting police cars filling the entire square with flashing blue, someone pushes down something on his head. "Don't forget this." The black beanie.

Act 2.

It's always difficult to decide the format to write a story in. I tend to want to write in first person to be able to better convey how the events impact the protagonist. What they feel. What they think. To only reveal information as it is revealed or experienced by the person in the story. But it also sometimes means more work as you can write "he was injected by a muscle growth serum" but have to describe the effects. This gets even tricker if it affects the person's mind, since he then becomes an unreliable narrator in the story. In addition to first person I tend to write past tense, as it makes it easier to jump around in time. Present tense however lends itself better to action. A real version of this story would probably be in first person present tense, though past tense is definitely a possibility.

Regardless, for act two we probably skip the ride to the station and describe a very light processing at the station. Nothing more than another pat down and swapping for gunshot residue. Then moved to a solitary holding cell. There is typically a 72 hour limit on the time between arrest and charge, but I wonder if there is a way to wiggle this into "detention but not arrested" area to make it feel a bit more lawless. The important part is that our protagonist is then led, hands cuffed behind his back, down some corridor inside the police station when the police officers on either side start talking about officer Jaxon (or whatever name he's given). They say how lucky it was that the bullet went clean through. Didn't hit any artery or bone, but tore through a ligament pretty badly. He's expected to make a full recovery, but physiotherapy will take a while. It quickly dawns on the protagonist that the two officers hold him responsible for what's happened to officer Jaxon.

The officers then unexpectedly trip him. Things are going in slow motion as he attempts to brace the fall with his hands, realizing too late that they are cuffed behind his back and that he should rotate his body instead. It's too late for that, so he breaks the fall with the front of his body. One of the officers put out a boot so he slams his face into that instead of the floor. "Bet that hurt," one of them says. "Not as much as Jaxon's leg hurts. Still, better be more careful. Accidents happen so easily."

The officers roughly pick him up and walk the last bit to an area of the station that appears in need of repair. Along one side of the room are a few large cells with benches along the sides, obviously intended to hold a larger group. Ten people per cell perhaps. In one of the cells three intimidating looking people are waiting. One officer opens the cell door while the other shoves the still handcuffed protagonist through the door, closes and locks it.

There is a clock on the wall opposite the cell. One of the officers glances at it and says "We'll be back in two hours for booking." The other inmates(?) nod, and the police officers leave the room.

Act 3.

Now, the exact composition of the group in the cell isn't the most important for the story, but my initial thought is two black men and one hispanic. The entire premise here is interracial non-consensual sex, which is why it crosses more than one political trip wire and wouldn't fly on Patreon. The backstory that probably wouldn't be explicitly spelled out is that the police officers want to take some pre-trial revenge on the one they presumed attacked their colleague. To that end they've created for themselves a few hours of time before he is officially booked at the station, and put him in a disused and unmonitored part of the station together with a few thugs who are getting some police favors on the condition of assaulting the protagonist. Wearing handcuffs, sweatpants, and no underwear makes it hard to put up much of a fight.

Obviously a lot can happen in this portion. The story outcomes I want are first that one of them cleans up after himself by taking the hat off the protagonist, wiping up/off the cum on the inside of the hat, and putting it back. The second one is that one of the guys gives him a quick scarring tattoo. The rest pin the protagonist down on one of the benches, pulling down the zip-up hoodie over the shoulder and folding up the T-shirt to expose the upper arm biceps area. Then the remaining thug takes a blade and cuts a design into the arm, breaks a pen, and pours ink into the wounds. Then he rubs all the but lines thoroughly. Finally he takes off his bandana, folds it like a headband, pisses on it, and ties it around the arm, over the tattoo. "It's just a little something for the guys in prison."

Act 4.

He's eventually led through the booking process. Sore all over, arm aching, and trying not to leak any cum. I don't know what a reasonable time is until you can meet your lawyer. Presumably it takes a few hours after booking, in which case the protagonist would have some time in a cell without handcuffs to inspect injuries. The tattoo would just be an illegible black mess at this point since the skin is pigmented too by the ink. The hat would be pretty stuck, given what dried cum does to hair and fabrics. At some point though the lawyer will show up and say something like "The charge on drug possession will never hold. You can easily say it was planted during the break-in."

"What break-in?" asks the protagonist, and the lawyer shows photos of his apartment with all valuables stolen. We could include other stuff, like vandalism, spray tagging the walls etc. but let's just assume the real perpetrator went straight to the protagonist's home, had sex with his girlfriend, smoked some weed, stole everything valuable, and left, and that is the state the police finds the apartment in when they eventually shows up.

The lawyer then starts going through some of the eyewitness reports, and it is soon apparent to the protagonist that they are subtly modified. "Man in white hoodie" becomes "White man in a hoodie" and "Black man in a hat" becomes "Man in a black hat". It's assaulting an officer, but the lawyer predicts he can make a deal for ten years prison time, out in five.