The World Out There - 9. Nine

They put him into a white-tiled cell in the basement of the building, locking him in. He’d expected that they would take him straight into the court room and had been surprised to be placed in there. They left him in there for a very long time. It seemed as though an age passed him by as he had no idea how long it was. He had no watch and there was no decoration to the walls, certainly not a clock.

Liam sat on the cold, tiled bench and stared at the white tiled wall in front of him. In his mind he could still hear that screaming crowd pushing at the closed metal gates, playing like a video stuck on repeat. They hated him and he didn’t even know one of them. Why did they hate him so much? What did they know? What was it about him that they hated? Their shouts of anger were still loud inside his head. There had been so many of them. Even sat there in that cell, he was still afraid of them: they had wanted to hurt him, to kill him.

He'd felt lost in the courtroom from the moment they had brought him in there. They, the two guards, had led him out of his cell and up a set of narrow stone stairs that took him straight in the Dock, right there in the courtroom. The courtroom was already full of people and as he looked around himself, it felt as though every one of them was looking at him. Everywhere he glanced, there were people openly staring back at him. Why were they staring at him? He didn’t want them staring at him. It was as if he was dragged to the front of a full class and everyone was staring him, except a hundred times worse.

The Dock area was actually small in space, though it was a raised platform for everyone to see him. One of guards made him sit down on the wooden chair there. When he sat down on it, all he could see was the wooden wall that ran all around The Dock was darkly varnished and he could see runs and drips of varnish dried into it. He certainly couldn’t see over it nor could he see the scary courtroom beyond it. Of course, all those people filling the courtroom couldn’t see him either. That was good and he gently smiled to himself: he was safe again.

Someone, in a hushed but forceful voiced called out to the guards now sat behind him. Liam glanced over his shoulder and saw the male guard learning over the side of The Dock and obviously talking to someone else.

The next few moments saw a rush of activity between him from the two guards. After speaking to the unseen person, the male had a hurried and whispered conversation with the female guard who then rushed off back down the stairs and out of The Dock. She returned a minute or so later carrying two old grey cushions. She made him stand up as she put the cushions onto the chair’s seat and made him sit down again. With the cushions on it, Liam found he had to struggle to get back onto it, and when he did, he could see clearly over the edge of The Dock, but the people in the courtroom could see him again.

The courtroom seemed so full of people, so many different people, and when he looked over the edge of The Dock many of those people turned to look back at him, again. So many of their faces carried expressions he couldn’t always read. Everywhere he looked there were people. Down in the centre of the courtroom were people dressed in black gowns and wearing wiry white wigs who were not looking back at him because they all sat with their backs to him. One of them was probably Mrs Stewart-Graham, but he couldn’t recognise her - everyone in those gowns and wigs looked the same.

Then the judge entered the courtroom through a side door, and everyone stood up. The woman guard grabbed hold of his arm and pulled him up onto his feet, hissing at him, “Stand up!”