Tyler Johnson Was Here

The cop is really pale, skin like a snowfall foreign to Sterling Point-the toilet of America, where shit really goes down. He has a bald head and eyes like the most chilling emeralds. Eyes that scream shitty things at me. We shouldn’t be here.

He’s dragging a boy wearing an all-black hoodie whose hands are being held behind his back-the boy screams in excruciating pain, calling out that he wants to get back home, wailing for the cop to let go of him, that he’s unarmed, that he doesn’t want to die, and reminding the cop that he’s innocent until proven guilty. But the cop isn’t hearing that shit.

And so, just ten feet away, he slams the boy on the ground. Suddenly, I’m a little kid again, watching my first body drop from a single bullet, feeling an overwhelming surge of adrenaline. Heart pounding in my chest. Cold sweats sending me shaking.

The cop keeps bashing the poor kid into the sidewalk, smashing his face onto the surface, screaming hate into the back of his head, screaming that he forgot his place in the world, screaming that his wide nose had it coming. All I can see-all I can focus on-is the cop as he pulls out his baton.

And the air I swallow is like Novocain. I go numb all over, adrenaline rising within me. My heart is doing more than beating in my chest-it’s rhythmically shredding me. I wonder if I’ll return home again. I struggle to remember the last thing I told my mother. Was it something really fucked up? I can’t think straight.

The cop’s head remains angled down for a while, his baton rising in the air and coming down in rapid, brutal strikes to the back of the poor boy’s head. My chest gives in and out, constricting tighter and tighter as each bloody second slips by. I’m stricken with fear.

“What the fuck?!” Ivy screams, hiding her face from the horror that’s going on in front of us. And it’s in this moment that the police officer looks over and notices us.

After cuffing the boy underneath him, the cop clutches his gun holster-gives us a glare. “Stay where you are,” he says. “Don’t fucking move.”