The Weekly Dormouse. (aka Bike, est. 2007) Part 3454 by Angharad Copyright© 2024 Angharad

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This is a work of fiction any mention of real people, places or institutions is purely coincidental and does not imply that they are as suggested in the story.
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I was just finishing breakfast when a uniformed police officer approached me and said that I was to attend the police headquarters in Cambridge with my two daughters. We were split up and led to separate interview rooms. You know the type, plain walls, with a table and chairs, neither of which were very clean and also suffering from some incised graffiti which just showed the people who do this damage either are dyslexic or ignorant. I suppose a percentage of the community fits that description and I suspect so does a percentile of police officers, though ignorant describes some of them best.

I looked at the two way mirror on the wall as I waited aware that I was probably being watched the whole time I was there. I was kept for ten minutes before anyone came to see me and I spent the time asking for the goddess to give me the strength to deal with it without implicating myself, my daughters or the goddess/blue energy. When the police deigned to come and introduced themselves, a Superintendent Voice and detective sergeant Bell.

He apologised for keeping me waiting and I said that it was okay, I didn't have anything important to do except run a university department. I saw a hardening in his eyes. "I have just been looking at you record."

"I was told that I don't have a police record," I retorted, if his plan was to upset me he might just succeed.

"Not a criminal record, just interactions with police forces. I see it cost Hampshire Constabulary quite a bit a few years ago."

"That money went to charity."

"It says that, but it also said you're not a cisgendered female."

I blushed, " I haven't claimed to be, so what's the point of raising it."

"So you aren't what you appear to be, neither are your daughters."

"Do you have a problem with that?" I asked.

"Not personally, nor does the force."

"If you read a bit further you will see apart from accusations of being a man I was badly assaulted by the individual concerned, who didn't stop when his companion suggested it and only did so after he had beaten me almost unconscious and a superior officer ordered him to stop. So my experiences at the hands of police forces is not always a happy one."

"But if you lie about your sex, might you also lie about other things like the hoax you perpetrated with your daughters?"

"I hope the tape recorded that because I'm just thinking of which charity will benefit when I sue you, my lawyer will eat you in court for slander."

"I haven't said anything slanderous."

"You have as good as accused me of not being female, though my birth certificate says so and so does my certificate from the Gender Panel. I am legally female and so are my two daughters."

"You also like publicity don't you?"

"I think you'll find you have been misinformed, I actually try to eschew publicity."

"So you make films and take part in radio shows, write articles and appear at save the badger debates. What's all that then if it's not publicity seeking?"

"I speak up when I feel I have to, I made the films to promote dormice and harvest mice, to raise the public's awareness of these beautiful creatures. The badger thing, I was invited when they couldn't seem to get another ecologist to speak against the cull. It is iniquitous and I would go on record again to defend that statement. It is unscientific and a waste of taxpayer's money."

"But you got lots of publicity?"

"I took the place of Dr Brian May, who couldn't make it."

"What the pop singer, what does he know about badgers or other wildlife?"

"He's actually an astrophysicist and if you'd watched his last documentary, quite a lot. He's also a multimillionaire and one of the best lead guitarists in the country if not the world."

"So he lives for publicity too?"

"Actually he keeps his private life pretty private unless he's working or wanting to say something he feels strongly about."

"Yeah, so the likes of him can do what they like?"

"We are all supposed to be equal under the law," I threw at him.

"Yeah, but you privileged and moneyed lot are just more equal than the rest of us, always in the news whether you're on your favourite hobbyhorse or just hungry for publicity. If I say what I think about badger culls or whatever, no one listens to me."

"Write to your MP, it's what I did, haven't you got a copy of my letter? Oh dear, superintendent what else have you missed?" He scowled at me and I felt I had got one back on him, revolting creature he is.

"Back to your hoax, what's this about your daughter setting fire to several young women?"

"How about we start by saying my daughter had been abducted against her will and charges of false imprisonment?"

"We'll get to that, answer me about this accusation of setting fire to people."

"Did anyone have any burns that needed treatment?"

"Well, er no."

"Because it didn't happen. Trish is very clever, she has a bachelor's degree, a master's degree and a doctorate, she's here to research in Physics and Mathematics for another PhD. She is quite capable of making them believe they were on fire."

"I find that hard to believe, and this blue light she produced, what about that?"

"She has an iPhone, it was probably that."

"The girls had confiscated that earlier."

"They obviously made a mistake."

"It says here that they didn't."

"I see, so you can accuse me of lying or being mistaken but not them? We are all equal under the law, remember?"

"And you're threatening to sue me?"

"I don't threaten, especially not policemen, I just make predictions and I spoke to my lawyer earlier, he's on his way."

"I want it on record that I didn't say you weren't a woman or your daughters, I said you weren't cisgendered."

"You have accused me of making a hoax of my daughter's abduction."

"I want to know about this blue light my predecessor wrote about having the power to knock him off his chair and kill his friend in a car smash."

"If you wield this power, we'er looking at murder."

"I also saved his son, you forget that."

"Okay, you saved his boy, how?"

"I sometimes get images in my mind's eye, I can't explain it, but I saw the truck hit the car and it was so vivid, I asked him to get his son out of the car before he got hurt."

"Yet you killed the other boy, what just to show off?"

"You have a rather sick mind, superintendent."

"Comes from dealing with people like you."

"Well, I suppose there must quite a few professors in Cambridge, are they that trying?"

"You know what I mean." His tone was quite hard.

"No I don't, care to share?" I asked winding him up some more.

"You want me to believe you get visions powerful enough to save one boy's life but not both."

"I asked him to tell his son for them both to get out of the car, but it was raining and both were reluctant and it was only his father's pleading that we saved one of them."

"So who decides who lives or dies?"

"I think it's called serendipity."

"And these so called visions aren't another element of your hoax?"

"No, of course not."

"So who controls these visions."

"I don't know, they just happen."

"So you can't control them?"

"No," just then I saw his wife slice into her hand with a knife preparing vegetables. "I think you need to speak to your wife she has just badly cut her hand."

"What, I suppose you think it's funny to provoke me do you?"

"I think she has just collapsed, perhaps you need to send someone round to see her, don't forget the key is under the mat."

"If you're wasting my time I'll get you Lady bloody Cameron bah!" He left the room presumably to call his wife, she was bleeding quite heavily, must have sliced a blood vessel.

"I've arranged to send someone around to check on her."

"May as well call an ambulance, she's not getting up."

"Just shurrup, " he yelled at me." I simply shrugged, the police sergeant looked around the room as if she couldn't believe what was happening.

He paced around the room, obviously waiting for a call from whoever he had sent. I suggested a nice cup of tea and the sergeant got up to make it. He looked angrily at me, "If you've set this up, so help me, I'll get you."

"Some things are beyond your philosophy." I smiled and blasted him off his chair.

"WTF," he exclaimed.

"You don't know what you are dealing with, don't provoke it."

"You jumped up pansy, don't you threaten me."

"It isn't a threat just a warning."

"I don't believe in all that mumbo jumbo."

"Good, neither do I, but even scientists can't explain everything, like this," and I knocked him off his chair again."

"Just do that again, " he stood and went to hit me but shook his hand as if he just hit a brick wall. "How do you do that?"

"I don't know," I smiled back at him.

Just then the sergeant came back with the tea and his phone rang, "On my way," he said followed by, "take over sergeant, better release her for now. Don't leave the area," he threw at me.

"I have a university department to run, I can't just stay here to keep that idiot amused," I said to her as I drank my tea.

"He does get bees in his bonnet if he thinks someone is trying it on."

"But I'm not, I'm just trying to get my family together and safe and deal with the women who abducted my daughter and who disrupted my university, a group of TERFs who want acceptance as radical lesbians but don't want to accept even smaller groups of people. I see it all as a power thing by small-minded individuals, like the anti-trans movement amongst Republicans in the States, how does driving a tiny minority to extinction prove anything except what dick-heads they all are?."