This is an old story which I had posted here once, so I thought I would put it up again.
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I shivered, my back up against the back of the observation box. I pulled my knees up to try to cover my naked body, but it did not matter, for everyone looked at the judge. The men who had been near me quieted their talk and found seats as the judge’s hammer demanded their attention.
“Here!” the judge called out in his baritone. “This case is brought up by Lawyer Raymond against Lawyer Carey Madison, claiming that he committed a crime against Object A.” The eyes slid from the judge and over to my glass cage. I hid my face. “The crime,” continued the Judge, “is one known in some cultures as rape. Mr. Madison, how do you plead?”
Madison stood, his arms relaxed against the sides of his flawless suit. “Not guilty, your Honor,” he said clearly, then sat again. Hardly anyone murmured – in fact, when I peeked out from behind my knees, I saw them nodding and rolling their eyes. I knew then that this trial was futile; they had decided the judgment before the judge had lifted his hammer. I hid my face again, resolving to observe without looking at anyone’s eyes.
“Mr. Raymond, it is your floor.” The judge swept a black sleeve toward the area my defender was to occupy.
Mr. Raymond fidgeted with his jacket and stood in front of the judge’s podium. No, a dull protest came from my head, he is too young, too inexperienced. “Gentlemen,” he began, “it is my belief, and duty, to show you all that the crime in question is a true crime, that Mr. Madison is guilty of this crime and propagating the idea that it is not one, and, most importantly, that the creature in this observation box,” he leaned a hand on my prison without looking at me, “is a man.”
The men, silent before, now roared up, and it took several minutes and threats for the judge to quiet them. Still, Raymond had to raise his voice to be heard over their mutterings. “My first questioning will be of Mr. Madison.”
Madison did not look at me as he entered the witness box. I could not look at him, either, but I knew he had not looked because I would have felt it.
“Mr. Madison,” Raymond began.
“Yes, my young friend?” Madison raised his voice to enunciate the irony.
“Mr. Madison, on the 10th of Thermidor, it is reported that you were walking alone one evening, when you found this Object A sitting alone in an alley. Is this true so far?”
“It is.”
“At which time – I shall use the judge’s word to avoid graphics – you raped Object A, despite it’s struggle against you.”
“I reject the implications your and the judge’s terminology, (pardon me, your Honor), of the word rape, since it indicates a crime occurred when none did. Therefore I request it be stricken from the record. I do admit, however, to having forced the creature despite it’s struggle.”
“Request granted,” said the judge.
“There were witnesses to this event,” pressed Raymond, “who said that once you were finished with the individual, you left it, seemingly with no further intentions for it.”
“That is true,” Raymond acknowledged.
“And is it also true that had those witnesses, (who prefer to remain unnamed), had they not brought the matter before the police, you would not have bothered with the incident ever after? That you had no further care nor thought to this creature whom you had just so ill used?”
“Quite true,” admitted the man in the witness box. Then he leaned forward so only Raymond to hear, but I overheard as well: “But watch your professionalism, and check your temper. Remember the Doe case?” I heard a huff release from Raymond.
“Gentlemen.”
“My apologies, judge,” offered Madison. “Is the Accuser finished with his questioning?”
“For now.” Raymond retreated to his seat.
Madison swept out from the box and onto his stage. “Gentlemen, I wish to show you how ridiculous this questioning is, based on the participants against this alleged crime. I am a lawyer, and a competent one. I know the law. Our government has provided that with the prohibition of ex post facto law, I cannot be convicted of a crime that was not a crime when I committed it. My relations with Object A were perfectly legal, and Mr. Raymond knows that. It is my inclination, then,” Madison began pacing, and I knew the eyes were following him, “that Mr. Raymond is confused about his own purposes in bringing me to court. He cannot convict me of a crime that is not a crime, and he cannot create a crime out of something that is unworthy of the title. Gentlemen, if this creature is a man, then surely it deserves all of the rights and privileges of one. But who is willing to make a man out of this?”
He looked at me. I felt his gaze burn my skin, and heard the scraping of chairs as the other men in the room leaned forward to inspect me. I hugged my knees so tightly that my legs beginning to lose feeling.
He brought to witness a professor of Biology, who assured the crowd that while I had some basic features shared with men, I was not one of them. I was too soft to be a man, too small, I was deformed, I could not speak, and according to them, I could not feel.
Madison’s next witness was a psychologist. He told them that I was inferior to men in intellect and maturity. Supposedly I would only ever achieve the level of one of their five-year-olds in either.
When the last witness stood, I closed my eyes so tightly that my face distorted, and I tried to hide myself in the corner of my cage. It is silly to try to hide in a glass cage, but I so wished that the trial were already over and my extermination performed that I could did not think clearly. It was the Doctor. I had not seen him since I had escaped the clinic, and I had prayed (to whom I did not know) to never see him again.
He stepped softly passed me, softly into the witness box. Madison asked how long he had run his clinic.
“I have been helping men solve their problems for the last… twenty-five years, I believe.” His voice could not have been gentler, calmer, or more loathsome to me.
“And that helping includes what?”
“I run a safe, clean clinic that provides relief to men, without having them forced to seek back-alley relief. I’m not suggesting your experience wasn’t legal, sir, just that, perhaps you should have come to see me, first?” He was smiling. I could hear it.
“And what are your reasons for keeping such a clinic?” Madison leaned against the witness stand, so close to my box that I cringed.
“I believe the freedom men have to make their own choices, and to do what they wish with their own bodies.”
“Here here!” came a chorus from the audience. Men started clapping and cheering, and I saw Raymond in his chair looking paler than ever. Madison offered the questioning to him, and Raymond took it.
Raymond cleared his throat. “Doctor. You have said that you believe in the rights a man has to his body… but what about the rights this creature should have to it’s body?”
“Mr. Raymond, that creature barely knows it even has a body. If I may ask a question, what are you trying to do? Create laws that protect these creatures, while causing suffering to your fellow man? If the government bans comfort clinics like mine, men will be forced to seek less safe methods, and we will see a rise in disease and death. As I said, my clinic is clean, comfortable, and undergoes a health inspection regularly.”
“Your clinic? You mean your whorehouse!”
More shouting, more banging of the hammer.
“Mr. Raymond, I’ll have no more outbursts from you,” the judge warned. The Doctor was dismissed, and Mr. Madison jumped up to join a very flustered Mr. Raymond. Madison began talking of an initiative to increase education about diseases and risks, especially in schools. The judge was stopping him so that he could go through with his sentence and move on to the next case, when Raymond grew animated again.
“Wait!” he shouted, “I have one more witness!” Grumbles of protest came from the audience, and even the judge sighed. However, he allowed him the last witness. Raymond gulped. “My witness is… Object A.”
Everything stopped. After the initial shock passed, the audience began grumbling again.
“Please?” Raymond begged before the noise grew too loud. I did not hear an answer, but then Raymond was undoing the latch at the side of my prison. He stood there at the opening and began speaking to me – the first words a man had ever spoken to me before. He wanted me to come out. I sat motionless, but I let my eyes meet his. The murmuring faded for the second that he took off his jacket, then it exploded when he handed the clothing to me.
I examined the jacket. The noise did not bother me, but I saw it bothered Raymond, so I tried to hurry. I had never put on a jacket before, but I did it well enough, and crawled out of my box and up to the witness box. I pulled the jacket tight around me, enjoying the covering.
Raymond stared me in the eyes, and I stared back at him.
“Mr. Raymond,” the judge interrupted, “Are you going to question your witness?”
The courtroom was so noisy I could barely hear Raymond’s muttered reply, but the room quieted to hear his question.
“So… yes. You are… are you man?”
I stared at him. He had green eyes, a lively green I had never seen before, so odd a find in a room full of black, white, and gray. Glancing over the crowd, I saw how same they looked, all in their suits, still for that moment only until something else interested them. They might have liked a spectacle, one where I stood and proclaimed my manhood despite my disfigurement, my inferiority. But no, as much as they would have enjoyed a spectacle, that is not what they really wanted. They wanted me to be mute, so they could keep doing what they wanted to do without the trouble of me being a man. People judged based on what they want to believe, and I had no hope as long as they clung to those wants.
Besides, I could not speak.
They soon snatched my opportunity. Shouts arose, and the judge hammered while he looked pityingly on Raymond. Raymond stared me long in the eyes again, then before slumping back to his seat, mouthed the words: “I’m sorry.”
“Quiet! Quiet!” the judge shouted. The room quieted. “Raymond had a good try for such a young lawyer, but the law still holds. Mr. Madison, would you rise? Mr. Madison, the charges against you are faulty. You are hereby cleared by this court, and innocent in the eyes of your country and fellow men. Case closed.”
Innocent, was the last word that crossed my mind before the police came to lead me away. Innocent.
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