Paper Shirt

Two o clock Sunday afternoon and my fare had woken up in the local police station cells. He tells me it's an awful feeling when you wake up and at first don't realise where you are and how you got there. When the truth finally dawns, fright sets in and you try to think what you have been arrested for. Frantically racking your hung-over dehydrated pounding brain to try and recall what took place last night. From time to time flashbacks of blood and some sort of struggle come and go and you start to really get worried. Then you realise with growing horror that you aren't wearing your own shirt, it's been replaced by a police issue disposable paper top. You know the type that you've seen on TV that they give murderers and rapists. Panicking you start to bang on the cell door and yell, asking why you are locked up. Nobody will tell, that has to wait until you are deemed sober enough to be charged. Hours later you are led in font of the desk sergeant to be charged, and you stand there sweating and with shaking hands. What a relief when you are only charged with being drunk and disorderly and you are handed a bag with your own torn and bloody shirt inside. What an experience eh? But my fare seemed to think that the worst bit was going home in the paper shirt. That's why he ordered a taxi; he just didn't want his street image damaged by being seen in the paper shirt.