Weekly Fic: So be it
Well, here's the second of the two pieces I'm writing this week. It's an original fic, the chosen genre being crime and the prompt given to me by starrylizard being oranges. Next week: historical person for fanfic and fantasy genre original fic.
***
I grew up on a street lined with maple trees that burned in the autumn sun and, on windy days, lay carpets of scarlet, vermillion and honey. The images of that street bathed in its golden splendour had etched itself in my mind, leaving an impression so deep, even the dark events that happened later failed to diminish it. I am, of course, speaking of death.
Death does funny things to a person mind. It amplifies emotion and reinforces associations. The criminal psychologists who will be studying my case in future will tell you all about it. An overriding sense of guilt due to an incident in his past lead him to commit those crimes, they will say. What he hoped to achieve we can only guess. Was it redemption? Forgiveness? Or perhaps he was just sickened to see people around him who reminded him of his loss and his failure to save the one that he’d loved.
***
The first one was easy, so very easy. It was five years after the incident. I was on my way home when I saw her standing there in the midst of a group of admiring boys in an otherwise deserted carpark. Everything about her reminded me of my loss; her flaming hair framing a delicate freckled heart shaped face, her green eyes sparkling in the dusk. She was leaning against a crumbling brick wall with a fag in hand, smiling teasingly at her companions with an ease and carelessness that stirred the darkest recess of my heart.
It had been simple enough to follow her home undetected through the swirling mist after she’d dismissed her admirers. Too simple, while she was fumbling with her keys, to creep up behind her and quickly snap her neck. I lowered her gently onto the gravel path as her grocery bag split and tumbled to the floor. There was a pack of cigarettes, a cartoon of eggs, a chocolate cake and some oranges… Oranges. I placed one in her hand and stood back to admire my handiwork, marvelling at how well the auburn hair scattered the misty sunlight into a golden halo around her head.
***
The girl was lying on the snow, her still warm body melting the ice around her. I sat down beside her to stare at her pale, beautiful face, running a gloved finger through the tendrils of her hair. It was perfectly safe. There was no one else in the park at this hour on a Sunday morning in mid January, nothing but the sparrows and silent oak trees to pay tribute to what I’d just done. I am always careful about when and where I kill them, because I always want to savour the moment after I commit the act and burn their features into my memory until they are indistinguishable from the one that I love.
I saw a piece of paper sticking out from her coat pocket and took it out, unfolding it as I did so. It was a letter, written in a messy, childish hand. I did not mean to read it. Usually I would avoid these kinds of earthly, personal things, objects that confirmed the body belonged not to Her but to some stranger.
This time, however, something was forcing my eyes to the page, compelling them to spell out the words upon the crinkled paper.
Dear sister,
I am so happy for you! Congratulations on getting the scholarship. You deserve it, after all the hard work and effort you put it. Soon you will be heading off to Europe - Paris no less! It makes my head dizzy just to think about it. To think that in a few years I will be proudly telling my classmates that my sister is dancing on the stages in exotic cities all around the world.
As for mother and father, I think they have finally accepted your choice of career, even if they aren’t too happy about it. Still, I hope you visit the farm before you leave, so that I can see you again! I miss you very much.
Love, Tom
The world seemed to blur around me and I dropped the letter, my fingers suddenly numb. I ran from the body, stumbling and staggering across the dazzling white field. I ran as if the ghosts of my victims were chasing after me. I would’ve welcomed it too, but I knew that She was not with them. She had left me long ago and never turned back.
Later that evening I walked into the foyer of the local police station and turned myself in.
***
The maximum-security prison’s exercise courtyard was fifty-two paces long and forty-five paces wide. It takes me three minutes to walk the circumference and fifty seconds to jog it. I have done twenty laps when a balding fat man accosts me.
“So whaddya in for?” He leers at me.
“Murder.”
“Young man, we are all in here for murder.” He grinned and licked his lips. To my disgust I could not help noticing a sliver of drool trickling from the edge of his mouth. “How many didya do in?”
“Six.” I said in a dispassionate voice.
The man looked startled. “Girls?”
“Tall, red-haired, green eyes.”
“You’ve got some taste, dude.”
He had slapped a flabby hand on my shoulder and was breathing heavily in my ear. It was foul. “Did yah fuck them before you slit their throats?”
That was it. Without any compunction whatsoever, I reached up, grasped his hand and twisted. With a loud snap and a shriek of pain, his wrist broke and I twisted free, punching his nose in the process.
“I broke their necks. Count yourself lucky that yours is still in one piece today.” I spat on the ground and headed to the other corner of the yard, leaving him snivelling on the floor clutching his limp hand.
***
“And how have you been?”
I don’t answer. That woman was talkative to a fault, even for someone earning a couple million bucks a year defending murders, rapists and drug dealers at the expense of being vilified and slandered in newspapers and tabloids across the world. Instead I leaned back in my chair, stretched my legs out under the table as far as the chains would allow me and stared. To her credit, she remained unfazed and stared back, tilting her head slowly to one side as she surveyed me as one might examine an animal at the zoo.
“I read that you’ve decided to plead guilty to all charges.”
I pursed my lips.
“May I ask why you’ve done that?”
“Because I am guilty.” I smiled sadly. “Why would I plead anything else?”
She gazed at me from behind her neat black fringe, confusion clouding her teal-green eyes for a moment. I smirked.
“But the evidence against you is circumstantial at best. It will not stand up under pressure in court at all!”
“I’m not ashamed of what I did.”
The sharp intake of breath sounded eerily loud in the enduring silence. After a minute spent in vain searching my face for a hint to the seriousness of my statement, she leaned back in her chair and delicately placed her pen on the table.
“Then you will be executed.”
I nodded slowly and solemnly. “So be it.”
***
I found it hilarious, during those days before my capture, how the press speculated on the meaning behind my signature and a good portion of my evenings was spent chuckling over the latest crackpot theory. The truth was simple enough really, as I explained to the police officer interviewing me that evening I’d handed myself in. She had died with an orange clutched in her hand, in the exact same position I’d placed one on each of her doppelgangers. I described, to the horror and fascination of my captors, how I’d rearranged their limbs so as to match Hers. The head drooping farcically to one side, the legs bend awkwardly like that of a marionette, her left arm crookedly trapped behind the torso and, most importantly, the right arm, sprayed perpendicular to the body, fingers curling around the object that took her life.
It was a little disconcerting though, hearing the prosecution read out those very words to the court in an attempt to prove to the jury deciding my sentence what a cold blooded, heartless murderer I was. It was very convincing, I have to admit; that lawyer most certainly knew how to play emotions. Why they were wasting precious public funds on a foregone conclusion, however, I do not know. People have been sentenced to death for less.
It was almost a relief when the gravel finally fell and the judge announced the sentence. Death by lethal injection.
So be it.
***
The night before, I dreamed of Her again. She was working on an oil painting of a garden scene on a bright sunny day. There was a young boy leaning against an orange tree, looking up into the branches at someone else within the foliage, someone with brilliant red hair whose hands were stretched out precariously towards an orange on one of the highest branches.
“It’s all your fault, you know,” she said cheerfully as she fixed the detail on the orange. “I wouldn’t have gone for it if you hadn’t begged it of me.”
She put down the easel and whirled around to face me, except that the eyes burning daggers into my soul were not hers but that of a stranger.
“You had to insist on an orange juice,” she stabbed her paintbrush in the air. “If not for your selfishness, we would still be alive. Did you enjoy seeing me fall? Did you enjoy the sound of the branch snapping as much as you enjoyed the sound of our necks torn apart by your hands?”
“Not you!” I cried at her. But she was no longer there. Only the orange-red glow of the last sunset I will ever see on this earth shining through the bars of my window.
“Not you,” I whispered softly into my pillow. “I’m so sorry Sarah.”
Twenty-five years it has taken me to say her name. I let a single tear trickle down my cheek and silently counted down the minutes before they will come for me. I had no regrets- it was much too late for that. I have learnt that all things must come to an end, and if they came before their time, then so be it.