“You should have seen the food, mister. That glorious, juicy pork and turkey with the best gravy I’ve ever tasted. Oh, the softest rice, the buttery potatoes, the squash, the carrots, the baked eggplant, delicious. I’d never made a feast like that. Damn, I was so proud of it. And I would’ve been prouder if he had been there, but sadly, he didn’t get to enjoy the wine. Actually, nobody did. You see, I don’t drink, mister. Well, and I guess the guests didn’t enjoy it, right?” she laughed.
That was such an eerie gesture, knowing what one officer had testified a few months ago. I played back the recording of that afternoon for her to hear.
“Your Honor, the scene was gruesome. It kept me up at night for weeks.”
“Can you please describe it to the Jury, officer?”
“Sure. Well, the bodies had their heads down on the table. They were left there just as they had dropped. Their mouths and the area around them was covered in, uhm, vomit. Their eyes were still open. She hadn’t touched them. As I said before, they were still in their chairs, and that woman was sitting right in the middle of the table, crying and eating a turkey leg. Around her were about thirty corpses, Your Honor. She minded them as much as a child minds a broken toy. She’s out of her damn mind!”
“Objection, improper lay opinion!” she shouted as she paused the recording.
“What?” I asked her.
“That’s what my lawyer said next. Come on, I obviously remember the trial, mister. You don’t need to play it back to me. Yes, I left a mess, but I was heartbroken. None of them turned out to be him!”
I looked at her, astounded, because she clearly showed no signs of remorse. She had confessed to murdering thirty men that night, and many others on different occasions.
“But, listen, you killed a lot of people.”
“Yes, but it was all in the name of love.”
“What do you mean?”
“You have the recording of my trial; I bet you must know what I said!”
“I don’t remember that, though.”
“Let me refresh your memory,” she replied.
“When I was ten years old I had the dream. There, lying in the arms of the man who I knew was the love of my life. How did I know that, mister? Because of how I felt. It was passion, mister, a warm and overwhelming passion. He would love me forever and I would too. The connection could never be denied!
“We were on a hammock at the beach, watching the sunset together. I couldn’t see his face because I was facing away from him, but my hand touched his softly. Then, all of a sudden, lightning crashed down on the sand and I felt as if my soul had gone out of my body. I dug my nails into his hand. Right after that I repeated again and again that I was sorry, and I didn’t notice that the man hadn’t even winced. I looked down and saw that there was no sign of a scratch. And then I understood: we were both made from the same mold, so we could never hurt each other physically. I instantly woke up and knew that all of that was true in real life, beyond the realm of dreams. Mister, that’s when I made it my mission to find him, because we were meant to be. And I knew that when I found a man I couldn’t hurt, he would be my soulmate.”
“And you didn’t mind killing people because of it?” I asked.
“Mister, it was all in the name of love. Of course, the first few times it wasn’t deadly. I remember my first accident: a brown-haired, sweet-eyed boy. We were in the fifth grade, and one day I got him to play alone with me in a forest that was close to our school. I took a tree branch and pretended to scratch him by accident. He bled, and I was, oh, so sad. Mister, I felt so desperate that I exploded in rage and hit him on the head with a stone. He stopped breathing, the poor thing. I threw the rock far away, wiped my hands on my dress, and went back to school because recess was almost over.
“You see, mister, I was a well-behaved and excellent student. When the boy went missing, no one suspected me. They found his body, but the case was never solved. Couldn’t find a person of interest, they said. That’s what always happened. It’s incredible what a good reputation can do.
“From then on, I had similar experiences with every boy I had feelings for. As time passed, mister, I figured that it would be faster if I just chose a random group of men and tried to hurt them all at once. That was until the banquet, my beautiful, genius banquet, went wrong.”
I watched her in awe as she narrated her story without the smallest of flinches. It was obvious that she felt that every death was a mere casualty in her quest for love. Her aura pulsed with madness and restrained anger, and I seemed to gravitate towards her incredibly consuming energy.
I now understood why she was sent here. Though honestly, at the same time it all felt like destiny— like all her small actions, her quietness, her calculations, everything had led us to this same single cell. A shiver went up my arms.
“You are not like the other patients,” I stated, “because I can still see someone in your eyes.”
“Yes, that’s because I’m not crazy.”
“Of course, a woman as smart as you would never go to jail. That story sounds so believable.”
“Excuse me, are you saying that I lied, mister?”
“Well, people would surely believe it. Female serial killers are rare, and they are easier to explain if their reason for killing is a man. A woman’s nature isn’t violent, unless love is in question.”
“Shut your damn mouth!”
“Sure, but when I look into your eyes, you’re still there.”
“Yeah, that’s the problem. I’ll never find him here!”
“Quit it, you know he’s not real.”
I wished those words hadn’t left my lips, because as soon as they did the devil was set loose. The room darkened, the air around me got cold. Her eyes were fire, her expression a shadow. Her shoulders went down and it seemed as though all the hairs on her nape stood on end. She was a black cat curling up. I ran towards the door of her cell, hearing her feet hitting the ground behind me.
A couple of guards tried to help me out, but her nails were already on my arms, on my chest, on my face. She was foaming at the mouth, clawing like a rabid, hungry rat. I shut my eyes, and not seeing her was a relief. Actually, it was too much of a relief, because I couldn’t feel anything.
My partners pulled me back and shut the door. I landed on my bottom, heaving for air. The apparition and I both looked into each others’ eyes, then down at my arms, then up again, and the fury in her complexion suddenly melted.
There was not a single scratch.
*****
Hello, humans.
This is a little piece I wrote using a Tumblr writing prompt. It's been a while since I've done one of these, and the last one SUCKED. I'm sorry.
Anyway, I hope you enjoyed this snippet. I've been accidentally starving you hehe. Even though I should ~technically~ have a lot of time to write, I don't. Writer's block rocks. If you have any ideas or requests, I'm completely open. See you in 388493 months.
Love,
Nan.
