C H A P T E R 62
C H A P T E R 62
BLUE
Puppet
Play ‘hurts Like Hell - Fleurie’
“ M iss Blackthorne. Were you aware that Miss Moore was planning to transport you to a different state?” I stare blankly into the nothingness as their questions drill into the side of my head like a mind-numbing headache, hugging the itchy blanket wrapped around my trembling frame, still shivering and I can’t see properly, with tears still breaking down my face no matter how hard I try to fight them back in. We’ve been at this for hours but I’m not cooperating. They think switching officers will make me give them a different answer. Anger and sadness are breaking my empty shell, glaring at the thick glass window disguised as a mirror casing the dull room, grey concrete walls closing me in as I refuse to look at the officer, feeling eyes on me like an animal in a cage. I dread to think how Shep feels right now. I screamed for him as I watched them take him away and shove him in the back of a van. All I’ve been told is that he is ok and he’s been put in a kennel not far from here, I will get him back, even if it kills me. I made it very fucking clear that if they touch a hair on his head that I would find a way to sue them all in my stage of infuriated anger. It’s highly unlikely in my state but they seemed to comply and tried to comfort me on the matter. I sob harder, knowing he's scared and alone, trapped in a room, on his own just like me right now and all I want to do is hold him and tell him everything is going to be ok.
“No.” I murmur. Lying . I don’t know why I'm lying. She’s no longer alive to protect but I lie anyway, thinking about her dead corpse in my arms. How I watched her life fade away as her blood coated my hands trying to stop the bleeding and I can’t get the image out of my head, feeling the front of my skull pulsate as I tense my jaw trying to contain more sobs as I remember her using the last of her energy to squeeze my hand until she stopped moving. She told me forever . She promised me we’d have more time. I grip the blanket harder, huddling my knees into my chest on the uncomfortable chair.
“Did Miss Moore harm you in any way?” He pushes, tapping the paper against the desk as he hangs over my anticipated words.
“No.” I whisper, recalling the bickers eight months ago and even then, she wouldn’t lay a hand on me. Even when I put my hands on her with anguish.
“Have I hurt you?”
“No…”
“Then I’d say you’re pretty safe, wouldn’t you?”
Her voice haunts me as I cling to her melody in my head, her deep, throaty engine, replaying it like a broken exhaust as I squeeze my eyes shut. I’m so tired, alone, scared. I’m terrified. Being in this room is making me so claustrophobic and I want to hurl being this close to a man right now, flinching at the thought of their hands on me as they dragged me off her lifeless body, unresponsive and pale. How they dragged her away like she was a bit of dirt.
I’m mourning for someone who was dead the moment this started and her face is a permanent picture in my head, looking right back at me. Smiling, but all I feel is an unbearable ache that's crippling me from sitting up straight.
She wouldn’t even tell me she loved me until her last dying breath. A wave of insufferable anger washes over me, hating that those were her last words to me, gripping the seat either side of my feet as I dig my nails into the flimsy plastic.
“Did Miss Moore touch you inappropriately?” I swallow the truth down my throat as I spit out another lie, trying not to think about the way her hands felt against my skin, crushing my soul every passing second I think about the fact I’ll never be able to feel it again. I won’t be able to hold her again, or kiss every inch of her skin like I promised, as I graze my lips, realising her soft, sweaty skin is probably erased from my mouth by now and it's destroying me.
“No.” He lets out an irritated huff, placing the papers down on the desk as he interlocks his fingers, feeling his fragile, sympathetic gaze on me as he leans into the table.
“You can be honest.”
I know I can. But I won’t. Channelling my inner rage, trying to find the strength in hating her as I dig for more lies, trying to cover up what really happened and I’m vibrating with an ache worse than my own end as I snap back, and I can’t tell who I’m trying to lie to. Me or him.
“She never touched me.” I hiss, nearly choking on my dishonesty as I finally look at him looking back at me like I am a compulsive liar. Water and painkillers sit perfectly in front of me and I’m refusing to take them. I almost didn’t take my insulin but I was ordered by a nurse who was fairly kind to me, helping me as I couldn’t even hold it steady but my food has already come up and I’ve not slept for almost 48 hours, terrified to let myself drift off into more nightmares. Terrified to see her dead eyes glaring back at me. Every time I close my eyes it's all I see.
“Did you share any sort of relationship with Miss Moore?” He asks confidently and I’m milliseconds from puking as the last few months of our lives replays on a agonising loop in my head like a happy movie which I thought would make me feel better but it only makes this worse and I can taste bile in my throat. I want to hate her. I want to scream, belt, throw this god damn fucking table across this room! It should have been me!
“No…” I contain my internal burning as he glares at me with visible annoyance, grinding his teeth in his pristine uniform and I used to feel so safe in the eyes of the law but I’ve never felt more unsafe. More repulsed by them, trying to get my head around the fact they were going to open fire on an innocent girl. How they opened fire when they know it's against the law unless it's self-defence. Self-defence. I squint at the words, realising the route of all of this. This system. These people. They are all frauds.
“Are you aware she killed your parents?” he bites, clearly trying to hit a nerve and it does. It's been almost a year and I’d nearly forgotten but their faces suddenly appear, screaming at me. Telling me how I betrayed them and guilt smothers my body.
“Yes.” I did. And I don’t know what will happen if I confess I was ever romantically involved with her. I myself may end up behind bars for willingly letting this go unnoticed. She gave me more than one opportunity to run away but I stayed.
“How does that make you feel?”
I don’t know . I don’t know how it makes me feel. I’m in no fit state to be answering questions right now, all I can think about is her and it makes me want to die, I’m frightened to live. The cameras, the press, the questions, the knife rammed into my chest, it’s all too fucking much. I told her my heart would stop beating when hers did but I’m still breathing and I don’t deserve to be.
I don’t answer, glaring back at the invisible faces behind the glass that I know are watching me. Watching every move I make.
“Miss Blackthorne. It states here that you intervened during the time of breach. Can you tell me why?” If I told them why, I’d be in so much trouble. But If I lie they will be able to tell.
You are a terrible liar.
“I'm not sure.” I chew the cuff of her hoodie, having ripped apart my lips and wipe my face dry of my grieving.
“Did you have feelings for Miss Moore?” My airways jam. Finally hit with reality, my feelings begin to suffocate me. I was in Love with the woman who ruined my entire life, not once but twice and my jaw locks as stray tears push over my lashes. Was it even Love ? Infatuation? A bond by trauma? Did I just think I was because I had no one else?
“No…” He pulls a device from his pocket, placing it on the table. A recorder of sorts. But not the one we are already using to document this conversation. He presses play and her last moments begin playing out the crackly speaker, finding it hard to see as I hear the fear rip through my throat and her voice tears through my core like alcohol.
“Please! Listen to me!”
“Alora. Let. Go. You need to let me go.”
“You need to listen to me! She doesn’t deserve this! You need to hear her out! Please!”
“I need her! Please don’t take her away from me!”
“Alora, baby. Let me go. Just trust me.”
He glares at me, cocking his head slightly as his eyes narrow and my heart stops.
“That doesn’t sound like you never had romantic feelings for her, Miss Blackthorne.” His condescending slyness slips from his tongue and my eyes are burning trying to contain my fury. They are trying to corner me and I can’t fucking breathe. “You told us to hear her out. Well I'm listening.”
No one knows her story or the suffering she endured. Only me. I’m the only one who can fight for her. The only one who can let her voice be heard, her betrayal be known. But at what cost? I cannot beat the system. I have no power here, everything I say can be twisted, I realise that now and I will not be painted as a villain.
A loud buzzing fills the room as the door clicks open, and my tongue almost chokes me as I suck it down my throat, glaring at a man with a badge, the same man who ripped me from her, the same man who threw me in the back of the cop car place my journal on the table in front of me and the corners of my eyes fuzz.
Fuck.
“Does this belong to you?” He asks a question I already know he knows the answer to but I deny it anyway, staring down at it wishing I’d burn it like I should have.
“No.”
“Miss. Blackthorne, do you realise with this you may end up behind bars?” He illiterates and my heart rattles thinking about all the awful things Hayden went through, gulping down my fear. I wouldn’t last five seconds.
“You documented everything dating back from Christmas of 2009 and information even before that date. We need you to be honest with us or the court will see to it that you aided in criminal activity.”
I scowl at him, trying to understand how the hell me being a hostage equates to me aiding in murders that had absolutely nothing to do with me. I was almost raped, possibly killed. She saved my life? But I guess that doesn’t mean anything to them. God forbid that ruin their reputation. All they care about is her downfall. Being the heroes , ending the cycle of a deranged serial killer. Even if it means making me look bad. All the blood on her hands behind closed doors was not my doing, nor is it my fault but that is exactly how they will see it.
“Alora. This does not look good for you, am I making myself clear?” Perfectly fucking clear.
“I never aided in any murders. I was a victim.” He scoffs at me, completely disregarding my trauma and it only makes me sob harder.
“Is that what you think? Miss Blackthorne. This woman murdered your parents? How do you think that will look for you? The night they died you just so happened to go missing. Found eight months later untouched with a clear indication you shared a romantic interest in your kidnapper? You infiltrated her arrest.” His words are like poison, I'm finally out of my little clouds and I was a victim. But now? Now I'm lovesick for a convicted criminal who can’t even keep me safe anymore. Because she's dead.
He opens a file filled with images and stacks of paper, morbid graphic pictures of mutated faces and gutted bodies, widening my eyes when it dawns on me.
These are all her victims .
Men, sliced up like vegetables, smiles of blood gracing their faces, just like hers. Just like the smile she carved into that asshole's face, dotted all over a fifty-mile radius. But for some reason, I’m not horrified anymore. This is no longer the Hayden I know. The Hayden I coaxed out. The Hayden that was ready to do better.
Now I know the real dangers out there, the man she dismembered for putting his hands on me, people who deserved it. People like her father. Pigs. Fucking animals. I glare at them, sifting through the pictures, clearly a tactic to try and weaken me.
And I realise my parents are not in this pile, only making it more suspicious. When I found them they only had one singular bullet wound through their skulls and nausea creeps up my throat. She was clever . This way they stayed off her scent, due to her relations with my father, they would have worked it out. She was a calculated woman. She was only found when she wanted to be found. She was found because of me. For me . This was for me and for some reason I hate every inch of her right now, because freeing me has only sentenced me to a life in a different box when I’d rather be in a box six feet underground with her.
She told me she’d taken fourteen lives, not including that prick's life or the remnants of another on her sleeves the day she brought me back my favourite chocolate. All her murders were to keep them off her scent after I came into the picture. She didn’t leave them as a trophy or a message. She was in hiding, like she was frightened they would find us and my heart throbs heavier. So how did they know these murders were her?
“How do you know these were her doing?” I ask curiously. Trying to keep my composure.
“The mutations were a metaphor. The things you wrote in your journal only confirmed our suspicions. Her little acts. Her second identity you mentioned. It doesn’t take a genius to put two and two together.” I try to hold back a sarcastic laugh laced with amusement.
“Then you would also know that all those cases were all men in your records whose cases had been forgotten. Have you ever considered the possibility that they were deserved. Cases you left cold. Did you ever stop to think about why she finished what you couldn’t?” I snap, squeezing my jagged nails into my palms, shocked at my own voice. He peers back at me, his eyes telling me everything I need to know. He knows I’m right. And he's struggling to find the words.
“She still murdered in cold blood.” His tone now full of uncertainty as he backs away from me, leaning back in his chair trying to defend his own stupid laws.
“What, like your officers did?” Does he really think I don’t know that in the last forty-eight hours, they haven't put all the pieces together. I now have no one to speak for me, the same way Hayden had no one speak for her. I’m silenceable If I say too much, so I refrain from talking further.
“Did your father deserve it? Your mother?” He stoops lower, trying to slither his cold scales underneath my skin but I’m already in a room full of snakes.
“I refuse to answer any more questions until I have a lawyer present.” A fire burns inside me. A hunger for justice. Not just for me but for her. I will get her story out there. I will not be fucking silenced. This system will fall. I will make sure of it.
??
Play - ‘Soul tied - Ashley Singh’
T he first person I asked for once released on bail was Kacey. She is the only person that came to mind. The only person I really have left and her and her parents took the day to drive up and collect me. I would say she was thrilled to see me in one piece but by the sounds of it, it's like no one even cared I was gone. I could hear the ignorance in her voice and it hurt. I dread to think what she's put on social media in the last eight months. She's an attention whore and as much as I hate to see it, she's all I have left.
My time away made me realise she really isn't a friend at all, but her family welcomed me with open arms and lent me the spare room until my court case, they also promised me they would find Shep and bring him home safely which eased my panic slightly. He is all I want right now. The only part of her I have left.
I spent the majority of the car journey back to Indiana in silence staring out the window wanting the ground to swallow me whole as this concrete jungle merged into acres of nothingness, realising how petrified of the outside world I truly am. I feel like an alien on earth, in someone else's skin. I died in that house alongside her and I don’t think I’ll ever get me back.
She tried to talk to me but I couldn’t find the words. I don’t know what people know as of yet but these eyes on me is making my skin crawl. Desperate to get into the house and lock myself away.
We arrive at the house and I trundle inside feeling like a stranger. So out of place as they escort me to my room and I forget how made of money her family is.
“Here we are darling. The bed is freshly made and there are towels in the ensuite waiting for you. Please, if you need anything else, anything at all, don’t be afraid to ask, ok?” Her mum says softly as she cradles my hands like my own mother and my swollen eyes pulse with the urge to push out tears I must have run out of by now.“Everyone is so happy to see you safe and sound.”
I want to believe that but in the grand scheme of things, no one really even knew me. Not the real me anyway, and I’m sure they all jumped on the sympathy bandwagon once they caught wind of my disappearance. If there is one thing I’ve learnt. It's to see through the bullshit.
She rubs my cheek before leaving me standing in the doorway with nothing but the same clothes I’ve been wearing since her death, wrapped in her hoodie that I inhale, stinging at my eyes and a small bag of belongings they took from her house, my phone. my teddy and a few other bits.
I refused to change, even when they lent me new clothes at the station and I stare into the standing mirror propped up in the corner of the room, glaring at my own ghost as her hoodie is stained with saturated blood. Her blood. I can still smell the sea in my hair as I glare at the greasy mop on my head, tied in a loose bun wearing the heaviest bags, sighing as I glare at the bathroom door knowing I need to shower. But I don’t want to. I don’t want to erase her touch. Her smell, her last moments in my arms. The last remnants of her on my skin will be gone, something I’ll never be able to get back and my knees buckle to the floor, cracking them with hard impact as I sob silently, clutching at the hoodie tightly in my fingers as I cradle my own body, praying for my death to come quickly. But I can’t. Not yet. Not until I say my peace. I may be angry at her for leaving me on my own, but her story isn’t over. She is not a monster. And I refuse to let the press paint her as one, so I will speak out in front of everyone if I have to. I will be her voice.