Chapter 35 Aston
Aston
They put me in a room with no windows.
Unless you count the mirror stretched across the wall to the right of where I sit, which we all know isn’t there for vanity purposes.
It’s been what feels like hours since the detectives interrogating me—sorry, I mean interviewing—got whatever they needed (see also: a whole lot of nothing) and abandoned me all to my lonesome.
Or so they’d like me to think…
I side-eye the “mirror”.
“Do I need to call my lawyer?” I’d asked the detectives after they sat down and introduced themselves. Because when one is brought in under suspicion of a crime—murder, especially—that is what one asks.
“I don’t know, you tell me. Do you need a lawyer?” the cop who introduced himself as Detective Sergeant Lawson fired back oh so predictably. It was all I could do to not mouth along. Something told me they wouldn’t appreciate that.
What followed from there was a headache-inducing string of vague, yet pointed questions thrown my way, met with a whole bunch of no comments and I don’t knows from yours truly. Until eventually, finally, I learned just who it was that was killed tonight…and why they were so certain it was me.
After all, my reputation might proceed me, but it’s all rumors. Some might be true, sure—there’s always a little bit of truth wrapped in lies—but without a warrant or subpoena or whatever it is they’d need to access my file, ultimately they’ve got nothing.
Nothing but a convenient target for people to pin this on. That target being moi.
The victim’s name meant nothing to me, and they saw as much when they asked what kind of relationship I have with Tim McPherson…have because this was before they confirmed he was in fact the one who met his untimely demise tonight.
A quite gruesome one at that. Something I’d learned after it was obvious I didn’t know who the hell they were talking about—that or I was a really good actor, as I’m sure ran through their heads as a possibility—and they had no choice but to show me pictures.
First, of his school photo. Then of one of him, all sweaty and flushed in a burgundy leotard with the Archers’ logo on the front, raising his fist into the air—apparently this Tim guy was kind of a big deal wrestling star.
It was at that moment I recognized him. It wasn’t unlike how he looked earlier tonight in the mine car. Reeking of beer, and too cool for a costume.
The handsy asshole I poked and threatened with my knife.
Well, fuck me silly, I thought, I might actually be screwed here.
“So, you do know who this is,” the detective taking lead said, not missing my reaction. And it was at that point his partner slid me a photo from the crime scene. One of Tim laying on his back in a pool of blood, throat slit ear to ear, eyes cracked open, vacant and unseeing.
Like Rick…
The detectives excused themselves not long after asking me where the knife was, visibly frustrated when I shrugged and told them I didn’t know what they were talking about. Talk about a blessing in disguise…
Inwardly, I sent a silent thank you to the universe or whatever deity had decided I was worthy of some good luck and stripped me of my knife before I could be caught with it on my person. At what would quite literally be the worst possible time.
Now, it’s just been a matter of waiting.
I might not know the ins and outs of the law outside of procedural shows and my own spotty history, but I’m pretty sure they need more than just hearsay to keep me. Secondhand hearsay at that, assuming Tim blabbed to his friends about what happened, and they’re the ones who accused me.
How they figured out it was me under the mask…
I sigh, using my finger to draw a frowny face on the table.
Maybe it was…
Groaning, I flop forward, forehead meeting the cool metal table with a dull thud. I squeeze my eyes shut, and all I see behind my lids is vacant dishwater-colored eyes. And blood. So much blood.
Sticky. Wet. Blood.
My breath hitches, sounding like a gunshot in the silence, the heavy kind I imagine is purposeful, the kind of quiet that will make a person go mad with their thoughts. Weakening them into submission so they’ll cave and blab all their secrets.
It reminds me of my early days at Ashwood, before they mastered the art of dealing with me, when being thrown into the pit was a regular thing—locked in, sometimes strapped down. Left to fend for myself against the horrors that stalk my fractured mind.
And then there’s even further back, to a time I don’t really like to think about. Circumstances that are painfully similar to what’s going on right now, where I found myself in a room not unlike this one, haunted by the image of unseeing eyes and red-soaked skin.
I roll my head so I’m resting my cheek to the table. My eyes lift to the one-way mirror, and the past flickers in and out with the present, as I watch my hand lift in a little finger wave.
Last time, they provided me with a snack. A juice box. Clean clothes and a blanket.
A sharp, sudden pain throbs behind my eyes. And for a moment, my vision seems to wink out completely.
“Don’t,” I moan faintly. Blinking rapidly, I swallow a couple times, willing the memories back. Willing myself to stay in the present. Willing myself not to think about the fact the walls seem to be closing in on me.
This isn’t the same thing.
I’m not there.
And yet I can’t ignore the tendril of doubt, the one that seems to have a direct line to the black hole in my head that, up until recently, I easily ignored. Pretended doesn’t even exist.
I rub my finger furiously along the metal table. Smudging the face I drew. My knees bob a quick rhythmless beat, and I feel like I’m crawling out of my skin.
I need out of here.
What if they found the knife?
What if it’s covered in Tim’s blood?
It will have my fingerprints…
If you asked me earlier, however many minutes or hours or days have passed since I found myself in the back of a patrol car, I would’ve said hell to the nah. I didn’t do this. I couldn’t have. It’s not possible.
I am innocent, I tell you! Innocent!
But as more time passes that takes me further and further away from what transpired in the fields…
A hell of an alibi, if there ever was one, might I add.
Oh, ya know, Officers, couldn’t have been me. You see, while good ol’ Tim was in the process of being unalived—poor sap—I was getting my prostate rammed by the town’s star quarterback.
So, in the wise words of Shaggy—
It wasn’t me.
Case closed.
But alas…I’m not really so sure I didn’t do this anymore. The longer I sit here with nothing but my thoughts to occupy me with, the more I begin to wonder if perhaps my brain did that thing it’s been known to sometimes do.
Glitch out.
Resulting in gaps of lost time…false memories…
It’s happened before. Maybe even more times than I’m aware of.
But I try not to think about that: the fact that there is a chance the few good memories I hold on to from my past might actually have never even happened. That I just made them up to cope, as various shrinks of mine have so kindly suggested.
Because that would mean getting railed by Vale tonight was nothing more than a fantasy. One I fully immersed in to escape the memories of snuffing out someone’s life..
Again…
Scowling, I bury my head in my hands, scrubbing my stinging eyes with my fists.
I bet Jude had something to do with this.
Set me up.
Or set me off…
Then again, though, who knows if he was actually even there? Probably just imagined him too. Why? Who knows. Maybe to find someone other than me to blame? Who better than the guy whose guts I hate.
“Ugh!” I scoff into my palms.
There I go again, sounding all rational and self-aware. Which means I probably am innocent this time.
But if I am…
Why am I still here? Why haven’t they released me yet?
You know why.
My heart pounds. My vision grows shaky, dimming around the edges.
I find my arms slipping once more to my sides, hands dangling lifelessly. Cheek smushed to the table, I watch as the metallic surface clouds with steam from my breaths.
He didn’t speak up last time, why would he now? a voice whispers in my head.
I screw my eyes shut. “One, two,” I murmur shakily, “he’s a comin’ for you. Three, four…”
A door creaks open, and I can’t tell whether it’s real, or if it’s the past gnawing on my brain. Ripping seams into my mind that reveal flickering images of splattered blood and deadened eyes, interspersed with me sitting in a room just like this.
“Can I have another juice box?”
“Where’s Vale?”
“Is Vale okay?”
“What’s going to happen to me?”
“I want to see Vale. He needs me. Why won’t you let me see him?”
“VALE!”
A door closes, silencing the echoes in my head. Or maybe it slams. Locks. I think I hear voices, and I have to seal my lips together to trap the moan fighting to burst free.
Shaking my head, I plead silently, Go away, go away.
Under my breath I hum, and bounce my knees so fast and hard, the table rattles.
“You don’t deserve to feel good.”
My throat burns with the scream clawing to get out. Eyes aching with how tightly I seal them shut.
“…better lock the door.”
Chair legs squeak across the floor. A thud. Then—
“Here.”
I frown, blinking my eyes opens just in time to catch a deeply tanned hand placing a sealed water bottle inches from my face. I wet my dry lips and waste no time sitting up and unscrewing the bottle, upending several gulps down my throat.
Lowering it, I sniff and wipe the back of my hand across my mouth.
“So, you’re Aston.”
Peering up from my lashes, I come face to face with the dark scrutinizing gaze of a man I recognize instantly.
My lips slowly rise, hand slowly lowering back to the table as I straighten. “And you’re Daddy Riviera.”
His brows spike from behind his thick dark frames. “You know who I am.” Not a question.