The Victims

My English Controlled Assessment draft... I actually disturbed myself writing this!!!

Whenever I close my eyes, I hear their screams. I feel the satin softness of their skin, and remember how easily my knife slithered through it. It makes me smile. Those glorious memories from when I released my true inner self from the cold, metal cage of society. They’re all I have left now. Now my freedom has vanished, like the flailing, quick breaths of a dying bird. Now I’m in here.

              

  I open my eyes blearily, already knowing exactly what I will see. A bland, featureless room with no windows and one door.  My vision is blurred; hazy. Like trying to see through a window spattered with tiny sprinkles of rain. Floundering, my hand tries to reach for my glasses. Shoving them awkwardly onto my face, I observe as the world sharpens its focus. A slight draught wafts through the air, dragging an icy finger down my spine. My body quakes under its thin layers. I am so confused. I still don’t know why they put me in here. I don’t remember doing anything.

                

It was my nephew, first. My brother’s pride and joy. We were sitting together, all alone. He was so loud; tiny lungs converting all their strength into volume. It irritated me. The sound grated on my eardrums, reverberating through my head. He was so helpless: he couldn’t do anything for himself. A waste of space, really. My hands clenched into unforgiving fists. He still wouldn’t shut up. My anger reared its head inside my chest, contained like a wild beast for too long. I stood up. My footsteps resonated around the room as I walked towards the child.

                His screams brought his mother into the room. My assault died away. I watched her as she instantaneously absorbed the situation. Her eyes, wide with horror centuries old, bored into my soul.  A flash of something I had not felt before seared across my heart. Guilt. I couldn’t have that. Thinking quickly, I left the child and snatched the knife from the table.  She had such lovely skin; pale silk. Reflecting on this, I advanced towards the cowering woman.

                

My eyes overflow with misery. I don’t deserve this. ‘It wasn’t me,’ I yearn to cry out. ’Please let me go. I never did all those things you said. It must have been someone else.’ My sobs fill the room, echoing off all the walls; a cacophony of despair. ‘Irrefutable evidence,’ they concluded. I weep into my tear-proof pillow.

               

  When it was over, the red tinges at the edge of my vision began to fade. Her long, dark hair had fallen over her face. She could have been asleep; if not for the crimson pool leaking out from underneath her. I turned to look at the motionless infant on the other side of the room. It was time for me to take my leave.

                Minutes later, I sat, curled into a ball on the street. My claret-stained knife was gripped in my fists.  A tap on the shoulder. “Are you all right, sir?” The monster in my torso screamed back to life again.

                

When I woke on the hard cobbles of the street, that day, my fingers were tainted with lifeblood. A blade was lying on the ground next to me, coated in that same substance. I sat up, wondering where my glasses were. Then I saw the man’s body; saw the scarlet blooms it was hiding. The onlookers covered their mouths with their hands. “It wasn’t m-“; I started to say, before someone knocked me over the head into oblivion.

___

                The man sits in the cell sobbing wildly. He throws his glasses off into the corner. Then he starts to laugh, manic screams of mirth that echo continuously. He stands up and punches the wall until his knuckles bleed. He sinks down to his knees, and reaches for his shattered glasses.  He puts them on, and looks in bewilderment at the blood on his hands.