13 Murders

Guilt?

CHAPTER FOUR

GUILT?

It’s been a month. My bones are now visible from every angle. I smell like despair and Dettol. My hair has dulled due to the lack of sunlight. I know longer have fingerprints. Just scars. Every day I lose the ability to sleep dreamless a little more. My dreams are filled with memories.

Memories of before that night, before the night I killed him.

The last week has been the hardest. Everyone has lost the spark a new person gave them. They seem to have resumed to a routine formed long before I arrived. My nights are spent trying to sleep without thinking about him, and they normally end in sitting around the table with Grace, the girl with the green eyes, talking about our pasts. I’ve told her most things, things like what I wanted to be when I finished high school, my plans for the future, that I wanted to get married, maybe have kids, go to university. She says that she can hardly remember the outside of this room, and she tells me about how she imagines outside looks. She often tells me that she wishes that she could see the ocean, that she longs for the feeling of the sun on your arms, the feeling of grass on your feet. I describe what it’s like, what high school is like, about things like Chemistry and Geography. And slowly but surely, she closes her eyes for a little longer than previously, like she’s dreaming whilst awake.

I wonder if she’ll ever sleep again.

If there’s one thing I like about this place, it’s my conversations with Grace. That and, I guess, that everyone has a place. I like knowing exactly what will happen today, who will do what. I know Xavier will sit against his strip of wall, a leg hugged against his chest the other stretched out in front of him, smoking his pipe. Amelia will be by his side, almost always, if not she will be in Electra’s cell, discussing anything and everything that could be discussed. Charlie Danes will then take Amelia’s place next to Xavier, but he will not smoke the pipe. Elliot, Theo and Jaxon will lie on the floor making dirty jokes, Ricardo will practicing his accents or his magic tricks, and Kaminski will watch or join Maya as she pops her bubblegum persistently. Grace and I stick together, but we drift between the small groups of our orange-jump suited family.

I never though I’d call my cellmates a family, but neither did I think I was capable of murder. And I guess I’ve done both.

Everyone is sitting in his or her positions. Despite the chatter, the room always seems silent. My lungs feel heavy for an unknown reason, and tension builds in my muscles.

My eyes are focusing more than they should. It’s almost as if I can see the individual hairs on Grace’s head as she pushes it back. And my ears throb. I can hear each beat of my heart. My fingers, though scarred and dimmed in senses, feel a prickling sensation.

“I have a bad feeling.” I whisper to Grace. She looks up at my, her eyes widening. Today she has that dear-in-the-headlights look to her.

“What do you mean? Are you ill?” She asks. I shake my head.

“Are you getting day dreams? Like the ones you get at night?” I want to tell her I had those before I got the night dreams, but instead I shake my head.

“No…I’ve just got a bad feeling.”

“A feeling in your bones?” Electra saunters over, smirking. I figured out a while ago that’s just her normal smile. Amelia, wide-eyed and curious, follows her.

“How peculiar.” Amelia smiles, the pupils in her sapphire blue eyes dilate. Maya, who has since taken a break from braided her jet-black hair, has joined us.