Back for You (Watty Awards 2012)

Chapter 11

Andora was dead, all right. And her brother and his friends had killed Arthur. But those were the only kernels of truth he fed me. The more I read the sicker I felt. Not only was Arthur a cold-blooded murderer, he was a con artist and a heartless psychopath.

            Arthur caught Andora speaking to another man while they were out dancing one night and flew into a jealous rage. Instead of asking her about it, he dragged her into the alley behind the club and slit her throat. He stabbed her over twenty times. The man she was talking to? He turned out to be her cousin.

            But Arthur’s insanity didn’t stop there. He staged the scene. He left her in the alley, went back inside and plated the knife in a random man’s jacket. He also grabbed the man’s wallet and casually tossed it into alley and left. Arthur went back to his apartment as if nothing had ever happened, cleaned himself up and waited for the police to come tell him what had happened to Andora. Not an ounce of remorse.

            That’s where the real shit-storm began, I learned. Back in the backward-as-fuck Harriman Police Department in the 1970s, the evidence Arthur planted was enough to get the man, Brian O’Leary, arrested, charged, and convicted for the murder of Andora Cipriatta. But everyone who knew Andora knew that it was Arthur. The interviews I read told me everything I needed to know: the cops didn’t believe them, because they had “solid evidence.”

            Brian, an innocent victim of circumstance, was thrown in prison for a crime he didn’t commit. An innocent victim of Arthur’s sick fucking mind, and another fatality of it. Brian O’Leary hung himself in his cell a few months into his sentence. After Brian’s unnecessary death, a witness came forward who claimed he saw Arthur leaving the alleyway the night Andora was killed with blood on his hands. The typical lazy cop’s response? “We’ll have to conduct an investigation.” An investigation that never happened. That’s when Andora’s brother took matters into his own hands.

            Arthur wasn’t stuck in Limbo because Andora’s family died before he had a chance to make up for her death. He was stuck because the innocent man he royally fucked and had thrown in prison was dead. His purpose was never to get forgiveness for Andora’s death—it was to confess to the crime and have Brian cleared of all charges. But Brian’s suicide made that impossible.

            My body was shaking with rage. I felt violated. I felt cheated, I felt stupid. Never in my life had I let someone fool me, but now in death I had the wool pulled over my eyes by a dangerous criminal?! What the hell was wrong with me? People who let themselves be taken in by charm and dimples and cute smiles were the ones that ended up dead. People like Andora.

            For the first time, I was glad I was dead. If I were alive, I would be scared for my life having someone like Arthur near me. Then I had a horrible realization: I may not have to worry about my life anymore, but there were people whose lives I did have to worry about. My mind raced. Penny’s suspicions. My own gut instincts. Penny’s lessons on possession; on intense emotional outbursts and taking over a living body out of intense love… or intense hate. Jason hearing threatening voices. It dawned on me suddenly whose voice he had been hearing—Arthur.

            Before I knew what was happening I was out of the chair. The roll of film I’d been using flew across the room and hit the wall, and the microfiche monitor knocked onto the floor. Within a few seconds a few troll-like librarians appeared at the door. I watched them scuffle around the room, muttering to each other in shock, not understanding what had happened. I barely noticed them. Instead, my mind was occupied with a startling realization: I’d affected objects. I sent the monitor and film flying without touching them—something that until now, I only ever heard about from Penny.