His Collection

EPILOGUE

"Dr. Martin?" My assistant taps at my door while I continue jotting down on my study journal. "What?"

"The parents of Blanca just called, they will be here shortly, and apologize for the delay," he replies. "Hopefully the little girl actually turns her head and faces them this time."

"That little girl had been through quite a scarring experience," I strike my voice past my desk, then groan for him to leave me alone. After shutting the door, I look down to my notes.

Blanca. That was what I had labeled all her folders, and refused to giver her a number to identify with. It suit her; she would become blank at times, and her eyes laminated in light as she stared into nothing. To most she would appear to be daydreaming, but those were not dreams that passed through her eyes: she was reliving the four months she had spent captive by Lance Flint, the twenty-one year old mentally ill young man I dearly wished I could have helped as well.

Rereading my past notes, I find the report the police had given me a copy of. It stated just how they found her; miles away from the burning barn of Mr. Flint.

Blanca had been smart enough to set it on fire as a call for help before walking off with no clue or care of the direction she was heading in, yet I had wondered why she hadn't done it sooner. Much sooner. Though, with my guess, and her blood work results, it was then revealed that her senses and judgment had been clouded by severe dozes of toxics.

"Child," I speak to the pages I had spent hours writing into about my patient. She was a smart one, and quickly could morph back into her old self, but one trigger, and suddenly she would become distant, and glossy eyed. Through therapy exercises, she had convinced her mentors that she was well, but I knew she could fake it; for crying out loud, the girl had faked some part of her happiness while in the Flint residence.

The moment she arrived in my care, I welcomed her as she smiled warmly through her blossom lips. She didn't appear the battered, lifeless girl that had been described in the papers. Nor was she the detached, crying girl her therapist had mentioned.

To her personal wishes, I gave her a windowless room, and a candle to light every night. As intruged I was to see what was left of her intellect, she wasted no time explaining that yes, she had been left psychologically damaged.

"I am not well up here," she had pointed to her head, then bluntly added. "I know I must be ruined."

"Ruined? Child, ruins are for statues, and castles. You, my dear are far greater than either, far stronger than steel. The human mind does not break, it simply cracks," I told her while brushing away her bangs.

Rubbing my temples, I exhale. What did raise an alarm was not why she had killed Lance, or Marina Hall. Clearly it had been self defense, I am most certain of it. But how she had left his body. It surprised me, and if anything, it was the main reason her therapist had called me to take her on in my facility.

Blanca had dragged his body to the sunken , frozen garden, then had hundreds of butterflies pinned to his corpse from head to toe. Lance's head hung loosely to his neck which showed signs of actual sawing, far more energy than she should had used. She had wanted him not only dead, but to also let all her bottled anger cut through as well.

The oddest thing was, when I had asked her why she did it. Why she simply couldn't have just killed him, then walked away without doing anymore to his body, she had delicately fluttered her wet eyes up to me, blinked, then replied, "So then maybe they would have carried him to heaven. He's a good boy somewhere...else."