Written By: Pillowyspu

Edited By: Epicstu Wyyvernwriter

Warm tears fell from her cheeks onto the bathroom floor and mixed with blood and bathwater. Never in her twenty years travelling the multiverse has she seen anything so horrific. As she looked at the boy’s lifeless corpse next to Alan’s decapitated body, she sat cross-legged on the bathroom floor and called to God for mercy. Yet God wasn’t there for her – instead, she looked up at the ceiling towards Him and watched droplets of coagulated blood rain down on her. She grabbed Alan’s phone and redialed 911. She tried to explain everything to the operator but her words were entirely incoherent and she sounded like she was on the verge of a mental breakdown. After spitting out word-salad, she threw the phone against the wall in anger and it shattered and died.

            She crawled out into the living room; a trail of blood followed her. There was a few moments of silence before she could hear the sound of police sirens rushing to the scene. Within minutes, blue and red lights flickered through the venetian blinds covering front window and illuminated the apartment. She could hear the sound of men barking orders and helicopters hovering directly above the building. She didn’t run this time; instead, she crawled into the boy’s bedroom and covered herself with his fleece blanket. She didn’t even cry – she was suddenly numb and ready to accept her fate.

            The sound of splintering wood pulled her back to reality. Armed police rammed through the front door of the apartment and their flashlight beams danced around the living room. Another set of officers broke in through the front windows and start yelling out orders to “come out with your hands up.” One of the officers entered the bathroom and nearly fainted at the sight of the murder scene, “Holy shit.” He pulled a small black radio up to his mouth, “Dispatch, this is Charlie One-Seven. I need you to 10-21 a medical response team to the fourth floor. I have two potential DBs. 10-79.” He entered the bedroom and his beam of light rested on the Woman’s trembling body, “Show your hands! Show your fucking hands!” He announced over the radio, “Charlie One-Seven requesting backup. I have the suspect in custody. Caucasian female, orange hair, black tank top, grey sweatpants. She’s in the south bedroom.”

            The Woman laid on her stomach and placed her hands flat on the floor and submitted as the officer stretched her arms behind her back and placed her in handcuffs. Within moments, several more officers burst into the bedroom and forced her to her feet. She tried resisting at first but as soon as they slammed her against the wall and performed a pat search, she gave up. “You’re a fucking monster,” one of the officers whispered in her ear; she certainly felt like one.

*          * 

            She drifted in and out of consciousness on her way to the police station. When she arrived, a clammy, calloused hand grabbed her arm and pulled her out of the armored van. She garnered enough strength to tilt her head up and look at the towering structure in front of her. It was an evil place; blaring spotlights illuminated its featureless cinderblock façade and rusted iron bars covered small porthole windows and the building looked like it had never been loved. As the officers led her past a razor-wire chain-link gate, she went limp and fell back into numb submission.

            The officers led her through a locked door and as soon as she entered the building, fluorescent lights assaulted her retinas. They dragged her down a long hallway and entered a small room with white painted concrete walls, a weighted plastic chair, and an older woman sitting at a desk behind a Plexiglas shield. One of the officers walked up to the desk and told the older woman “she’s a feisty one” and to “put her right into Seg.” The Woman didn’t know what that meant but from the sound of his voice, it wasn’t a nice place.

            “Annie Withers,” the older woman called from behind the desk, “My name is Officer Brooks. You’re being booked into the Laugar County Jail on charges of…lets see…” she put on a set of reading glasses and held up a file, “Oh my.” Her mouth dropped and she set down the file, “Two counts of murder in the first degree, attempted armed robbery, and assault with a deadly weapon. I need to ask you a few questions.”

            The Woman nodded.

            “Date of birth, and county of residence,” she barked.

            The Woman remained silent.

            “Once again. I need your date of birth and county of residence. You don’t want to know what happens to inmates who don’t cooperate.”

            “3/14/1998. Suffolk County, South Callister.”

            “1998?” the officer raised her eyebrow.

            “Yes. March 14th, 1998.”

            “Sweetie. It’s the year 4150. You don’t look 2,000 years old to me. And where exactly is Suffolk County?”

            “On another fucking planet in an entirely different universe,” the Woman spat.

            The officer leaned back in her chair and sighed in frustration before she wrote something down in her notebook and gestured for the Woman to stand up, “Lean against that wall and look towards the camera.”

            The Woman obeyed. She threw her weight against the wall and used it to support her decrepit frame. After a quick flash, she was instructed to approach the desk and place the palm of her hand on a fingerprint scanner.

            “Have you been booked into Laugar County before?”

            “No, ma’am.”

            “I’m referring you to mental health segregation unless you’re willing to give me your real date of birth and county of residence. So let’s try this again…”

            The Woman dropped her head and cracked a smile, “March 14th, 1998. Suffolk County, South Callister.”

The officer picked up the phone and dialed a five-digit number, “I need an escort team, a restraint chair and a canvas gown to Admissions Room B131.”

 She slammed the phone down on the receiver, sat back in her chair with a smug grin on her face and took a sip of her coffee. Within moments, the Woman could hear commotion stir in the hallway. The intake officer exited the room and before the Woman had a chance to react, a team of officers spilled into the room and threw her down to the ground. One of the officers stripped her out of her street clothes and they fought with her as they placed her into a tan canvas gown that reeked dried urine and was labeled “Property of Laugar County Jail.” As they brought her up to her feet, they rolled a crude metal restraint chair into the room, forced her backwards and strapped her hands and feet to the arms and legs of the chair before placing one final restraint around her head. She screamed in horror but they didn’t care. Instead, they placed a spit mask over her mouth and wheeled her out of the room.

            It was a humiliating experience; she shrieked the entire time they rolled her down the hallway past a long line of incoming inmates and into an elevator. She watched one of the officers push a button labeled, “Maximum Security Level 7 – Mental Health Segregation.”

            The Woman began to wonder if she really was crazy.

            After passing several grill-gates, she was finally escorted onto a unit labeled “Maximum Intake and Segregation Unit.” She emerged into a dayroom filled with about fifteen people chained to weighted rubberized sand chairs arranged in a semicircle around a flickering television that played local news. The Woman caught a glimpse of the headline, “MTMGA, Inc opens new Wildlife Research Facility in U’Thuntu.”

            Drak is here.

            They pushed her past the dayroom and down a long hallway before an officer opened one of the many heavy metal doors that lined the hall and rolled her inside a small padded cell. The officer held her limbs as a male nurse wearing plain blue scrubs walked in with a syringe filled with some kind of clear substance. She squirmed and tried to resist the restraints as the man approached her with the needle but the officers twisted her arm and he injected the medication into one of the veins on her forearm. She suddenly felt her eyes droop and her body give up. She mouthed a few curse words but no one listened. They untied her from the restraint chair, exited the room and slammed the door behind her.

            Her only friend was a humming fluorescent light that flickered above her. She tried to resist the surge of unconsciousness but she was too weak. Before she passed out, she called out Ethan’s name over and over and waited for a response.

*          *         

            She had absolutely no concept of time. She drifted in and out of sleep and every time she managed to catch a few moments of rest, she would be pulled out of her slumber by a vivid nightmare. It was almost impossible to sleep anyway – she shared the hallway with fifteen other inmates who all decided at random hours of the night to bang on the doors, cuss at the guards, and relentlessly scream until their voices were wrecked. Hours started to feel like days and she kept herself occupied by pacing around the room and talking to herself because she was the only one she could talk to. The guards came around every few hours and offered her a meal tray and she would try to talk to them but they were trained not to respond. She was never hungry, anyway. She would spend hours trying to swallow the foul tasting sludge but she could never hold it down. Within a week, she was too sick to move.  

            Twice a day, a nurse would stop by and ask her if she had any homicidal or suicidal thoughts. She lied every time; of course she wanted to kill. She wanted to kill Drak; to find him, chain him up, and filet every muscle in his body while he screams out in thorough agony and she basks in sadistic pleasure. She wanted to send Drak a message the same way Drak used Ethan to send her one. After asking her a barrage of questions, the nurses offered her medications that made her feel nauseous and weak. She made the grave mistake of refusing them once and a team of guards dressed in riot gear came bursting into room and a nurse injected the medication directly into her stomach with a barbaric seven-gauge needle. She didn’t resist anymore; after all, they were just doing their jobs and she had already given up the fight a long time ago. She would usually hide her pills under her tongue and spit them out as soon as the nurse walked away.

            She figured two weeks had past and she never left that room; her only human contact was the twice-daily visits from the nurse and one of the guards sliding a meal tray under her door three times a day.  She made friends with the cracks on the ceiling – they would talk to her sometimes. She always considered herself an introvert but being deprived of social contact was worse than any physical torture she had ever endured. Eventually the nurse found out she was hiding her medications and started forcing her to swallow the pills. Those pills only made things worse – she would stay awake all night hallucinating; shadows would dance around her room and she would often hear Ethan’s screams coming from the room across the hall.

            She managed to unfasten a metal screw from the heating vent and spent hours sliding it back and forth on the concrete floor, sharpening it to a point. She often used it to trace the veins in her arm and imagined how easy it would be to dig a little deeper and free her from this living nightmare.  She stared at it for hours on end; it started to fascinate her. This sharpened metal bit was beginning to seem like her only escape. After all, she failed to keep Ethan safe and therefore she didn’t deserve to live.

*          *

            “Annie Withers,” one of the guards opened her trap door and interrupted the conversation she was having with the spider living behind her toilet, “Your initial court hearing is scheduled in three days and your attorney would like to meet with you.”

            “I don’t have an attorney.”

            “Everyone has an attorney, Ms. Withers. You were appointed one by the state.”

            The Woman nodded and stood up from her fetal position. She adjusted her canvas gown and used her fingers to comb her unkempt mane of matted hair hoping to look halfway presentable, “Alright. Let’s do this.”

He instructed her to walk over to the wall, kneel down, place her hands on her head, and not to move. She turned around and placed the sharpened screw in her mouth, hiding it behind her cheek. She followed each one of his instructions. After he opened the door and wheeled in the restraint chair, he performed a half-assed pat search. Then, he forced her back into the chair and quickly applied the restraints.

            She couldn’t remember the last time she left this six by eight cell. As he shut the door behind her, she felt a joyous sensation and cherished this small taste of freedom. Her eyes had difficulty adjusting to the light and the sight of other beings walking down the hallway was overwhelming. The guard wheeled her past that dayroom again; this time, a few catatonic inmates were sitting in a circle around a scrawny, middle-aged therapist as he preached to them that it’s okay to feel sad as long as they aren’t afraid to talk about it. It was pathetic.

            After passing a few grill gates, the guard wheeled her down a long, dark hallway and unlocked a small holding cell at the end of the hall. They entered the room; there wasn’t much to it. It was maybe only a few square feet larger than her cell and had a metal table, a potted plant, a few informational posters, and a single bookshelf stuffed with volumes of legal literature. This time, she didn’t have the spiders or the cracks in her ceiling to keep her company and the anticipation was a new form of torture. Once the guard exited the room, she almost wished she were back in her cell. She didn’t know what she was going to tell her attorney – the truth is, she was born three thousand years ago on a different planet, she came to Olympion using highly advanced inter-multiverse travel, she killed a Shape-shifting alien from another universe that pretended to be her most trusted friend, and she’s been trying to hide from a ruthless assassin on a planet that is currently being taken over by a massive interstellar corporate conglomerate called Make the Multiverse Great Again, Incorporated. No state-appointed attorney was going to believe her.

            There was an old, battery-operated clock above the door and she loved it. Her eyes were glued to the second hand and she watched every second go by; it was an absolute luxury to be able to know how much time had passed. After forty-five minutes, she began to wonder if her court-appointed attorney had forgotten about her. She felt even lonelier knowing that the person who was hired to represent her in court didn’t even care enough about her to show up on time. As she drifted back to sleep, she thought about her fate. She had spent weeks predicting every possible outcome but it still seemed suicide was her only way out. She was a strong fighter but she was emotionally disturbed and those mind-altering medications made her weak and powerless. She was afraid she was going to become a shell of her former self. Her greatest fear was losing control of her mind and becoming heavily medicated and catatonic like the others. The only thing she had to look forward to was being strapped to a rubber chair in that dayroom and drooling her brown sludge all over her gown while some stick-boy quack tells her how to feel her feelings. As she entered this dark train of thought, the glorious ticking of that clock serenaded her to sleep.

*          *

            “Ms. Withers?” one of the guards was towering above her when she opened her eyes. She had completely forgotten where she was and it took her a moment to remember. She woke up in a fog and as her vision focused on the man’s face, she smiled and was lost in his eyes. His soft voice spoke with grace and civility, “You’re attorney would like to meet you.”

            He stepped out of her field of vision and as soon as her eyes focused on the man sitting behind the metal table, her smile faded. She squinted her eyes; it was difficult to see him even though he was sitting directly across from her and once she made out his lumbering figure, she couldn’t believe what she was seeing. He set a leather briefcase on the table, pulled out a stack of papers, and cleared his throat. Her eyes finally adjusted and when she saw who it was, she immediately squirmed in the restraint chair and begged the guards to take her back to her cell. She shouted profanities; spat, and laughed maniacally hoping it would be enough for the guard to pull her away from this man. However, the man handed the guard a folded stack of money and told him to leave the room; the guard pocketed the cash and promptly left the two of them alone. She wondered if this was some kind of vivid drug-induced nightmare and she was about to wake up in her cell but the pain felt real.

            “Good morning, Annie.”

            “Noah,” she whispered.

            Noah adjusted himself in his chair, folded his arms and offered her nothing more than an empty stare. He waited for her to speak and waited a while. She finally caved in and told him in a desolate voice, “You should just kill me.”

            Noah grinned, “Funny you mention that. I actually snuck in a little contraband for you.” He dug through his briefcase and pulled out a freshly rolled joint. She stared at him with disbelief as he lit the end of it and inhaled deeply, blowing a cloud of smoke up in the air. She watched it as it lifted to the ceiling and billowed around the fluorescent light, She offered it to her but immediately retreated and rolled out an unstable cackle, “Just kidding. This contraband isn’t for you.” He pulled out an expensive looking wooden case and set it in front of her. She watched him as he opened it; it was lined with velvet and contained a glass syringe and a small vial filled with a cloudy yellow substance, “Now, this is for you.”

            She chuckled, “Trust me Noah, I’ve already been injected with tons of sketchy looking substances over the past few weeks. This doesn’t scare me.”

            “Few weeks? Honey, it’s only been a few days,” he looked into her empty eyes as she glanced at her precious clock. He smiled, “Yeah. I’ve heard that the justice system in this realm is primitive and barbaric.”

            Her voice cracked, “It’s not that bad. I’m finally used to eating brown sludge three times a day.”

            Noah attached a large needle to the syringe and used it to extract the murky substance, “Do you know what this is, Annie?” The Woman didn’t humor him with a response. “Its Flufonium.”

            She snorted and rolled her eyes, “Yeah. Okay.”

            “You don’t believe me?” Noah set the syringe down on the table, “See Flufonium is a very unique heavy metal. The body metabolizes it at one hundred times the rate of heroin. Because of its unique electromagnetic properties that make it perfect for fueling multiverse travel, once it reaches the heart muscle, it targets the sinoatrial node and essentially stops all electrical impulses. The victim dies of an irreversible myocardial infarction in less than and hour and when the coroner does an autopsy, the substance has already metabolized and left the body.”

            “C’mon then. What are you waiting for, man? I don’t care how you fucking do it; just kill me already.”

            “Well I have something else for you.” Noah reached into his briefcase one more time and pulled out a familiar piece of hardware. Her eyes flashed when she saw the portal device, completely intact and it appeared to be in functional condition.

            “Where did you get that?!”

            “The cops confiscated it from the murder scene and kept it in some evidence locker on the north side of town.” The man set the device on the table in front of her and watched her as she salivated at the sight of it, “Remember when I told you I wanted to have a chat?”

            The Woman didn’t take her eyes off of the portal gun.

            “We’re going to have that chat. If you lie to me, I give you this,” he said as he gestured towards the syringe, “And if you tell me the truth, I hand you this portal gun, turn around, and we never have to cross paths again.” The Woman didn’t respond. She knew the truth that Noah was looking for but after everything he’s been through, there wasn’t a goddamned chance he was going to trust her. Noah wasn’t going to accept the truth because the truth was absolutely absurd and it didn’t help that she had just spent the last few weeks locked in a mental institution, “So I’ll ask you again, can we have a chat?”

            The Woman nodded and bit her lip, holding back a fit of tears. She had nothing to lose.

            “Let’s start with your name.”

            Of course he started with the most difficult question and the Woman figured he already knew the wrong answer. But she took a gamble, “Annie Withers.”

            Noah slammed his fists down on the table and the syringe jumped towards her, “See – now you’re lying to me! You don’t want to lie to me.”

            “Damn it Noah, no matter what I tell you, it’s going to sound like a lie!” the Woman screamed, “Just fucking kill me already or I’m going to do it myself.”

            A silence followed. 

    Noah stood up and leaned over the table, clenched his fists and sighed in absolute defeat. The Woman fixed her eyes on the needle. She flinched as Noah picked it up and rolled it between his fingers.  Noah’s voice was gentle, “Tell me your name and this can end.”

            “You won’t believe me,” she spoke softly. Noah trembled with rage as he grabbed the needle, flipped over the table, and pinned her against the wall. He traced the end of the needle against her carotid artery and the vein on his crimson forehead pulsed. However, the Woman didn’t react and this was infuriating to Noah. Instead, she looked deeper into his azure eyes and saw a gentle man. He was a ruthless killer but just like her, he had a moral code he lived by. He didn’t murder people in cold blood until he was absolutely sure they deserve it. There was something holding her back and she hoped that he had maybe done his research and caught a glimpse of the truth. So she played her last card and went all in, “My name… is Maggie Miller.”

            The color left his face; he loosened his grip and a bead of light rolled down his cheek, “Goddammit – why should I believe you?”

            The Woman broke free from her restraints. With every ounce of her remaining strength, she grabbed Noah, dropped her weight and pulled him to the ground. He pushed her and she thrust backwards, landing on the other side of the room. Noah charged at her with the needle but stopped in his tracks as soon as she held up the sharpened metal screw, “Because I could have killed you already and I didn’t!”

            He was lost in thought. She rose to her feet and cautiously approached the troubled man. He held the needle in front of him and he was built of stone like a valiant statue. She looked him in the eyes and pried needle from his bony, overworked hands. After setting it on the table next to her makeshift shiv, she wrapped her arms around her father and hugged him for the first time in seventeen years. The Woman whispered, “I missed you, Dad.”