Horror Stories

Solitary

I was cleaning my cage for the first time in years when I stumbled upon the letters from years ago. They told me to pack my things by today, but all the possessions I had accumulated in my twenty one years trapped in this small cell was just a few books, and some stationary. I had long since stopped reading, drawing, or doing anything other than lapsing into my own mind to a different reality, and the presence of the letters came as a surprise to me.

They were in chronological order, most of them from my wife, Ruth. I am slow to read, my brain unused to processing writing after so many years. The first letter is long, about my wife realizing that she's pregnant with our baby. I try to rack my brain to remember my daughter's name. Miraculously, I remember. Nala. She must be about twenty now, never having known her dad. I read the first letter emotionless, recalling how two decades ago I would pour over every word of these letters pining for Ruth, crying desperately, still foolishly hoping that they'd let me go, still foolishly convincing myself that they had wrongfully convicted me.

The letters would arrive on Sundays, brought to me by a prison guard, always stamped with the same stamp of approval. I hated the ugly stamp, covering Ruth's cursive, letting me know that the filthy cops could go through them, censor them and stop my letters from getting to her. Now I know that the cops just keeping the both of us safe, working to serve and protect.

Some are from my coworkers, but most are from Ruth. I read the letters about my old, free life, days I have long since forgotten, noticing how the letters slowly got shorter week by week as Ruth got over me. At about the four year mark, I'd be receiving one letter every few months, of Ruth checking on me, just making sure I was alive. Those letters were my only source of simulation in my barren cell, till those stopped coming too. I couldn't blame her, I'd been in solitary for six-ish years by the time they stopped.

This was when I realized that I had really been guilty, that it was the voices in my head that told me to do it. I started having vivid nightmares in which I would drive the corpses I collected up to the isolated creek in the dead of the night. I did unthinkable things to the girls' bodies before cutting them into bits with my handy dandy chainsaw. I'd usually toss the remains in the water, but sometimes I would keep the especially pretty girls with me to bury in my own, untended front porch.

My mind protected me from the guilt and the thirst for young corpses during the day, making me forget what I did at the creek. This is why I had no clue what was happening when the cops knocked down my door in the evening and dragged me to the station. I was shocked silent when they produced corpses from my backyard as evidence in court as Ruth shrieked and sobbed. I was still expecting my appeal to get through when I first familiarized myself with the walls of my prison, having no idea I would not once leave for twenty one years, as the claustrophobia turned to comfort.

After a few weeks of my nightmares haunting me, Kai joined me in my cell to keep me and my voices company. He was the only other person, other than the short check ins with prison guards, that I interacted with all these years. He comforted me as the nightmares got more lucid and disturbing. I'd watch myself pick the lost young girls from the street, ignore their pleads and cries as I greedily tortured them, feeling pleasure with each one of their screams of anguish. I'd witness myself tasting a girl's heart, sticky scarlet juice flowing from her arteries down my throat as her innards lay strewn around me. Sometimes it would be me treating the corpse as my daughter, putting my arm around her and telling her stories of far away lands before proceeding to maul her and do unimaginable things. I'd always wake up screaming, cold and alone, feeling trapped within myself, feeling a wave of sickness within that went far beyond any physical retching. The only comfort I had was Kai, who would hold my head and shush me, lulling me back to sleep the way my mom would when I was a kid.