Evan Farrington's Confession | ✔️

three

Evan waited in the classroom for an hour. To the minute. She sat at her usual desk with her backpack slung underneath. She wasn't sure if she had been blinking or not. She assumed she must have breathed. There were two windows open so the heady, tangy smell of blood wasn't strong but it still formed a dull, nauseating throb at the back of her nostrils. Evan knew that it wouldn't be going away any time soon. All she seemed able to do was sit and stare into thin air. She didn't blink. She had wiped her glasses with her sleeve but they were still streaked with stains of red. Her clothes had taken the worst hit.

Had she really heard the voice? Evan couldn't help seriously doubting it. She hated the thought but it didn't make sense, nothing made sense. Voices can't lift scissors and cut paper. Which meant...

(murderer)

Would it be counted as a crime of passion? Manslaughter? Or had it been planned? If she had thought up the voice then...

(murder, any way you look at it)

It was Caligula, in her head, and the familiarity of his voice almost comforted Evan. But it wasn't Caligula's thought, it was hers. She had just thought it in his singsong voice. 'Loser, every way you look at it.' When she used to hold her fingers in an 'L' shape on her forehead with the middle finger sticking out. 'Loser, every way you look at it.' Evan went to put her head in her hands but stopped at the last second. The blood was beginning to harden in a grotesque coating of brown scabs.

She must have thought it all up. It was nothing more than a hallucination that her mind had created to avoid the guilt that comes with taking another human's life. There was no other explanation that aligned with anything Evan knew to be true, everything that kept her sane. She gasped in some air in a desperate laugh. Sanity. Something that she was certainly not the picture of right at this moment. But the scissors. How could that explain the scissors? She must have just picked them up off his desk. Schizophrenia. It had just gotten worse. This thought made Evan relax a little and, when everything had been quiet outside for what felt like a safe length of time, she got up, thanking Jesus that the cleaners hadn't done Mr Watt's classroom yet. She eased her backpack over her shoulders and waited for her vision to clear. It didn't. So she clung onto the desks as she left, blinking uselessly at the buzzing spots aching at the edges of her vision.

The air was fresher in the hallway. The locker door still hadn't been properly closed and it swung, lackadaisically on its hinges, just like it had when she'd gone in. Evan watched it for a few seconds before picking up her speed and staggering down the corridor. Her shoes didn't squeak on the floor anymore. Instead, each step made a sticky red footprint. It sounded as if she was walking over a floor that was delicately coated with honey. The footprints pursued her out of the school and into the vague idea of rain lynched in the evening air.

The one-way streets that formed a net around the school were completely empty but Evan could hear traffic on the main road a couple of minutes' walk away. She started to run along the deserted pavement, breaths tearing through her throat. Any second a cleaner could see her. Maybe someone saw the body and followed the footsteps. Then she'd be caught.

(oh christ in heaven the body the body the body)

There wasn't time to panic. It wouldn't help anyone and the traffic was getting louder. Evan yelped when she heard the shriek of a horn one street away. The blood soaking the front of her clothes felt like acid that seared into her flesh.

Evan pinched her lip for a second before taking a hard left and dashing into the forest. Her fingertips were tacky with the blood that was drying on her mouth. Branches snatched and grabbed at her sleeves and legs but she barely noticed. Her heart began to thud almost comfortingly with the run. The noise of the cars was deadened by the wood. Hemlock trees liberally distributed through thick pines and firs. Evan slowed to a jog and shut her eyes. After a moment's thought, she turned a little to the right and sped up again. The trees smothered her like a heavy blanket. The cold scissors were still in her equally cold hand. Her breaths were audible, much louder than the traffic and her footfalls and the cacophony that the trees made as she hurtled through. Her bag lurched around on her back and she pulled the straps as tight as they would go. Lights not too far away told her that she was going in the right direction.