PROJECT MORTUUS: Killer In Silence

Chapter 9: Forgive Me, Darling Girl *

Mortuus awoke, breathing heavily and irregularly as he looked around for something familiar. Something to ground him in his state of panic. His heart sank as he realized Kassandra Campbell was the only thing he recognized besides the apparent fact that he was standing in a jail cell.

There she was, sitting on the edge of a bed, her hands clasped around a silver cross on a necklace and eyes squeezed shut. Mortuus recognized the mattress she was sitting on as being in the local jail the more that he looked at it. He had been jailed enough times for pointless things to recognize Cell Three.

Kassandra Campbell sat on her prison bed with her head bowed and her hands clasped tightly together. She prayed to God, asking for forgiveness and guidance. She had made some poor choices in her life, and now she was paying the price for them.

Tears streamed down her face as she thought about all the people she had hurt and the pain she had caused. She wished she could turn back time and make things right, but she knew that was impossible. Nothing was going to undo her choice.

All she could do now was pray and ask for God's mercy. She asked for the strength to face the consequences of her actions. Mortuus could see in her eyes just how much remorse and guilt Kassandra felt for what she had done.

"Kassandra?" Mortuus asked as if expecting her to respond. As usual, there was no response to his questioning of the figures in these nightmarish hallucinations, if that's even what these hellscapes were. He sat down beside her, his body having no effect on the bed. "Why are you here?" He wondered aloud. He had never really questioned why she was executed.

She was just sitting there, seemingly praying to God or some deity of sorts, but based on the cross, he figured it was probably God. Mortuus listened closely, "Forgive me, Lord. I never meant for the world to know. I only wanted to end her suffering."

Mortuus finally understood what she meant as the pieces of her story finally clicked in his head. He knew she had been a neonatal nurse before this and was accused of murdering a newborn- Jackson Knight's newborn. But only now did it make sense to him.

"You pulled the plug on that child out of mercy," Mortuus voiced, looking down solemnly, finally understanding her reasoning for murder. She killed Jackson's newborn daughter to end her pain; she couldn't watch the sweet little girl being in so much pain any longer, and she knew that Jackson wasn't strong enough to take her off life support.

Mortuus stood and watched as the guard brought her last meal, a single apple. Strange but not the most unusual compared to some he had heard of. She ate in somber silence, tears falling as she mumbled to herself. "Pulling her plug was a thousand times harder than facing my death sentence will ever be."

Those would be her last words, and what powerful last words they were. It held so much emotion for only being sixteen words. They indeed voiced the heartbreaking truth of her choice. Unfortunately, no one would ever hear those words.

He finally understood her anger as those heartbreaking last words tore at his heart. Mortuus could sympathize with both sides: Jackson, who lost his newborn girl, and Kassandra, who had to watch the child suffer for weeks before finally taking action. It was clear that the decision tore her to shreds far more than anyone knew.

The truth that Mortuus finally understood was that this origin had no real villain; they both loved that sweet, darling child. Mortuus walked solemnly beside Kassandra as she walked to the electric chair and was strapped in by a man who resembled Bigfoot or a Neanderthal more than a human. The leather straps buckled tightly as she sat in the rigid, uncomfortable chair. The man yanked hard on the leather and clicked in the buckles, making sure that she was strapped in.

Her last thought as the switch was pulled and bolts cracked was that the seeds of her apple would grow a tree above her grave so that in death, she could give peace to those she loved with a shady tree and sweet green granny smith apples. "May my death bring beauty to the world." She thought to herself.

Mortuus stood beside her, and his eyes fixated on the viewing room as the Bigfoot-looking man pulled the switch. Mortuus could see someone sitting beside Jackson Knight, who he hadn't expected. Mordecai Mallard's face glowed in the shine of the electric chair's bolts.

He walked closer for a better view, looking into the window. It was undoubtedly Mordecai in that room. "Why are you here?" Mortuus questioned aloud. It just didn't make any sense to him. He knew how Jackson was connected to her story, but Mordecai's presence at her end felt so random. For the first time, his presence had an unnerving feel to it that made Mortuus feel uneasy.

For just a second, Mortuus swore he had seen Mordecai smile, almost as if he knew that Mortuus was there. But Mortuus knew better than to think a person in one of these hallucinations could see him and brushed it off as just being a trick of the lighting. For some reason, though, that smile sent shivers down his back as if Mordecai was watching him from beyond the grave. He looked back at Kassandra as the switch was flipped back up, and the chair went silent like a sleeping beast waiting for its chance to reawaken.

Her body was slumped forward in the chair, her skull still smoking from the electric charge. There wasn't any motion now from her as the life was gone. Mortuus stepped closer to her and touched her hand. Her hand was cold as ice, and the cold feel of it seemed to send him back.