How long had I been sitting here? One hour? One day? One year? I rolled my stiff neck and massaged my aching, manacled hands. I was still waiting for questioners to enter the room. Right now, only my lawyer and I were on the room, but we weren't looking at each other. I remembered how he had looked at me yesterday with a weird expression on his face; I couldn't place it. Was it desperation? His gray eyes shining, he gripped my shoulders and said, "Vance, no matter how much you don't want to, you MUST act insane. You must." Now that all felt like a century ago. I sneaked a glance at my lawyer. He was looking down at his hands but as soon as he felt my gaze, he looked up at me. I saw that look in his eyes again as he flashed me a tiny smile. I hadn't seen one on his face for years.
Just then, there was a knock at the door. My lawyer quickly averted his gaze to the knocking as he stood up and said, "We're ready." The door opened and a blonde woman and a brown-haired man entered the room. The woman had shoulder-length hair, a white blouse, and a straight, black pencil skirt. She had applied a bright shade of red lipstick, but it only outlined the tight-lipped frown that she had plastered on her face. The man had short hair with a tight, black suit and a gold watch on his wrist. He, however, had a look of pity upon his face. I had seen that look countless times since the incident. At first it was anger, but then when my lawyer had said I was mental, it soon changed to pity. I got looks of pity as I left the courtroom, looks of pity from the taxi driver driving me to the place I was to stay at, and even looks of pity from government official who was guarding the room I was had slept in. I had grown to hate this look now.
The two people sat down at a metal desk in the front of the room; the woman on my left and the man on my right. The woman looked at some papers that were laid on her desk before starting. "Mr. Vance Light, do you know why you are currently handcuffed and to a chair and being questioned?" she asked.
My voice croaked as I answered. "Yes, yes I do." Out of the corner of my eye, I could see my lawyer stiffen. He had told me to deny all associations with my crime.
"And why is that?"
"I murdered a man." I turned towards my lawyer, whose knuckles were white and whose face was red from gripping the chair as he struggled to regain his composure.
"Now, why did you murder this man?" the brown-haired man asked, leaning forward in his seat.
My breath caught as a memory sharply hit me. My fiancée and I, walking on the street side by side. She was laughing at a joke I just made, her red hair shining in the sunlight as she tilted her head back. The there was the glint of a knife, a loud scream, and hard, thumping footsteps, and it was all over. My fiancée lay dying in a pool of her own blood, gasping for air. As I held her in my arms with tears streaming down my face, she took her last breath to tell me, "I love you," before slipping into a sleep she would never return from. The man had gotten away, but there was one thing he had counted on: I had seen his face. "I had killed the man to avenge the death of my fiancée," I growled. "He killed her."
"So I take it you believed that man to be the very same man who killed your fiancée?" the brown-haired man asked.
I didn't believe him to be the same man: I KNEW he was." I said.
"But how could you be so sure?" the woman asked, her eyebrows knitted tightly together.
"His eye. Those monstrous blue eyes. I would recognize them from a mile away." I snarled.
"But there are many people in this world with blue eyes," the man said.
"Not like these. Not like the blue eyes he had. Those striking, ocean-blue eyes; I felt like I would be dragged into a vortex of swirling mass and pure terror if I stared at them too long. His eyes weren't normal. I know those eyes I saw were really his." I hissed.
The man and woman nodded as I said this, taking notes as I talked. My lawyer had closed his eyes and I could see that he had clenched his jaw. I looked back at the two people at the front. They glanced at each other before the woman announced, "It's decided. This man is mentally ill and should not be held responsible for his actions. He shall be sent to the best mental hospital in the nation where he will be treated with utmost care." The woman smiled and she and the man started to get up. My lawyer had opened his eyes again and had a relaxed look on his face as he too made to get up. No. This wasn't right. It couldn't be happening. They didn't get it. I'm not mental. I'M NOT MENTAL!
Everyone in the room stopped moving. Had I really just screamed all of that aloud? My lawyer, with beads of sweat forming on his forehead, said, "Oh, he doesn't mean that. All mentally ill people say-"
"No, I really mean it," I said, cutting him off. The man and the woman sat back down in their seats and my lawyer, looking very reluctant, sat back down too. I had gained new confidence from this; I was not an insane person so I would NOT be passed off as one. I took a deep breath and started.
"I'm not insane. Who are you to decide whether or not my mental capacity is the same as everyone else's? How do you know you aren't insane? I'm perfectly sane, that's one thing I know. What I don't get is how humanity can be so high up in intelligence levels yet pass off normal, innocent human beings as insane. There's nothing wrong with me! I just took revenge for the death of the woman I loved. Millions in this world have murdered someone, but has humanity passed them off as insane? No. Then why should I?" I was practically screaming at this point. Where was I getting all this from? Why was I so determined to make them realize that I was absolutely normal? Was I turning insane because of this? Questions pounded through my head as I tried to focus on getting my point across. I'm not insane. I'm not insane. I'm not insane. I cleared my thoughts and went on. "How come you get to decide whether I am insane or not? Shouldn't that be something I can figure out for myself? Ask me to do anything any able-minded person can do, and I will do it. How else can I say this? I. AM. PERFECTLY. NORMAL. Maybe it's you who should be sent to a mental hospital. Maybe humanity needs to rethink its ways." I chuckled. "Do you know what this makes me realize? No one is right. I'm not right, you're not right, the government is not right, my lawyer is not right- no one is. You're no right because you think I'm insane. I'm not right because I'm trying to convince you that I'm not when I could easily save my own life and go along with the façade that I'm mental. The government is not right by sending you here to question me. My lawyer is not right because he lied to the world when he tried to save my life by saying that I am mental." I no longer knew what I as saying. It was as if my thoughts were overflowing and spilling out of my mouth in the form of words. I couldn't stop. Not when I was this close. "This isn't just about my fiancée's death anymore; this is about my sanity. You must punish me for killing that man just as you would a normal human being because that is what I am. Normal. Not insane, normal. The cruel clutches of insanity have not taken me as their prisoner; I'm still free of their grasp and I intend to stay that way. That's all I can say. I'm perfectly sane, and I need you to realize that. I'm not insane."
It was as if my mind and mouth had both turned off then. I had said what needed to be said. Had they got the message? Had I convinced them of my sanity? They certainly looked shocked. At least the woman tried to conceal her astonishment with pursed lips; the man was just sitting there, staring at me with his moth wide open. I turned towards my lawyer's chair to see that my lawyer was no longer there. He must have left room while I had spoken, or more like screamed, what was on my mind. The man and woman put their heads together and started whispering to each other. I sat back in my chair, still handcuffed, and looked around the room that held me captive. Gray floor, gray walls, gray ceiling... everything was gray. Just like my future. I had no idea what was in store for me. Would I be sent to "the best mental hospital in the nation", or would I soon be having my last meal? I sighed and closed my eyes. I tried to imagine a life in a mental hospital, but I couldn't. After seeing the wonders of the world, good and bad, through a sane person's eyes, I didn't believe I could make it through the rest of my life as an insane person. O would probably be driven mad by it all. How ironic: my sanity actually depended on the decision of the questioners I loathed so much.
The loud scraping of chairs suddenly brought me back to reality, and my eyes popped open. The man and woman were leaving the room, both with grim looks on their faces. I watched them without a sound, without a last attempt to convince them I knew that they had made their decision and nothing I could do or say now would change their mind. They shut the door and I strained my ears to try and hear what they were saying. And though I was in a room with soundproof walls, I was able to make out one single word, repeated over and over and over again.
Guilty.
