Diseased | #wattys2016

Chapter 1

       

She glanced down, splattered blood covered her from head to toe; the metallic scent giving her a headache. Run. She needed to run. But the voices were getting louder. So loud,in fact, that it made her want to rip the hair from her head. She knew they would only get louder. The job wasn't finished. They wanted her to finish. So she kept going, dragging the lifeless body to the bathtub upstairs, the blood staining the hardwood floors. It was going to be hard to clean, but Riley knew the mess was not what she needed to worry about. She just needed to finish, and they would leave her alone. The small girl struggled to heave the body into the tub, smacking its head on the brass taps. Almost done. She knew what she had to do next. She pulled out the hatchet from under the bathroom sink. It had been used countless times before. She was always doing what they told her to. For if she didn't, they would come for her. They told her so. She used all of her weight to tear the body apart, limb by limb, until it was no longer recognizable. She placed the head in the brown box, sealed it, and labeled it carefully. This would be the last time. She gathered the limbs in the bathtub, and got the gasoline from where it sat in the corner, sloppily spilling it over the bathroom floor. She then grabbed the box and her hatchet, striking the final match. She left the house and watched with blazing eyes as it burned to the ground. The head of the happily misleading man who once lived there was in the box under her arm. She pulled a pen from her pocket and lazily scrawled an address on the brown box, before sending it off in the mail. An overwhelming feeling of relief and anxiety washed over her. The voices could not be heard. But when she glanced down at her hands she realized. She had twelve fingers, six on each hand.

The dreams were vivid, but she was used to the by now; it was as if they were real life. Memories. But she knew better than that; she would never do that. They graced her subconscious every time she closed her eyes, since they had found her guilty. It had felt so real though, and that, she could not deny. The blood on the clothes, and that awful metallic scent. She looked down at herself; expecting to see that the sticky red substance still there. It wasn't. She ate the mushy food without complaining, as she knew it was that or starving. Riley hated it here. She wasn't crazy, no matter what they told her. They called her 'sick' and 'diseased', but she knew better than to listen.

"Breakfast." the scruffy security man banged on the door of her cell before sliding the mushy grey meal through the allotted space under the door. She could only imagine having a job like this, it would be terrifying with all the crazy people everywhere. For her it's not as bad because she's locked in a cell where no one crazy could come in, but to have to walk around and see every one, she shudders.

This was only temporary, just until her lawyer could figure out who framed her. Riley was born with 3rd degree schizophrenia, but they kept her violent urges and loud voices under control with medication. She heard sometimes that people don't remember what had happened after a severe episode; but it had never happened to her. She didn't kill those people. She felt the rage build up in her stomach as she thought about it. How could they find her - 5'2 and petite- guilty of killing four people? It was absurd. Riley was determined to find out who really did this, what monster killed those innocent people. This hospital was not going to stop her. Although, it would be easier if she wasn't stuck in the ward with all the real crazies.