Flash Fiction

The Witness

You think no one can see you, when you do your deeds. You think nobody knows, nobody ever will. You think it's a secret, your secret, something nobody will ever guess, something nobody would ever even dream of.

You're wrong.

Maybe you don't know, maybe you wouldn't believe it even if you did. You can't see me. But I'm there. When you leave the house, looking over your shoulder, lying to your family, lying to your friends, when you leave in search of another victim, I am there. I stand at your side when you raise an arm to strike, I perch on your shoulder when your fingers close around a helpless throat. You think you're alone, but you're not. I am always there. I am always with you.

Two weeks ago, when your fist smashed through a window, when you stepped over the broken glass to reach the woman kneeling in the midst of it, when you wrenched  the baby from her arms and hurled it to its death, when you laughed at her screams of pain , at her anguish – I watched. You stared into her eyes, told her it was her price, that that should teach her to question you, and then you slipped your blade between her ribs. You left the way you'd come, climbing through the window. You walked back down the street through the pouring rain, over the fields, mud splattering your boots. You stepped into a tavern, stayed till midnight, until all your friends were too far gone to remember when you'd come in. And then you went home.  Told your wife you'd gone out for a walk and a drink. Went to bed with her. Slept through the night, a man with no cares. And I stood by and watched. What more could I do?

Nine months ago, a boy was dragged in by your guards. Theft, they said. Caught red-handed, they said. You took him into the barn. Brought out the whip you used to lash the bulls with when they were lazy. Flogged him like a soldier convicted of insubordination, and him only seventeen. The boy begged you to stop. He cried aloud for mercy. He wept like a child – he was a child. You laughed, and told him to toughen up. It didn't make a difference to you, how much noise you made. You knew no one could hear you over the sound of the hail pounding on the roof. But I saw. I knew. Because I was there.

And one year ago, you kicked in a bedroom door. You dragged a girl down to your basement. You chained her to a wall. She knew too much, you said. She couldn't be trusted. She should have known enough to mind her own business, she should have left well enough alone, but she didn't, and she hadn't. It was too late now.

She screamed, the girl. She pleaded. She promised. But it didn't matter, not to you. You were laughing already, with that rush of pleasure you feel at another's pain. She could try all she liked, you said. Her mother wasn't home. Nobody was around for miles. It was just you, the two of you, then. And you were right. Nobody came. Nobody heard. You lashed at her, bludgeoned her, branded her with irons heated till they glowed white in the dark. You sliced into her flesh with knives coated in rust. Your hands came away red with her blood, and her tears, but you never relented, you  never gave in. Until at long last, the sun rose once more, and the last breath had left her body. You left her there then, your own blood, your own daughter, and maybe your mind was already working, how to sob at the funeral, how to swear vengeance on the cur who had done such a thing. You were calm, secure in the knowledge that you would never be punished for what you had done. How could you? The girl was dead, the body would be dealt with by the morrow. Nobody would ever know.

Except for me. I knew, only too well. And maybe that's why I follow you now, even though there's nothing more I can do.

Because I was there, Dad.

I was there.