What I've Done

 Belinda eyed the heavy woman in front of her mutinously. She insisted upon sitting in the corner of her frigid, grimy cell, as far away from the woman and her stark white lab coat as possible.

“Hello, Belinda. How are we doing today? How was your week?” The woman’s tone was soothing like honey, but Belinda could see the disgust and restrained contempt in her eyes.

 “I don’t know,” Belinda replied monotonously.

 “Well,” the woman flicked through her notes, an excuse to keep her eyes off the sorry sight in front of her, “It says here that you only eat and drink enough to stay alive. You do not interact with the inmates. You dislike leaving your cell. Am I correct?”

 “I don’t know.”

 The woman frowned, “Would you like to talk about it?”

 “You know what I want to talk about.”

 The woman sighed impatiently and touched her name tag. Roe Cruise. “We’ve talked about this, Belinda. Your memories have to return naturally; any interference could disrupt your development. Things might be easier for you if you made some progress.”

 “I don’t need to make progress. I heard the prison guards talking; they…they said I have a life sentence,” Belinda’s thin voice started trembling. She stood up slowly, her hands shaking.

 “I hear them talk…All of them...The guards, the cooks, the inmates, the nurses, the therapists! They say I’m mad! Madder than any of the rest!”

Roe tried not to lean away, but human instinct forced her to.

 “They say I’m evil…The things I’ve done… They call me the devil, did you know that?!” Belinda’s eyes were wide now, red veins bright against the whites, twisting around her murky brown irises.

 “But I haven’t done anything! I don’t know who I am! But you know! Why won’t you tell me?!” She lunged forward, her small hands encircling Roe’s throat as her voice hitched up to a scream, “Tell me who I am! Tell me what I’ve done! Why am I here?! I haven’t done anything!” her hands squeezed tighter, and she relished the feeling of Roe’s quick pulse against her palms.

 After weeks of confusion and isolation, adrenaline surged through her; the opportunity of finally being in control of something filled her with manic glee.

 Four guards suddenly burst through the doors, and before she knew it, their strong arms wrapped around her, forcing her to part from the gasping woman.

 “See you next week, Dr. Cruise!” Belinda crowed as the woman fled her cell.

“I still get a call, right?” Belinda pressed her face up against the bars of her cell, letting the cool metal sink against her skin.

 “That’s right,” the guard stared dead ahead, without turning to look at her.

 Belinda let out an exhalation of frustration. Who was she supposed to call? She didn’t remember any numbers or names; only a blur of faces, flashing lights and blood…so much blood…

 She absentmindedly trailed her fingers along her side, letting them brush over a raised patch of skin. She touched the light contours around the old bullet wound. They told her she had been shot and that she had hit her head so hard that her memories were erased.

 They wouldn’t tell her what she had done, who she was, where she had been, how she had gotten there; she didn’t even get a trial.

 Belinda pressed her palms against her eyelids, trying to find everything inside her so she could piece things together, but all she found was endless folds of suppressed rage with nowhere to go. She wanted to hurt everyone for leaving her, for not giving her answers, for not explaining; she hated them all. They had to pay. She wanted to stab Dr. Cruise for all her meaningless banter, grab the prison guards by their hair and drag them to hell herself, tear the other inmates limb from limb until their blood drowned the tiles, and most of all she wanted to find the people who had gotten her there and do every horrific thing to them that came to mind.

 The sadistic images flashed through her mind, begging her to take retribution, until she finally released it all in an animalistic scream, her voice raw, as she slammed her head against the sink over and over again.

 A woman in dark brown stood with her back to Belinda’s cell.

 “T-They say you’ve lost your memory…They say that you don’t remember a thing,” her voice was almost translucent, just a note above a whisper.

 Belinda stumbled towards the door excitedly, feverishly, trying to pull herself closer to the woman.

 “It’s true! It’s true! I didn’t know who I am, where I am, what I’ve done! You must know! Who are you?”

 The woman gave a choked gasp as her shoulders shuddered with sobs.

 “You know! You know!” Belinda shrieked, jumping on the tips of her toes now, “Tell me! You must!”

 She wanted to reach through the bars, dig her unkempt nails into the stupid woman’s arm, drag her towards her, and knock some sense into her, so that she could dispel the ghastly mist that enclosed her mind.

 The woman continued to cry, now making odd gasping sounds like an animal in pain. Belinda started to clench and unclench her fists, like she was imagining wringing the woman’s throat.

 “Who am I? Who am I?!” Belinda screamed the words over and over again until the woman finally turned around.

 She had a hard, angled face with protruding cheekbones. Her blonde hair was threaded with gray, and her watery hazel eyes looked scared.

 “Dead. You should be dead. To me and to the world,” with that, the woman reached through the cell bars and tipped over the contents of her leather bag.

Hundreds of newspaper clippings fell out, their black and white contents carpeting the stone floor.

 Belinda scrambled across the floor, gathering them into her arms and burying her face in them. They smelled like coffee, as though someone had read them over and over with a drink in their hand.

 Small-Town School Shoot-out

 Mass-Murderer On The Loose

 19-year-old Belinda Young Still At Large

 15 Murdered in recent attacks

 Mass-Murderer Claims the Life of Parents and Fiancé

  There were so many of them, the same headlines being recycled by almost every city in the nation, until there was only one left.

 Belinda Young’s Reign of Terror Ends After Being Shot and Captured by Her Sister

 Two pictures lined up side-by-side; one was a younger version of Belinda, clean and smiling. It took her a while to figure out that she was staring at herself; this girl was so different from the pale, gaunt girl with mousy hair matted with grease. The second picture was of blonde woman who had given her the articles.

 Belinda folded up the pages gently before setting them under her filthy pillow. She lay on her cot, staring at the wall for hours, before her cracked lips finally stretched into an unsettling smile.

 Her name was Belinda Young. She now knew where she was, what she had done and how she had gotten there.

 So, after innumerable restless nights, she was finally able to sleep in peace.