Seeking

After the killing

I jerked up the shard of glass and brought it down in an arc, feeling a strange sense of happiness bubbling up inside of me.

~*~

I sat in my chair in the police station, staring blandly up at the police officer who was surveying me gravely with those cold black eyes of his.

"Your father and lawyer have arrived," a kindly middle-aged policewoman peeked into my cell.

I nodded, shrugging unconcernedly while hurried thoughts ran through my mind.

My father entered the cell, strangely out of place with his expensive tuxedo and gelled hair, with a short jumpy man bouncing along his strides.

"Dad," I said, my face still devoid of any expression.

My father nodded at me curtly, as if I were his secretary.

"I shall let the lawyer explain," he said, smiling at me coldly. "He is the most promising lawyer in the whole of America. He has more experience in this field than I do." He spoke as if showing me a product his company had just designed.

"Well," the lawyer spoke, balancing on the balls of his feet as he rubbed his hands together. "You can easily get out of this case. As you have no criminal records in the past and the victim had involved himself in ah... how may I put it, in a lot of trouble, yes, so your case is self-defence."

He droned on about my case, trying to convince me how easily I can get away, but I knew better. I had killed that man for a purpose. The goal I was going to achieve. I knew I could get away. I had been a goodie-two-shoes all along, well, if you don't count the fact that I liked torturing animals when I was six and liked burning things when I was thirteen, but nobody, I meant nobody had ever doubted my actions before.

The lawyer had finally finished his droning and it was time for me to take a rest and then go to court to finish things off.

The next few moments blew away like a blur, I only remembered being declared free of any charges and I was escorted out the doors of the court with my unsmiling dad.

I arrived home before I even knew it and felt a strong aroma of roses engulf my nostrils.

"Oh hello hon!" my dad's girlfriend sashayed out of the sitting room, flicking her perfectly styled blonde hair behind a shoulder. "You are... free!" She didn't seem happy at all. I knew she wanted me out of the way so she could have dad all to herself.

Dad entered the house, giving the revolting woman a warm smile he only saved for my deceased mother. I felt a pang of anger and stormed out of the room before I could see them smooch.

I headed straight for my basement room, braiding my hair as I went along. I always braided whenever I had strong emotions, I guess it was a habit. I reached my small dingy basement of a room and sat down on my bed, letting my emotions engulf me, but strangely, I felt nothing. Just a strange hole of emptiness.

I had a rich dad who spent all his money on his work and girlfriend, Emmy, and treated me like an employee of his huge firm. I had had a poor mother, who fell in love with my dad and married him. And they had me. All things seemed happy and perfect, but one night, she left without a sound. All her things were gone. Then a month later, dad told me she was found dead on the street, but he had forbidden me to go to her funeral, fearing that I would be a bother.

I tried to feel angry with that memory, because I really wanted to feel something. But I couldn't. An invisible void seemed to have suddenly sucked all my emotions away.

I took the hand mirror Emmy gave me as a 'welcome' present from my rickety wooden desk and threw it onto the floor, shattering it into pieces. I didn't do it because I was angry, but because I needed the shards. I scooped the big pieces up one by one, and stuck them into my pocket, then grabbed my wallet off the drawer. I had a lot of cash, as my dad gave me lots to 'keep my big mouth shut'. I stuck it and a smartphone which was almost out of battery into my bag and heaved it onto my shoulders. Pushing aside my bangs, I took a deep breath. It was too stuffy here. I needed air. I would never come back to this place I called 'home' ever again. NEVER.

I climbed up the stairs back into the ginormous house and headed straight to the door.

"Where are you going, Will?" Emmy asked, flashing me her fake smile.

I cringed. Only my mother would call me that.

"Don't call me that," I hissed. "And why do you care where I am going?"

I spun around and opened the main door.

"I will tell your father about that attitude, Wilma," she said scornfully.

"I don't care," I did not turn around.

"Your mother must be so ashamed-" Emmy started.

"Don't you dare speak to me about my mother," I said quietly. Before I could collect myself, I spun around and punched her in the face. Without turning back this time, I strode out the house into the perfectly mowed lawn.

I purposely stepped off the path onto the perfect grass, trampling the plants under my feet. I made a path so crooked, any gardener would scream.

I reached the gates in no time, nodded at the guard, and went down the familiar street. It was twilight, and I needed to get going and find a place to stay as far away from the house as possible.

I hailed a cab and told the driver to take me to an inn (I checked from the remnants of the battery of my smartphone) that was in the outskirts of town. The driver dropped me off when we arrived and I instantly knew I had made the wrong decision. It was a large and old place, as if it had been standing there for a century. The outer walls were peeling and the place seemed to be toppling at any minute. I sighed and trudged through the howling winds and onto the porch. I rang the bell once and the door swung open almost instantly. An old man with a wrinkled face looked up at me, slightly hunching as he did so.

"Customer?" he asked in a raspy voice. I nodded hesitantly and was pulled in by his surprisingly strong hand.

The house was even bigger than it looked. The entrance hall alone could fit a few hundred people. I walked down the stairs, feeling small and vulnerable, and followed the old man as he led me up a flight of stairs and stopped in front of a door with a wooden plaque, the numbers '341' scrawled in fancy writing on it.

"Your room," the old man rasped and pushed a set of keys into my hand. "Remember to join us for the midnight round of beer just down the hall. The toilet will be on your left."

I pushed a wad of cash into his palm and with that, he spun around and left me alone, standing in front of the room, the hollow feeling creeping up my chest.

I unlocked the door and went into the room. There was a strip light in the centre of the ceiling, which blinked into life when I pressed the on button, casting cobwebby shadows all around the room. There was only one single bed to the side, its sheets musty and dotted with brown, with a lonely bedside table at the other end. I sat down and fumbled for my phone. I dearly needed a world to escape into. Its battery was down. I sighed and stuck it back into my bag.

Suddenly remembering about the midnight round of beer, I decided to head over, not because I want to drink beer, I never did, but because I wanted to get news.

~*~

It turned out that the 'midnight round of beer' was not in a bar, as I had imagined, but in a room with benches lining the room, and a small raised platform was set in the front. I grabbed a coke from a small table off to the side and squeezed my way through the people to sit down at the third row. I watched as dancer after dancer went onstage and started performing, while the sober people clapped politely and the drunkards hollered.

I suddenly felt a pair of eyes on me and stiffened. I turned slowly and saw a tall boy staring intently at me from the back row, his eyebrows furrowed and a coke in hand.

I made my way to him and confronted him quite rudely, "What do you want?"

"Have you ever killed somebody, I mean literally?" he asked bluntly.

I was taken aback by the question but hid it quickly with a smirk.

"Why do you wanna know?" I sipped my coke.

"The look in your eyes," he said calmly. "A potential serial killer."

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