For a room specifically built for disagreeing and agreeing, for defeat and victory, for desperation and joy, the room was unusually absent of any sound, except for the occasional, rapid tapping of nervous feet, and the scratching of ballpoint pens on the surface of snow-white paper. The room, patrolled by currents of bone-chilling air, shouted echoes of a heartbeat - my heartbeat.
I glanced up, hoping to find any slight hint of emotion, any slight hint of my upcoming fate. I stared at the judge before me, expecting him to finally break contact with his paper and give me a confirmation of relief. But he remained fixed, and there I was, sitting, again, with nothing to expect.
My mind drifted off, trying to convince myself that I was out of that horrible place. A picture, static, yet so dynamic, so real, so vivid. My wife, Sofia, stared at me, wide-eyed, filled with content and love. In her arms, my baby, my sweet baby angel, Darcy, soundly asleep, innocent and untouched of the world. I reached my hand out to touch her head, to tell her that I was okay, that I was not the man everyone thinks of me as, that I love her. But she was merely a dream, a manifestation of my will to walk out a free and innocent man, which I was.
I grasped the memory depicting Sofia's last meeting with me. I saw her tears running down her cheeks, drowning her ability to speak with clarity. The way she struggled to catch her breath from all her painful sobbing, the way she called me a monster, like how everyone did, reminded me that I was now all alone, with no one to count on, no one to lean on. I had lost everything.
Then I went back to the time that man found me covered in red. I remembered how his face, his expression, twisted the instant he saw the dripping blood that did not belong to me. How he screamed in fear when he saw the scarlet hatchet wrongfully placed in my hands. That very moment marked the time my fate was framed up the wall, high up where I couldn't reach, rendering me powerless below its feet, with only my eyes to stare at it helplessly.
KNOCK.
I was transported back.
KNOCK.
I was not ready.
KNOCK.
The judge gently placed down his gavel.
His cold amber eyes finally gave the hint I had been dreading for.
He opened his thin lips.
"I declare Mr. Thomas Gray to be guilty of 13 counts of first-degree murder."
