Innocent

Chapter 14: Prisoner of My Mind

       UNEDITED

The sun had fallen low in the sky, and all that was left was a girl, an army of FBI Agents with matching blue jackets with yellowing lettering, and a dead body. I could feel my breathing hitch, onto the point of hyperventilation. Disgust and remorse made it's up my body like a snake traveling, it's cold, slimy body making it's way to my heart. All that's left is this. I sadly realized it was one of those moments, you know the one filled with actions you didn't think about. Like telling your best friend you secretly hate them. This was it. I couldn't take it back, the bullet had already been let loose like a mystical arrow that had sealed my fate. How could I have come this far? Taking the gun, and ignoring the shocked stares of my environment. I placed my gun down letting it softly land on the rough, old concrete that desperately needed to be whole again. Kinda of like me. I put on my mask of indifference, knowing that I was one of the best con men around. I put my hands up and grinned at Agent Collins, whose look of bewilderment, sent a pang in my heart for some unknown reason. What did they think of me, now? They didn't know, none of them did. The desire, that consumed me, like a unquenchable appetite, filling me up with hope, but leaving me with grief every night. They probably thought I was a monster. Wasn't I? How could I? They probably thought I was some kid who was broken. Like the dog who after so many years of abuse finally broke and turned into a rabid dog who could never be petted, even though that was all he wanted in the first place. We must ask ourselves whether to call the dog blameless for his actions when it was only ever taught violence, or to condemn him, because his actions are his own and of his own accord.

        I wake each morning with the desire to do right, to be a good and meaningful person, to be, as simple as it sounded and as impossible as it actually was, happy. And during the course of each day my heart would fall to the pit of my stomach. By early afternoon I would be overcome by the feeling that nothing was right, or nothing was right for me, and I would have the desire to be alone. By evening I was filled  with being alone in the magnitude of my grief, alone in my aimless guilt, alone even in my own loneliness. I am not sad, I would repeat to myself over and over, I am not sad. Maybe one day I'll convince myself that I am not sad. Or fool myself. Or convince others--that I'm happy, that being in a horrible lonely cage has not broken me. I am not sad. I am not sad. Because now my life had unlimited potential for happiness, I was the writer of my own life now. No one was holding the pen anymore. Now, I could be happy right? That's what I always told myself that if I could just prove my innocence that everything would be okay. I'm free now. I have everything someone could ever want. Money. Power. Freedom. Love. Then why aren't I happy? Why can't I escape the prison that is my mind. I have the key in my hands, to unlock myself from this cell, then why can't I use it. I would fall asleep with my heart in a box faraway, like some domesticated animal that was no part of me at all. And each morning I would wake with it again in the cupboard of my rib cage, now it's become a little heavier, a little weaker, but still pumping. And I ask myself how long until it stays in the locked away box and I wake up and it isn't there. Then I'm left with this incredible emptiness, that comes to me every night but leaves in the morning. What if one day it doesn't leave me? Then what. I will be overcomed with the desire to be somewhere else, someone else, someone else somewhere else.

        "Are you going to arrest me?" I asked pretending to amused. I hope he can't see my hands shaking. Don't see through my lie, I'm mentally begging. He smiled at me, his shock gone, replaced by something cold and inhuman.

        "Well I'm not going to arrest you. I think I've done that already." He replied.

        "Once is enough don't you think?" I let a half-smile slip at seeing him flinch.

        I glanced over at the dead body, the blood from the bullet wound was seeping to the concrete floor. The pale body was lifeless bleeding out and I need to take a shower was over whelming. Maybe if I scrubbed hard enough I could was away my sin. Or maybe there was no hope for me, maybe after four years of being surrounded by criminals and stealing for the right reasons, has turned me into the thing I was imprisoned for. A criminal. Agent Collins picked up the gun I had placed on the floor, and handed it to me. I stared at him questioningly. He gave me a small smile of his own and said aloud.