Fic: Jabberwocky, Part 2/? (Part 1 Posted as Untitled)
“In case you haven’t noticed, we have a spate of horribly grotesque murders, a dozen flocks of bastards and harpies and all manner of journalists screeching about our ears, every super from Rathbone to Barrington one inch from losing faith in us, and by us, I mean me, your illustrious, glorious leader, and you pick this day of all days to sleep in!! Wake your pansy arse up or I’ll ruddy well bust it down again! Count of three! One…” With a splintering bang, the door to Sam’s flat ripped off of its hinges yet again as the weight of Gene Hunt bore down upon it, fueled by rage, frustration, nicotine and scotch. Gene surveyed the empty flat before growing even angrier, his face reddening.
“Tyler! Where the bleedin’ hell are you?” he screamed into the empty flat storming through and toppling anything that wasn’t already toppled over, including the bathroom cabinet. When he was satisfied that there was enough damage to the flat and its contents to raise Sam’s ire, he stormed back out of the doorframe, leaving the door askew on the floor and pounding down the stairs.
“Cartwright! He’s not there! Where the hell is the little shit?” Gene grabbed Annie by the wrist and started dragging her back to the Cortina, which stood parked haphazardly over the curb, sloping up onto the pavement. Ray was leaning against the car, nervously smoking a cigarette and listening for news from the radio.
“Bleedin’ jessie went off on his own, did he? Thinks he can solve this one without us, is that it, Gov?” Ray was incredulous. “Little gobshite thinks this is the perfect time to go for the glory, does he?” Annie thought she saw hackles rise visibly at both Gene and Ray’s collars.
“Not what I would’ve ever thought, even from him, but you never can tell, can you, Raymondo? Come on, we don’t have time to waste here. If Master Genius Science Prat, Esquire can’t be bothered to let us in on his new-fangled super-investigation, we’ll just have to do things the old fashioned way until he deems it appropriate to grace us with his presence. At which point I shall grace his arse with a kick so swift the yard stick up his jacksie might very well pop out of his smug gob.” Gene’s voice rose as he spoke, and Annie sighed.
“Gov, should we really just be going around beating on anyone with access to butcher’s tools until we get a better lead? Surely there must be something… Maybe we could go back to the crime scene? Maybe that’s where Sam is?” Annie sheepishly looked up at Gene’s face, hoping that she wasn’t going to have to fight with him this early in the morning. She was rewarded for her bravery when Gene actually did calm down a bit, albeit just to sigh and spit out a response in a quieter, strained tone.
“You might have a point, Cartwright. Looks like you’ve been picking up more than hair and makeup tips from Dorothy, then. We should… I can’t believe I’m saying this… We should get information from forensics. And then we make one of those table things, like the list of people most likely… And THEN we go and beat seven shades of shit out of them, from the top down!” Hunt’s voice rose triumphantly and Annie couldn’t help but give him a bit of a smile in response.
“I take it you’ll want Chris contacting forensics, me compiling the list, and you and Ray will be discussing details of the bodies with the pathologist, trying to come up with more things that will help me to narrow down the lead table?” Annie asked hopefully.
“Exactly my plan, Sweet Tits. Couldn’t have put it better meself,” Gene lit a cigarette and started to glance down Sam’s street. “Chris! Where the hell are you? We’ve got a job for you! Lots of waiting and sitting on your arse, it’s right up your alley, caters perfectly to your wide range of expertise!” Ray snickered as Gene scowled, wondering where Skelton could have run off to in the few seconds it had taken him to break down Sam’s door and ascertain that the DI was, in fact, not in the flat.
“Boss…” Chris’ voice was shaking as it came floating around the corner of the building.
“Get your arse over here, you div, we’re heading back to the station. Seems the bloody great berk has gone off on his own again,” Ray called out to Chris, flicking his finished cigarette down on the ground and grinding it out with the toe of his shoe. He started to head around to the front passenger side of the Cortina when Chris’ voice came around the corner again.
“Boss… Ray… Annie…” This time, all three of them caught the strained and waivering tone of his voice. Gene threw his own cigarette down and the three of them rushed around the corner, their pace increasing as they made out Chris’ figure, kneeling on the pavement near the back of the building. Annie and Gene could both hear their own heartbeats drumming madly in their ears as they realized what Chris was kneeling over: Sam’s leather jacket.
“Gov, Sam wouldn’t just leave his jacket on the ground… He loves that thing, always wearing it, he is,” Annie couldn’t think of anything else to do except state the obvious, acutely aware of the fact that her heart was continuing to race, but this time, it was doing so from inside of her throat.
“Tell me something I don’t know, Cartwright. Shit,” Gene was scanning the pavement closely, looking for any other sign of Sam, and his eyes fell upon the rag lying on the ground. It looked like a scrap of shirt, or some other article of clothing that warranted a crazed striped pattern these days, and the scent that wafted up to him when he leaned over it was unmistakable. “Chloroform,” Gene informed them as he moved to pick up the rag.
“Wait! Gov, forensics might be able to do something with it!” Annie called out as Gene stood, the rag in his hand.
“It’s not like they can get dabs off it, Sweetheart, and I think I’ve managed to get what we really need up off the ground along with it.” Gene held out the rag to Annie and Ray, who noticed the short, brown hairs clinging to it. Incredibly short, but not the right texture for facial hair. Someone with very short hair… Gene swallowed.
“Gov, you don’t think, I mean, it’s just one hell of a coincidence, isn’t it? Could be completely unrelated, couldn’t it?” Ray couldn’t keep his eyes off of the rag, couldn’t stop thinking that there was no way in hell… He wouldn’t mind beating the stuffing out of Sam, in fact, he often fantasized about it, but breaking his smug nose into splinters and screaming something along the lines of “shut up, you wanker” repeatedly was about the worse he would wish on Sam. There was no way… It had to be unrelated…
Annie swallowed hard, “There were no traces of chloroform on the other victims, we only have the one other rag to go off of,” she, too, was trying to force herself to believe that there was no way, no possible way, that Sam could have been taken by their mystery killer. She was even less successful than Ray at convincing herself of it.
“Victims were held for too long, and then the bodies were left out, one in water and two in the open, before they were found. Chloroform could’ve been washed away, and it certainly wouldn’t show in any doctor’s tests after a few hours. We’ve got one rag outside the pub where Mark Davis went missing, nothing near the areas the other two men were missing from,” Gene said it quietly, and the lack of screaming, coupled with the lack of obscenities, scared Annie the most.
“We need to get back to the station, Gov, check the other rag… I barely looked at it myself…” Annie stared at the distinctive pattern on the cloth. It did look a lot like the other rag, the one found near the pub Davis had disappeared outside of. Mark Davis, 35, 5’9,” on the slim side of average with brown hair and hazel eyes, not too noticeable, but somewhat handsome… Very similar to Justin Dunn, and Gerry Macrae.. Very similar to… Annie raised her hand to her mouth and wanted for all the world to race back to the station and compare the rags, and to see that the pattern didn’t match. It couldn’t match. There was no way that it could possibly match.
Chris was still stooped over the jacket, and he took off his own coat, wrapping the black leather in it. “Forensics can get prints off of leather, yeah? They can, can’t they?” He looked hopefully up at Hunt.
“Maybe. Think so. Good thinking, Chris.” Gene surveyed the scene. Nothing else. No signs of a struggle, just hard brick walls, pavement and road. Not even enough dirt for a single footprint. Nothing. Just the jacket, and the rag. “Right, you three, back in the car. And mind that you don’t get your grubby paws all over that jacket, or I’ll have them on my desk, standing up like little trophies. Got that? Good.” Hunt headed back to the Cortina, wondering how many seconds it would take to get back to the station.
It took approximately 195 seconds, at approximately 70 miles per hour, including a short detour through a row of bins. When the car screeched up in front of the station, they raced up the steps and Gene practically burst through his second door of the day as they entered CID and he moved up to Sam’s desk. There, in a plastic bag, neatly labeled in Sam’s horridly neat and fastidious script, was the other rag. The fabric was identical. All of CID, and, in fact, all of the station turned as Gene slammed his foot into the side of the desk and screamed.
“FUCK!!!”
Annie, Chris, Ray, and the entire station flinched.
“Skelton, you get with forensics, I want you forcing them to go through everything with a fine-toothed comb, and I want your full report up here, with all of the other shit that Tyler collected, in less than an hour. Or it’s your arse in a sling! Ray, I want you down the morgue, same drill - I want something more, I want a solid lead, I want it in less than an hour, comprendes? Cartwright, you and I are sorting through this pile of arse, and we’re finding something. Less than an hour. NOW!” Chris practically leapt for his desk and grabbed the phone off of the receiver, requesting forensics in a shaking voice. Ray strode out of the door with his head lowered, hands in his pockets, a black expression on his face that just dared anyone to come near him.
Annie stared at the neatly stacked piles of papers, folders, and plastic evidence bags, racking her brain for anything, any sort of process or detail that might help. Her eyes fell upon the original coroner’s report. All three of the previous victims had had the same wounds on their arms, the same wounds on their backs, other bruises and lacerations, and differing, surgically precise wounds on their fronts, each one having had a piece of his body removed. Testes, then pancreas, then adrenal glands and part of the kidneys. She shuddered, glad, for the first time in her career, that certain details were deemed inappropriate to share with a female officer. Her eyes fell on the portion of Sam’s summary that described their eyes.
“Gov, did Sam mention anything to you about the eyes?” Annie stared at the sheet, looking at the scrawling notes that Sam had overlaid on his neatly typed report. Each of the victims had been arc-blinded, a form of extreme flash blinding that usually lasted 36 hours. 36 hours, the approximate timeframe between each victim’s disappearance and registered time of death. 36 hours… Annie stared at the clock, and she swore that she could hear it ticking, swore that she could see it boring down on her, moving off of the wall and towards her, menacingly. She closed her eyes for a second, and the clock was back where it belonged. Where it had always been.
“He wanted them blind, it’s right there,” Hunt snapped, flipping page after page of coroner’s reports, forensics reports, and Sam’s own summaries over in his hands. His eyes scanned the pages, but nothing seemed to be making sense. This wasn’t what he did. He should be out on the street, finding this bastard, cuffing him, dragging him in and ripping him to shreds.
“But he didn’t permanently blind them. He had to blind them through a very specific process. Look at what Sam’s written here, Gov,” Annie said, pointing at one of Sam’s notes. “Arc eye, blindness lasting around 24-48 hours, usually about 36, a direct result of extreme light flashes, or sometimes water or sand in the eyes: no abrasions on the corneas, not sand or water. So it had to be light. Extremely bright light, like, this is a really bad form of snow blindness, or something that welders get. Corneal flash burns, welder’s blindness. He’s got it all writ here, Gov, it has to be a lead he wanted to follow,” Annie looked up at Gene.
“So the bastard doesn’t even want his victims to see him, he’s a wretched, sniveling coward on top of a perverted murderer. The two do seem to go together, once you get their arses against the walls. You’re not telling me anything new here, Love,” Gene continued to flip through the papers, moving more and more quickly, not even staring at what was written on them.
“He doesn’t want them to see him… But what if he does? Gov, what if that’s part of it? The killer doesn’t want them to see him until after he’s finished, but he DOES want them to see him, before he kills them? And what if that’s why he only blinds them temporarily; I mean, if he’s going to kill them, it would be much easier to just put their eyes out all the way, wouldn’t it? He obviously doesn’t have any trouble torturing them, or hurting them, so why spare them full blindness… Gov, the parts that are being removed..”
“Don’t tell me you’re getting the same twisted idea as your boyfriend now, Petal,” Gene didn’t want to think about it, but the idea kept surfacing in his mind. The hunks of meat from the backs, and the sweatbreads. That’s what Sam had called them, wasn’t it? And some rot about a dragon, or some such nonsense?
“But Gov, if he’s doing, doing, doing THAT,” Annie couldn’t bring herself to say it, “then he sees himself as superior to them. He’s higher on the food chain, he’s a man, they’re animals,” Annie began, but was cut off by a shout from her DCI.
“He’s the bloody animal! Ripping apart young men, two of whom had wives and bleedin’ children at home, children who are NOT going to open up some old chip-wrapper of a shit-rag newspaper and read about how, once upon a time, daddy become a Christmas fucking turkey for some damned psychopath!” Gene fumed and kicked at the desk again, slamming his fist down as he made his way through his tirade. Annie jumped with each slam and kick.
“It’s how he sees himself, Gov. It’s like… It’s so wrong of him to want them, like he does, and so he has to make them into animals, and then, maybe he won’t. But he still does. And then he has to take it further. He has to make them objects. Because then it doesn’t matter, then it’s just toys, not people, and then, in the end, it becomes something natural,” Gene cut Annie off again.
“NATURAL? How the hell is this shit even close to natural? I’m closer to laying one in on Mother Theresa’s sacred cup than this is to natural, Cartwright!” Annie swallowed hard and continued.
“He wants them. So he has to turn them into objects, to make that okay. Not animals, they’re objects first, and then when he’s done with that, it becomes the law of the jungle, and then they become animals. Prey. That’s it! That’s got to be it!” Annie felt a small flame of pride rise up inside of her, thinking of how proud Sam would be of her. A ‘profile,’ as he liked to call them, although she had never heard the term in all her time at university.
Gene was silent for a moment, and then shook his head. “Annie, what the bloody’ hell is this going to do for us? Knowing why the bastard does things isn’t going to help us knick him!”
“But it could, Gov. He has to be seen, at the end, so that they know he’s the superior beast, but he can’t be seen at the beginning, because they’re objects, and objects can’t see, can’t judge. So he blinds them, temporarily, with some form of incredible flash. Like welder’s eye, or extreme snow blindness. Welders… That’s it, Gov, that’s got to be it! That’s why Sam was making so many notes about their eyes, it’s the best lead we’ve got. People who have equipment for welding and butchery or surgery…”
Hunt mused over the situation, and then nodded. “You really are starting to think like your boyfriend, aren’t you, Love?”
Annie blushed, “Sir, Sam and I are not even remotely… I mean, he’s just a friend. Not even that, we just work together. I’ve tried being a friend, but” Gene cut her off.
“Just take the compliment and spare me the Coronation Street episode, fussybritches. Welding and butchery, there CANNOT be that many connections between those two worlds… And I’m sure the ol’ Gene Genie is going to pop up while we look,” Gene slammed down the pile of papers that he had, in the end, only been pretending to look through, and stood up. “Chris!”
“Nothing, boss - said that it was all in their previous reports. Jacket’s already been sent for printing.”
“Get a move on, we’re looking into recent purchases at any welder’s shops. Get plod, and bring in all shop owners that could sell any high-powered, bright welding torches. Get them down here, with their receipt books, NOW!”
Chris looked confused, “Welding torches, boss? Not knives, or…”
“NOW, DC Skelton, unless you want me to go get a regular torch and punch it through the back of your skull, just so we can see the light shining through the hollow cavity of your bloody head like the world’s ugliest jack-o’-lantern!”
Chris leapt up and ran to the door of CID, ramming into the side of one of the desks on his way out, a confused look on his face.
“Go with him, Cartwright, you seem to know what you’re doing.”
Annie’s eyes widened as she got up and hurried towards to corridor, “Yes, Sir. And Sir…”
“36 hours, Cartwright. Just shut it until then, unless it’s bleedin’ relevant.” Gene swallowed hard and stared at the clock. If Sam had been taken after leaving the Railway Arms last night, it was closer to 28 hours. But he refused to think about that.
“Wakey-wakey, little Sammy,” Sam tried to open his eyes, only to be met by the sensation of a bucket of sand being poured into them, very brightly lit. Obviously, the flash-blinding hadn’t worn off yet. He raised his head slightly, vaguely aware that both of his arms were pinned to the wall by shards of plate glass. Pinned like a butterfly… He’d always hated to see pinned butterflies. He had no problem with any of the other animals that they had studied in biology, had no problem looking over cadavers in a morgue. They were laid out, respected, preserved in jars of stinking alcohol and formaldehyde or frozen. Insects, butterflies especially, were a different story. They were pinned down, stabbed through, and it was horrible. Like they weren’t living, like they were the lowest of the low, something that felt less than any other animal.
Sam tried to take a deep breath, but blood rose up into his throat from the broken ribs along the left side of his chest, the punctured lung screaming in agony. He coughed, and more pain rippled through him, the thick, rusty taste building up in his mouth and gagging him. His other lung still seemed to be functioning, thankfully. The motion of just breathing more rapidly put a strain on the tissue of his arms, and the pain there roared to life. He counted over 20 shards, no, not shards, these were precisely cut, they were pins… He counted over 20 of the glass pins on each arm, stretching from his armpits to his wrists.
“Wakey-wakey, Sam,” the voice came again, and Sam started for a moment. It was his voice, his own voice, calling out to him.
*beep, beep, beep…*
*Scalpel. Have the rib spreader standing by, Matthews, ready with suction, Jamison, ready with…*
*Keep him open as little as possible*
“Come on, Sam, play nice,” he heard her voice, and cringed inwardly. She was still here, but at least she had stopped laughing at him.
“Of course I’m still here, you silly goose! You haven’t answered my question. It’s a really simple question, Sam.” The girl giggled again, and then, finally, was silent.
“You should have answered her question, Sam. You really should have. And you know the answer, don’t you? You’ve always known, all of the answers, you just couldn’t face them. You could never really face up to what was real, could you? You could never really face up to what was right?” It was his own voice again, low, angry, and yet almost gleeful. He had never known that a person could hate their own voice so much.
“Now, now, Sam, don’t be like that. You know exactly what’s right, don’t you? Just like you know exactly what’s real. Is this real, Sam?” Sam felt hands slowly beginning to slide up his thighs, fingers lightly stroking the flesh on the back of his legs, the curve of his buttocks, and then he felt a tongue slowly sliding up in the same patterns. A tongue, and then…
Sam screamed as he felt teeth sink into the soft flesh on the back of his thigh, and then felt the hands grip down harshly, fingers trying to rip in just like teeth had done.
*bee-bee-bee-bee-beeeeeee*
*Seizure!*
*Not a reaction to the anesthetic…*
*Dilantin!*
Sam felt his body spasm, flesh straining against the pins in his arms, hands and mouth pushing into his legs, his buttocks, and then around to the rough patch of hair between his legs, the organs just under it, hands becoming rougher, if that was even possible. Blood gurgled in Sam’s throat and trickled down each of the wounds on his arms, pain ripping through them as he screamed, or came as close to screaming as was possible.
Teeth bit down on the thin flesh behind his testicles, and Sam shrieked, feeling blood swell up inside of his chest cavity, pressure building on the inflated lung. He pulled, hard, willing every muscle in his body to work with him, and felt the shards of glass nearest his right hand start to slide through the flesh, ripping along through his arm until he was free of the closest few. He punched outwards, swinging down as far as he could, hoping to connect with anything, his assailant, the edge of the wall, anything at all. His fist struck against air as more shards of glass worked through his arm, the entire limb freed and bleeding.
The hands gripped his shoulders and then and pulled down, and he felt his left arm ripping free from the wall as well, the shards in it gliding through his flesh, tearing and streaming blood at an odd angle. Blood continued to well up inside of his throat and to flood his mouth, gushing upwards and gagging him fully, streaming through up his windpipe and through his nose, choking out all air. Stars swum up in the blackness, and he wasn’t sure whether he had opened his eyes for a second, or if he was seeing the flashes against the dark of his eyelids. His chin connected with a hard floor, smooth concrete, and he felt the blood spray out of him, retching and struggling to breathe.
“So, it wants off display a little early, does it?” this time, the voice was higher pitched than his, and gravelly - why had he thought it was his voice? He heard an odd, crowing laugh echo, yes, echo - he was somewhere that echoed - and then he felt a body on top of his, larger than his, pinning his bleeding arms down and laying its weight into his chest. He felt an odd, popping sensation inside of him, followed by more of the wet, swelling sensation. Like he was drowning, no, he was drowning - air couldn’t get past the blood and into him. Sam squirmed, feeling the muscles and tendons in his arms screech in protest as they moved around the cuts, trying to get away from his assailant.
“Not so fast, DCI Tyler,” came his own voice, and he felt a strange feeling of vertigo as the room spun around him, the blackness seeming to move and the ground seeming to swirl, a circling sensation, a falling sensation. “You think that you have any control over it? Because you do. But you don’t. That’s the conundrum. That’s the one thing you can’t figure out. You don’t know what’s real, what’s right, what’s what. You don’t know what you want, nothing at all. You know nothing, Little Sammy.” It was definitely his own voice, and the body that dragged him onto his side and pulled his head and shoulders upwards, freeing his airway and allowing a thin stream of air to bypass the blood, that body was the same size as his. He felt hands that were identical in size and shape to his own close over his hands - two matching pairs, one crushing the other, and he forced himself not to sob, knowing that it would stop the tiny, hitching breaths he was able to make.
Unable to move, concentrating only on breathing, choking around mouthfuls of blood once again, Sam felt the hands slowly begin to bind his wrists again, the cuts screeching out their song of protest like some unholy choir, shouting a demonic song through the flesh of his arms. He felt that body, identical in every way to his own, stretch out behind him, and then fold a leg over him, one hand reaching down between his legs, between their legs, as the two pair were in nearly the same position, and he felt the other hand ease his arms upwards, ensuring that he could still breath, at least a tiny bit. That other him wanted him to stay alive for this.
“Not just alive, conscious. You have to be conscious to know what it’s like, don’t you, Sam? Is this what’s right? Is this real? Is any of it? What about your entire life, Sam? Was any of that right? Was any of that real, or were you just lying to yourself, all along? This is your mind, Sam, so this has to be exactly what you want. I’m you, aren’t I? You can make this stop, any second, just by willing it to. Just by wanting it to stop. That’s the only logical explanation, isn’t it?”
The voice was cold, hissing in his ear, skipping slightly as his double’s breath started to come faster, as he started to pound his way, no, no, no… To pound his way into Sam. Sam tried to ignore it, to concentrate just on breathing, but the words, the words cut into him, thrusting like the hardened organ of his double, tearing through his flesh just like it, and just like the glass, and the shards of bone. Tearing further down… This was all in his mind, so it had to be what he wanted… Why did he want this? Why did he think this was the right thing to do, no, to have done, to have done to him…
Sam’s mind reeled as he felt his flesh tear, and as his double finished, and then slowly began to stroke the side of his face with hands that were sticky and covered in blood and semen. He felt the double’s mouth closing over his shoulders, his neck, teeth biting in, laughing as he did so, but Sam didn’t feel the pain anymore; he was trapped, caged by the idea that this was all his own doing… It had to be, didn’t it? Was this what he’d always wondered about, what he’d always danced around? And what about 1973, was that all his doing? Gene? All of them…
*Suction, more suction!*
*Full bloods again, find out what’s causing the seizures*
*Duel embolism, Christ, how much marrow spilled out from that snapped…*
*He’s going tachy!*
Sam felt his entire body lurch and spasm, blood filling his inflated lung now, and wondered if he would drown, here and now, on his own blood. He felt the double lay into him again, changing shape into the larger man once more, hammering into him faster, no longer concerned with whether or not he was alive. And then it was his exact double again, the figure, the unknown man, its voice shifting from that horrible, maniacal laugh into some sinister parody of Sam’s own laugh.
“Do you hear them, Sam? Do you hear what’s happening? They don’t know how they missed all these things, they don’t know why things are happening… Why don’t you tell them, Sam? Wake up, and tell them that it’s all your fault. It’s what you want. It’s what you’ve always wanted.”
*We need to reintubate!*
*Got him!*
Sam suddenly jerked away from the double, who seemed to be pulling away now, spent a second time. He coughed, pain ripping through every nerve in his body, feeling blood spray everywhere. Air, a small stream, but it was there - his airway was open again. He felt arms against him again, dragging him along the ground, pulling at the torn flesh of his arms. The hands kept changing, they were large, coarse, so much rougher than his… Then they were the exact doubles of his own hands. It wasn’t possible…
“Anything is possible, Sam. That’s why you can do this. All of this. From the moment you made your choice. You remember that, don’t you, Sam? You made a choice. A conscious decision…” His own voice laughed that horrible mimic laugh again, and he could hear the strange, high but gravelly cackle overlaying it. There were two of them, that had to be it. That was the only way this could be happening…
“Are you avoiding even thinking about it? Oh, you shouldn’t do that, you know. You know exactly what happened, don’t you, Sam?” The voice pressed into him, and suddenly he was being bitten again, hands tearing at his flesh, kneading and pummeling and moving in horrid, rhythmic time to the sway of the other body, which was pressing against him again. He could feel the other man’s shaft growing hard again, pressed against his body, could feel the other man’s mouth exploring him, and then breathed blood again as he screamed, the duel pain of teeth sinking into the flesh of his cheek, tearing at his face coupled with the feeling of being ripped into again.
“Exactly what you wanted, isn’t it? Always thought about it? Through all your schooling, work, just a thought, it could be great both ways, couldn’t it? But you never had the guts to try it the other way, did you,” the other voice taunted him now, and he gritted his teeth, trying to concentrate on breathing, ignoring the pain. The pain wasn’t real. This wasn’t real. It was all in his head, it was all in his head, it was all in his head…
“If you won’t think about that, then answer me this: it was a conscious decision, wasn’t it?” The voice pounded into his head like the body pounding against him, teeth and hands and entire weight pummeling him. This wasn’t what he had wanted, he’d wanted anything but this. This was just a violation, and it wasn’t real…
“It was a conscious decision!” The voice screamed it in his ear, and then began to repeat, over and over again, louder, punctuating each scream of the phrase with another, seemingly harder thrust. “It was a conscious decision! You know it was! You chose to do it!”
Sam’s mind raced back to the start of it all, back to the hunt for the killer, the interview with Colin Raimes, Maya, oh, Maya… Like Angela Maguire, Becky Amis, Amy Weng, David Bryant… Names locked in the back of his mind, all the ones he’d ever really been in love with, and Maya, the culmination of them all, so beautiful and smart and wonderful, and his… And she was gone because of him. He’d never had the courage to even talk to Becky or David, Angela and Amy had left him because he was too cold, too cut off, just like Maya would have left him, he was nothing, not even good at his job… Glen had been wrong, he would never be a good role model, he’d never be a good anything, and then, Bowie, on the radio, the cars, streaking past, just step out of the jeep, just step out of the jeep, one little step…
Sam moaned, willing it not to be true. He was upset about Maya, but he’d known he would find her. He’d known he would find her killer, he’d known he was better than that. It was an accident. It was. It had to be.
“Say it!” He heard his own voice echoing through him, coupled with the scent of dirt and oil, clawing its way through the overbearing, suffocating scent of blood, echoing through the pain in his limbs, in his face, his ribs, his lungs, everything, echoing through the bright, painful flashes in the dark. It wasn’t true. It wasn’t true. It couldn’t be. Was it? Was it?
Sam choked back more of his own blood as he began to sob, tiny, hitching gasps of agony tearing their way through him as the other figure pulled out, pulled away, and stood. “It was a conscious decision.” As he said it, the lights faded around him once more, everything swallowed by the deep, enveloping dark.
All comments and criticism welcome and encouraged!