“She knows what she did,” he finally blurted. “She deserved to die.”
“Die, Christ,” the male voice continued through Elsie. “I warned you something like this could happen, Beatrice. He’s fucking flipped.”
“She killed Oliver on purpose,” he growled.
“Well, it seems we’ve made progress,” Beatrice’s voice cut through the tension in the small office. Behind her desk, she leaned forward, interlaced her fingers, a smile lifting the corners of her lips. “You remember now why you are here, don’t you Billy?”
Billy did not respond, instead he lowered his head and noticed for the first time that his hands were bound in his lap, dried blood on his knuckles.
“You can’t be fucking serious here, Beatrice. He could have killed me.”
Billy looked up, turned to the voice. This time instead of seeing Elsie’s face, he saw the orderly, Chad. There was no half smashed in face, no bloodied knife protruding from his skull. Only a bleeding wound on his forehead and split lip. Billy’s gaze moved to the front of his shirt, the splattered red on white.
“Billy wouldn’t have killed you, isn’t that right, Billy?”
Billy turned back to Beatrice, his breathing labored, his mind spinning.
“If he’d had a weapon, he could...”
“But he didn’t,” Beatrice interrupted, her attention never leaving Billy. “You remember it now. What you did to your little sister? To your mother when she found you both covered in blood? The police taking you away, the courtroom where your life sentence at the Institution was handed down?”
Billy’s heart raced.
Red on white.
The smell of the interior of the squad car, leather and urine, smacked him in the face. The sound of the gavel, the cries of mourners behind him, the looks of hatred on the jury’s faces. Then there she was, the old woman, her wrinkled hands clasped before her.
Billy’s body trembled, he bit the corner of his lip, his vision blurred on Beatrice. He nodded. He did remember. He remembered too much. Felt too much. And it was then that he decided his own fate. No more would he take the pills. No more would he see Elsie mocking him, no more steel grey eyes judging him. He leapt from his chair, a roar in his throat, and lunged for Beatrice’s wooden desk. He was atop it before Chad could react, his hands around her throat as her eyes bulged, face turned red. Her frail hands fluttered up to his as she tried to pry his fingers free, but at her age, she was no match to a preteen boy filled with anger, a pension for violence. On his back, he felt hands dig into his pajama top, heard the curses of a desperate man, fear echoing off the walls of Beatrice’s office.
But he would be too late. They were always too late. Too late for Oliver. Too late for Elsie and his mother. Now, too late for him.
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