Brainwashed

Foot Prints

Drip. Drip. Drip.

My eyes fluttered open.

Drip. Drip. Drip.

My eyes closed again.

I began to sway. Then I fell. I was fully awake now. I crashed onto the floor almost as soon as I started to fall. 

My head throbbed. I held a knife in my right hand. I shakily raised two fingers to touch my bruised cheek. I groaned miserably as I wobbled to my feet. I looked at the floor, covered in something that could only be blood. There were two red footprints on the table from where I fell. 

"Mom!" I cried. "Mom!"

"Ava, it's three in the morning, what possible reason could you have to be-" My mother stopped dead in her tracks. "What happened?" She whispered, horrified.

My father walked into the living room. "Dear lord!" He exclaimed. "Tell me that's not blood." 

I began to cry. 

"Tell me what happened." My mother began to cry as well. "What did this?"

"I don't know." I sobbed into my hands. "I really don't."

Police cars and ambulances were scattered across our front yard. My parents didn't speak, they just held me tightly in their shaking arms. Two men carried  me to an ambulance. I was in shock and unable to walk. 

I passed out three times that day. I gasped for air when I woke up. The hospital was freezing and the blanket was thin. My cheek ached terribly as I took every breath.  My legs felt limp and my hands shook. My mother held me in her deep embrace as soon as she ran in. 

"Mien baby."  She moaned sadly in German. "My baby." 

"Mom." I hugged her back.

Her worried eyes darkened even more. "They think you did it." 

"Did what?"

"They think you killed Tom Lissy."

I did. But neither of us knew that. They found no injuries on me, except for a especially large bruise on my left cheek. The knife in my hand and the blood on it was easy proof that I murdered Tom Lissy. Not only that, they found bloody foot prints leading from his house to mine in my size. There were about three suspects, but there was only one culprit. Me. 

I was sentenced to jail until I was eighteen. After that, I would be transferred to an adult prison for twelve more years. 

There were arguments: "Fourteen is too young to be in jail!" Said one. "She should be put in a mental hospital, not eighteen years of prison!" Said another. 

I knew if I went to jail I might as well kiss my future good bye. I would run away, I thought. 

I would create a new identity.