Dreaming of Fireflies *rewrites*

07 | To all God's Silent Children

   The police detective sits in the tiny interrogation room. The smell of hot bodies and funk overpowers all my senses. The detective doesn't say a word to me. My public defender goes through a stack of other cases that overflow his briefcase. My guilt is written all over the face of the clean-cut detective. I shift my cast in the sling. My eyes are locked on the ground to avoid his question filled gaze.

   The detective has asked me so many questions. I didn't answer him back, I'm guilty, what's the point, he's right. I can hear Riverh and Rhain's pissed off howls through the door. The howls have been going on steady for hours and the questions don't stop. Everyone seems to be scared to separate us again, but it's a matter of time. I'm pretty sure you can't take Hellhounds to prison. I shift my body again for a better position my ankle hobbles rattle.

   The door opens and two baby Hellhounds run in ahead of the uniformed officer. They trail a large desk-chained onto their collar. The desk narrowly avoids a collision with the officer. Two pups settle in at the corner of the room together look smug about their combined accomplishment. The pup's coats shimmer in this crappy lite interrogation room.

[CRUNCH]

   Crunch, the puppies chew on the metal section of chain attached to their collars. It folds and crunches like a weak milk bone. The first two chains they chewed apart in the back of the squad car. That caused the squad car to pull over and put us all back together in the same car.

   My eyes close at his mother's shrill wail from the wide open door. She sits in the wooden chair, grief-stricken. Her enmity for me a mask on her face as she turns into the arms of her husband. The uniform officer closes the interrogation room door sharply and cuts off the sound.

I'm so tired...

   The uniform officer places my foster-mother's cell phone on the desk garnering my attention. The detective has accused me of attempted murder of my foster mother's precious son.

I did it.

He just wants all the details.

   His hand slams down on the table and I jump at the sound. My unfocused eyes lock onto the head detectives. He asks for my confession to a crime, we both know I did. I don't understand why he needs my confession; I never said I didn't do it.

I haven't said a word out loud since...I- I-

I did it and now I'm just like her sicko son.

   The uniform officer that just entered the room slides the phone over on the table to the interrogator. He pushes the confession slip to me again.

   My right arm is broken and I'm right handed. He expects me to write out my confession? The public defender doesn't bother to notice I am in the room.

   The detective is prompted by the other police officer to hit the voicemail button on the phone.

He presses play.

Speakerphone:

   "Hello, thank you for calling the house, please leave a message and we will get back to you." His mother says in a cheery tone on the answering machine.

*Beep*

My screams blast from the phone's small speakers.

I beg him to stop.

The crashes.

Three male voices laugh.

Grunts of their satisfaction.

   My mind plays the visual record of hours before. It all flashes before my eyes in time with the answer machine message like a macabre music video played to the sounds of my terror. I can't breathe.

My throat gags as they take their turns with me.

   All sound in the room stops and outside the room sound fades. Everyone's being is focus on that tiny phone's speakers. My throat burns with thick coughs as I spit out each one. My voice being muffled as he tells me its time and he's first.

Trapped against hot slick flesh pin down.

I listen to our lives play out on that damn phone.

   He tries to push himself inside of me. My fist makes fleshy meaty hits against his body. Each pounded hit having no effect on him. My fingers wrap around the handle of the hunting knife on his bedside. I pick it up and slash it across his throat.

   A one in a million lucky slash of the blade digs in deep. It slashes his throat wide. Splits him open in a disgusting smile across his neck. The pieces of his flesh wiggle apart as he attempts to rip thick wet breaths through the gaping hole.

His gasp gurgles with effort as he fades. His life blood spreads everywhere.

   We are still so close that he sprays blood on my body and into my mouth. His blood overflows my mouth and clogs up my nose. Then splashes into one of my eyes.

I'm going to choke.

My throat tightens. I spit lifeblood onto the sheets. He's desperate to breathe but he's a mess.

He makes that wet, sloppy sucking sound as he starts to die real slow.

So much blood sprays out.

My mind can't accept even a portion of what I have done.

   The police crash into his bedroom and the officers keeps his sloppy throat breathing. He screams for the paramedics to get their ass upstairs.

I'm surrounded by angry faces and guns.

   Dead silence from the room as the sound of the speakerphone unceremoniously stops. The useless public defender had hung in mid air his paperwork forgotten. He sits slack-jawed and frozen; finally, he treats me like a human being instead of another fucking paper to deal with.

   We sit in the noiseless room all of us.I live those moments of my life, again and again, playing in my mind. The loop doesn't stop.

This never ending loop where I become the person I hate the most.

Over and over again.

   "I made it stop," my voice croaks to the detective. The voice is broken and burns from disuse. Blood touches my lip from the broken scab that is open.

   The emptiness inside of me spreads out and creeps over my body swallowing a piece of me. That little piece of me that has been desperately blinking like little fireflies to keep the glow alive.

That part of me my foster-brother managed to greedily swallow.

   The low growls of Riverh and Rhain knock me out of the loop. Take me to prison or jail or whatever and end this.

I look the detective in the eyes affirm again, "I made it stop."