The Goth and His Psycho.

The Goth and His Psycho: [Epilogue]

  It did not take a long time for Alex to be found. Or it could have been a long time, but the passing minutes went unattended by Alex Brady, who sat with a small girl balanced lifeless in his lap. His face seemed to have slackened, his eyes unblinking and glassy as he stared down at a pale, empty face.

  It was the dogs that sniffed him out. Light roved over his slouched form, and he glanced up, squinting into the harsh light aimed on at his face. He raised a bloody hand to block the intense rays, and then fingers were seizing him, seizing the girl, and Alex was barely able to move.

  The next couple of hours were a long blur. It felt like a moment had passed when he was being hoisted onto a street, the dark woods shrinking in the distance behind him. There were voices all around, demanding and shrieking at him.

  The light became harsh again, and he realised suddenly that he was in the back of an ambulance. More words were thrown at him, but he missed them all; too lazy to reach out a numb hand to grab them.

   More hands tugged at his clothes and limbs, moving him this way and that, and he could do nothing to stop them. His bloodied shirt was pried away from his torso, and he realised then just how much pain he was in and focused gladly on that; too tired and scared to be able to focus on anything else.

  Time passed sluggishly, too sluggishly for Alex's liking and so he let sleep take him.

  He woke in a bed with itchy sheets and for a moment thought he could feel the cold touch of Bree lying next to him, but when he reached he found cold metal beneath his fingers and found it to be the posts of his hospital bed.

  He was not handcuffed - which he hadn't expected. Alex sat up and groaned, surprised to find that pain flared through the left side of his torso.

  "Don't move." Alex glanced to his left and found his mother staring at him, her face set in grim lines, her eyes glassy and distanced as she looked at his face. "You have four broken ribs and a fractured thigh bone."

  He blinked again in surprise; he had felt no pain in the woods. Not even a twinge of it.

  "The doctor said you running through the woods has made the injury worse." he looked again at his mother and she nodded to his right leg. "But he said it was adrenaline that kept you going." Alex nodded and settled back into his pillows.

  Police came in, a doctor and nurses swiftly followed. The police asked him questions and he answered dully. Though his mind was foggy he remembered clearly what Bree had told him; that they didn't know each other. That Alex hadn't seen her since he was twelve. He pinned all the blame on Bree, not because he didn't want to be blamed; he wanted to do nothing more than tell them all that she was never a monster - not at the end, anyway. 

  But he didn't, he didn't have a sudden ache for rebellion nor did he perform a reckless act of loyalty to Bree. She was dead and he was alive. That was it. He needed to forget, and he wouldn't be able to do that in prison. 

  So he sat and he lied. He told them that yes, Dylan and his friends had taken Alex into the wood to beat him up, because Dylan had a special dislike for him. Bree Treven had heard the noises and come to investigate. When Dylan had tried to rape Bree (for Alex could not help but try to drag Dylan's name through the dirt one last time) the murderess had gone insane and had killed him and had hurt or killed the other four boys. Alex blamed his fuzzy memory for not being able to tell the police which she had hurt or killed. 

  He told them then that he had picked up Dylan's gun, the one Bree had dropped after killing Dylan, and he ran, hoping to get away before she was finished with her victims.