Psychosis

Chapter 52- Prisoners

Isabel sat in the dark, cold room, just staring at the ceiling, trying to keep the tears from her eyes. Her electricity had been cut off that day, and now, there was nothing to protect her from the dark and the cold. Oh, how the mighty fall. It seemed only yesterday that she had been at the top of her game, solving crimes and having good times with her coworkers and teammates. And now she was alone, sitting inside her tiny, electricity-less apartment with nothing to protect her from the feeling of her soul splintering apart.

Yes, how the mighty fall.

And she had fallen due to circumstances beyond her control. Well, maybe they weren't so out of her control. Maybe she just lacked the willpower to change them. But she had a feeling it would hurt worse to change her circumstances than it would to just let herself sink into the lowest of lows. And maybe it wouldn't. But she wasn't about to risk it. So, for the meantime, she just closed her eyes, and with one final break of her heart, she let the tears fall and felt herself settle into a deep numbness.

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"So as far as Kathy and Frederick know, the Whittles were well respected in the community. May Whittle was a well-known member of the church and the leader of the local PTA. According to all of the neighbors we talked to, she was very involved in her children's lives, going to all of Dylan's wrestling meets, FFA contests, and 4-H shows. Nobody had anything bad to say about May," Akilah told the rest of the team, but Ciara was only partially paying attention. Her head was spinning in several different directions, each of them trying to command her attention.

On one hand, she was trying to pay attention to what Akilah and Morgan were telling the team about the Whittles. Although, even that might not help as much as the rest of the team thought it would. JJ might think she was a small-town girl, but when it came to towns with less than a thousand people, that was where Ciara was the expert. And if she knew anything about tiny towns, it was that people were never as they seemed. In her experience, some of the most community-involved people were actually the people with the worst souls.

Was this one of those times? Were May and Brent as good of people as the community was making them out to be? Did they actually think May and Brent were good people or were they all just agreeing to sling the same lies? What secrets did the community of Sinclair as a whole hold? What went on behind the closed doors of the Whittle household? What skeletons did they keep in their closet?

Now, on the other hand, would the community's thoughts on the Whittles give Ciara an answer on the mystery that lied within the family picture? What did the people of Sinclair have to say about the relationship between Katelynn and the rest of her family? What did they have to say about Katelynn herself? That was honestly the better question, and Ciara wasn't sure why nobody but her seemed to be asking it.

And, on another hand- or maybe, rather, her foot, since she only actually had two hands- she was still caught up on her and Reid's conversation at the Whittle's property. The one where he revealed to her that he had never believed her about her intuitional feelings. Honestly, she should have known he didn't believe her. Reid, after all, was a man of facts and science, and it's not like Ciara had any "real" proof. All she had was the feeling in her gut.

No, it wasn't the fact that he didn't believe her that bothered her. What bothered her was the fact that he had made her believe that he did. He had allowed her to live in her fantasy where someone actually believed her, and then he just pulled the rug out from under her. The biggest problem was that every single day, she struggled to know what was real and what was not. She struggled to sort out what was real life and what was just the fantasies that her mind had created. And she thought that Reid's belief was real. Now that she knew it wasn't, she found herself questioning everything she thought she knew.