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Ella did her best to understand the complex web of emotions and motivations running through this man’s veins. It was clear that his psyche was deeply fractured, reflected in his unique and unsettling manner of communication. As she carefully considered each cryptic phrase he uttered, Ella couldn't help but feel a profound sense of empathy. Here was a man, once just a boy, who had been so severely traumatized that his entire mode of expression had transformed into a series of puzzles and riddles. It was as if the direct language of pain and experience had been lost to him, replaced by a labyrinth of oblique references and metaphors.
‘But Arthur, they never wanted to kill you. Kids are cruel, stupid, reckless. But it’s not out of maliciousness, it’s out of survival and boredom and naivety. You can’t just strangle your past and hope it rewrites your memory. Scars are there forever. We just have to accept that sometimes we lose.’
Tears welled in Arthur’s eyes, black in the moonlight. ‘In truth's absence, I take my rise, Deceiving hearts and blinding eyes.’
The answer was lies.
Ella reached a hand forward, hoping to conclude this without an altercation. ‘It’s not a lie. Trust me, I was there too. I got pushed around, made fun of, laughed at, but I forgave. I never let it define me.’
She suddenly remembered what the old director had told Ella the day she joined the FBI – the losers in high school always went on to have the most interesting lives.
Arthur stared at Ella’s outstretched hand, as though accept it was making a deal with the devil.
‘And I solved your puzzle, so I guess you win.’ She moved closer, her ankles buried amongst a foot of leaves. ‘Friends?’ she asked.
Every time Ella had come face to face with a serial murderer in the past, all sympathy had gone out of the window. Their actions overrode their humanity, and Ella had never had any hesitation in throwing them behind bars for the remainder of their days.
But looking at Arthur’s frail body, his weary expression, and knowing there was a ticking time bomb in his brain – a part of her wanted to let this man run free.
He gestured for Ella to come closer.
She did, one hand extended, a gesture of peace and reconciliation.
But as her foot penetrated the next batch of leaves, her foot suddenly caught in something.
Before she could react, claws of sharp metal snapped shut, their teeth biting into her ankle, penetrating her flesh, crushing bone, reducing her to a crumpled heap on the ground. Pain shot through her leg like lightning, and she let out an involuntary cry of agony.
Arthur's expression changed in an instant, his momentary flicker of humanity vanishing, replaced by the eyes of a monster. The excruciating pain from the device sent waves of shock through Ella's body. Her vision blurred, and the world started spinning around her.
‘Not a potion, nor a pill, But a way to climb the steepest hill.’
In her delirious state, Ella found the answer without much thought.
Therapy.
Ella lay trapped and alone as the darkness closed in, and she realized she truly was going to play the role of the killer’s former tormentor tonight.
CHAPTER THIRTY FIVE
She found herself floating in an ethereal space, untethered from the brutal reality of the junkyard. The moon above her was impossibly large, and the stars seemed to flicker and whisper, telling stories of distant worlds and forgotten times. She began to journey through fragments of her past, seeing herself as a child, carelessly playing in a field of sunflowers. The sunny image suddenly turned darker as she witnessed the body of her father, dead in his bed.
The scene quickly shifted, and next she was back at the FBI Academy, her face determined and focused, pushing through every challenge with relentless drive. Obstacle courses, target practice, mental exercises.
The only present throughout these vivid recollections was the pain. Though distant, the steady jackhammer of agony grounded her to a reality she could no longer fully grasp. Faces from her past and present floated in and out of her vision – colleagues, friends, family, and the faces of the criminals she had pursued. Each face morphed and twisted, their expressions shifting from joy to sorrow, anger to peace.
Ella's sense of time and place dissolved. She was everywhere and nowhere, lost in a sea of memories and fantasies. The lines between victim and predator, right and wrong, blurred into insignificance.
Amidst the chaos of her mind, she saw Arthur, not as the killer he had become, but as the young boy he once was – scared, alone, and lost. She reached out to him, but he faded away like mist, leaving her grasping at air.
Ella fought to regain her bearings, to push through the pain and confusion. She knew she had to find a way out, to survive, to escape this nightmarish reality. But the dream had left its mark, a reminder of the fragile line between life and death, and the unseen scars everyone carried.
In this whirlwind of memories and pain, Ella's awareness hovered on the brink of reality. The voices from her hallucinations merged with the sounds of the junkyard, creating a dissonant symphony in her mind. Among these chaotic sounds, she heard Arthur mumbling something, his voice faint and distorted as if coming from a great distance.
Struggling to focus, Ella strained to discern if Arthur's voice was just another fragment of her delirium or a real anchor in her nightmarish reality. His words seemed to drift in and out of coherence, blending with the echoes of her own thoughts.
‘Arthur?’ she whispered, her voice raspy with pain and confusion. She wasn't even sure if she had spoken aloud or if it was just another voice in her head.
Through the haze of her agony, she tried to piece together Arthur's mumbling. Was he expressing remorse, or was it the cold deliberation of a killer? Was he speaking to her, or lost in his own twisted memories?
