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"Rhys called you!" I scream it, cutting off her sentence as my fists bang against the table. My heart is beating so quickly I'm starting to feel faint.
The detective holds her hands up while the other officers step forward at my aggression. She slowly grabs the back of her chair, pulling it back and taking a seat again. "I can see we're having a disconnect here, and I'm just trying to figure out the facts." I grit my teeth as she looks at the officer next to me then back. "When my officers got to the scene, there were only two people at your house, Hadley. You and Kyler. You're saying there was another man there?"
My eyes flit around the room, my chest rising and falling at a pace that can't be healthy for someone at rest. "Yes."
"And you say that this man, Rhys?" She waits for confirmation, and I nod. "Is who called the station to report the Butterfly Killer was in the middle of another murder?"
I blink at her, fingers squeezing tightly inside of my fists. "Yes."
Someone knocks on the door, opening it to bring in what looks like a tape recorder or voicemail box. They set it on the table in front of the Detective, and she nods to them with thanks before turning her attention back to me. "This is the recording of the call to the department. Are you saying this person is your Rhys?" She presses play, and before I can even think, the recording starts.
"77843 E Redburrow St the butter..."
I don't know what makes me do it, but something makes me launch forward to knock the recorder off the table, smashing it into the wall, so it breaks apart into pieces. I reach out for the detective, screaming a war cry as I'm ripped back by my ankles. I can't hear that recording. I don't want to know who called. I don't need to hear it. I already know it was my Rhys. It was Rhys, no one else.
My arms are pinned to my sides as I continue to scream, kicking the officer at my back in the shins. Jerking about, I break his hold, sprinting forward to grab at the Detective once more. I'm knocked to the ground by an officer, my face smashed into the cold tile as I glare up at Detective Porter. Her eyes are wide with what is undoubtedly fear, and I can't stop the ugly, barking laugh that leaves my chest. This woman wants to stand there and tear apart my reality, pick at the core of my very existence, but she is scared?
I'm fucking terrified. I don't know who I am. I don't have certainty in my future. I am a broken, sad girl who's puppet strings have finally become so tangled, the only choice I have at untangling them is by hacking at the frail strings with a cleaver. The one constant I have, the only person I have is on the brink of being ripped from me, and I refuse to let it happen.
I refuse to let it happen.
"Do you know what it's like, Detective Porter?" I yell it from the floor, my words slightly muffled from the pressure the forearm on my head is applying. "Do you know what it's like to be alone? To exist on this fucking floating rock and not have a single soul that gives a shit whether you live or die? From the moment I was conceived, I was branded insufficient. My oldest childhood memory is of my parents crying, crying because they didn't know where they went wrong to get me for a child. I've had pills and anti-depressants shoved down my throat since I could swallow a fucking pill because I was born broken. I needed to be fixed." The forearm leaves my head, and I'm yanked up to my knees. "And do you know what Detective Porter?"
I'm allowed to stand, and she wipes a tear from her cheek, staring at me as I'm shuffled toward the doorway. "What?"
"They were right, Detective. I am broken. I do need to be fixed. I am unsettled." Spinning, I catch the officer at my back off guard, slamming the shard of metal that I’d picked up from the broken voice machine when I was pressed to the floor into the side of the officer's neck. Blood sprays along the mint green of the wall as he scrambles to dislodge it, his mouth gurgling.
I vaguely hear the detective screaming in the background as a gunshot rings out, my shoulder searing with agony, "Don't kill her! Don't shoot!"
My face is slammed against the wall as I'm grabbed once more, my shoulder screaming in pain as they press their weight into me. I'm slapped with another set of cuffs, my legs chained as medics scramble to grab the bleeding officer in the room. Being pulled from the wall, I grimace, eyes latching onto the detective as I'm drug past her. I'm stomped through the hall in a blur of ugly mint green walls and metal gates, my arm and chest starting to go numb with white-hot pain. I'm shoved into a jail room that's essentially a giant tin box, and what I assume is their version of solitary confinement as my cuffs are removed. I immediately grab my shoulder, seeing the blood on my hand when I pull it away.
"An EMT will come to look at your gunshot wound in a bit. Try not to die before then." Says the officer holding my cuffs, the one behind him muttering something about how I shouldn't even get treatment.
In answer, I spit at his feet and raise my bloody hand to flip them both off.
