The blood had stopped coming out by the time the police had arrived. I hadn’t gotten very far in cleaning myself off by then, but with how much of a mess I had made I don’t think anyone could fault me there. They told me to freeze, put my hands up, and various other things that the police normally say. After all that was over and they had me safely in their control was when the questions started. Common stuff: who I was, what I was doing there, what had happened… who was the dead guy? I couldn’t answer any of those properly.
Then the hard questions came, like how he died and what was I doing when he died. I don’t know remember if it was before or after those questions, but I do distinctly remember them asking if I understood the rights as they were read to me. The answer to that one was yes.
They got me sufficiently cleaned up, but I think that was mostly to find out if any of the blood one me was mine. I hadn’t been hurt at all, at least I don’t remember being hurt. They gave me new clothes and shoes and put me in a room for a while. Various people came in to visit me and then leave. No one I knew, but my memory isn’t what it used to be. The last gentleman was very nice, he at least talked to me.
“What happened in there?” he asked.
I simply looked at him. He smiled back.
“You do remember what happened, don’t you?”
I looked over to the wall to see that there was a large crack running from the floor up four or five feet. It didn’t branch off into other cracks, though the edges around it did look brittle and crumbly.
“Look,” he said, “if you’re waiting for your lawyer, that’s your right, but I need you to-”
“Is he dead?”
“What?” he asked.
I looked back over to him from the crack. He had heard me, there was no doubt of that judging from the look in his eyes, I think he was just trying to figure me out.
“Yes,” he said and blinked a few times. “Yes, he is dead. Does that mean anything to you?”
I looked away. For a moment I wondered if I rammed my shoulder into the crack hard enough then I could escape. I wondered what was outside that room, if I’d have to go on a rampage to espcae. Like in The Terminator, going door to door, blasting my way out.
“Well?” he asked.
Then again, the Terminator was blasting his way in, not out.
“It means I don’t have to kill him again,” I said plainly.
“So you admit to it?”
“I admit to killing my father.”
