I did it

by Shahnaz T.M.

Horrific Scribes Extremity Rating:

Cassie stood unfazed in her heavily carpeted hallway, her hands muddied by the insides of the man she once loved, gripping the blood-soaked knife tighter as if letting go would be seen as an act of penance.

Yet she was cleared of all wrongdoing. Despite her fingerprints on the murder weapon. Despite her clear-eyed confession. She walked out a free woman, like it had all been a drug-induced nightmare.

This disturbed her.

So, she turned herself in, insisting she be prosecuted for murder. But the lawyers questioned her “feminine” strength. Psychiatrists diagnosed her with unheard syndromes, and doctors doubted her knowledge of human anatomy (she’d plunged the knife into his aorta with precision).

When no one believed her, she killed again. Before witnesses, before cops, even before cameras. But no matter how many people she murdered, she was always acquitted.

She turned hollow. The living had died, and the dead had become illusions. So, she put a gun in her mouth and pulled the trigger, freeing herself from the eternal nightmare of a world where she would never be taken seriously.

She woke up in an isolated bed. The walls paged red, information scrolling in the air like clouds, like she had woken in digital hell.

Two fuzzy shapes walked in wearing long-white robes, their arms flashing green.

“Hello Cassie. We’re here to deliver the results of your mid-life renewal test. We regret to inform you that you’ve failed the morality simulation: the willingness to commit a crime in the absence of consequences. Your life contract will therefore be annulled.”

“You believe me! You believe me! You believe me!” she repeated as if in a trance, her eyes gleaming and her face in rapturous joy as the neon-dyed poison dripped into her veins.