Autopsy of a Mind

Chapter 115: Empty Inside

"Does she still give you the milk?" the psychiatrist asked. Carol shook her head. 

"I didn't take it for a couple of weeks, so she thought the effect was wearing off on me. I don't know what motivated her, but she stopped putting the pills in the milk." She frowned. "They tasted horrid, too."

To think a mother wouldn't take that into factor, either. But why did this mother want to get rid of her own child?

"But do you know why your mother did so?" I found myself asking. The psychiatrist gave me a pointed look. Carol turned to me, burying her face in my arm. It was a manipulative tactic to make me feel sorry for her. I did feel sorry for what had happened to her, but that didn't mean she would escape the consequences.

"I don't think she wants me in her life anymore. She was talking to one of her boyfriends a while back about how she wished I was never born." Her voice was low and emotionless. "She thought I was sleeping but I was awake. She told them that it was hard to feed a child and that I was expensive and high maintenance." She hung her head. 

There was still time to tell her that her mother was lazy and a scumbag for making her believe she was unwanted and easily disposable. Right now, all I could think was the plans to get rid of her, and the shock of hearing her mother say such vile things had urged her to try her hand at choking someone. 

"If you had something to say to her, what would you say?" Carol looked intrigued. 

"I would wish that I had never been born, either." She shrugged. That left me in agony. "No man or woman should bring a child into the world if they cannot take care of it. I am old enough to know that she is a whore and she still can get unemployment benefits and food from several government schemes, but she chose not to do it because she needed to show off she was well off to the men who sauntered into the home at all hours of the day to fuck my mother."

The language was so crude that I could see what she heard on a daily basis.

"What did you call her?" the psychiatrist beckoned. The words were said so calmly and with a detachment that I couldn't see the hatred for her mother. It was all matter-of-fact.

"A whore. That's what they call her, right?" She went on to jot down the various names people called her mother and her. "I was actually curious why the men and mother seemed to enjoy such an uncivilized and messy act but when they asked me to join in... I was baffled." The child didn't flinch away. 

Something inside her was changed. Or was it something that had been inside her and had been activated due to abuse? So many questions, such little information. 

"And you don't feel bad calling her that? It is a derogatory term." 

Carol looked bewildered. "I don't understand why. People are calling her what she is. It's like calling a rose a rose. She indeed is a whore, so she is called a whore. She enjoys being called that, too. Just not outside our home."

I patted her hand. "But why are none of you asking me anything about Patrick and Tyler?" she blinked in confusion. "Is that not why you called me?"

I stared in confusion. "You used the older lady to bring me out of the house, didn't you?" she turned to me with a calculating look. "I don't know why you thought bringing me out in front of everyone and claiming my mother is bad helped me. Now everyone knows what she is and I can't stay with her." She rolled her eyes. "You adults think you know everything. Did I ask you to help me? You just poked your nose into my situation because you felt it would make you feel better about yourself." She paused. She had more to say, I could see from the look in her eyes. 

"But you never think about the consequences of your actions. What will happen to me next? My mother will be arrested on charges of prostitution, child abuse, attempted murder, and soliciting a child if I am not wrong. And I? I killed two kids but you can't do anything to punish me. Then? What happens to me? No one will take in a kid who murdered others because they found pleasure in it. Then, do I roam the streets?"

The psychiatrist was shocked but both of us kept our expressions hidden. 

"Who told you that your mother will be charged? Or that you won't be punished?" The emphasis was not on the person who told her but the implication was that the information was wrong. The statement had revealed that she thought adults particularly selfish and those that did things to wet their conscience. 

"One of my mother's friends," she said matter-of-factly. The psychiatrist's face lit up with excitement. We had found out about another player who was unknown to us before.

"Oh, do you like her very much?" she asked. Carol scrunched her nose. 

"Who told you the friend was a girl? He's a boy. He's one of my mother's boyfriends. But he's nice. He didn't ask me to watch my mother being fucked like the others. He didn't hurt me, either." She supplied us with a small smile. 

"He sounds really nice," the psychiatrist stated. "Then, do you think he would take you in? You're close with him, right?" The information was necessary. We needed all people who nurtured her growth to be interviewed. 

"No, he comes every week but he told me I wouldn't see him any longer." She frowned. "Something about me being given over to someone who was just like him." 

Someone who was just like him. 

"And how is he?" the psychiatrist asked. Carol looked up with a menacing smile. 

"Like me, of course. One look in his eye and you will know that he is a good man. But he's empty, too. Just like me."

Empty. Carol turned to me. "I see it in you too. The emptiness. Are you the one he was speaking of?" she asked, her tilted to the side. 

"I don't know the man you are speaking about," I admitted. It intrigued me, though. He had given her to someone just like him. And this man was just like this little girl? 

So, he had an urge to kill. I mulled it over in my head.

"And how did he know you were just like him?" I asked, my eyes trained on her. 

"I was allowed to bring over a few friends for a sleepover a couple of months ago," she admitted conspiratorially. I raised my brow. "Of course, no one came to find my mother and we were playing in the living area for a long time at night."

Playing. "The girls wanted to see who was most strong so we ended up wrestling." She smirked at the memory. "I had seen some of the men choke my mother so I tried it on a girl." She started to giggle, frightening the psychiatrist. "It was so much fun. Her face became so red and she was struggling to breathe. The others didn't pull me off so I watched for a while." She was staring at her open palm in fascination. "He walked in on this happening and pulled me off the girl." She rolled her eyes. 

"He saw you?" I confirmed.

"Yeah, he brought it aside and asked me what I was doing. So I told him." Silence. 

"What did he say?" 

"He smiled. He said he was proud of me for finally realizing my potential. So he taught me how to strangle someone. He knew I enjoyed watching them struggle and seeing the light in their eyes slowly fade, so he told me how I could do that." 

I felt my body freeze. A man who was proficient in the art of murder had helped another budding killer to hone her art and realize her fantasy. What kind of wretched story was this?

"Did he also teach you how to cut?" the psychiatrist asked. She shook her head. 

"No, he didn't like that one bit. He said that I had ruined his plan by doing it." She stared at the two of us. "Why did he say that? He said that me doing it gave you all a clue to who I was." She frowned. 

"Did you not want to be found?" I asked. She had made it abundantly clear that she was playing the cat and mouse game. She wanted people to know how she was living, but at the same time, she knew that it would not help her situation. Therefore, confusion arose.

"No," she said. "I never consulted him about where I would strangle them or who it would be. He told me to follow my heart and create the art that I wanted to." 

Create art. 

"And your heart followed you there." She nodded vehemently. 

"But don't be frustrated. It is not my mother's fault that I am this way. I had always been like this," she smiled. "It is thanks to her that I found out how much I like it."

She wished to thank her mother. 

"You have no resentment for her?" I asked, incredulous. 

"No, I don't. And if you had any sense in you. You wouldn't resent yourself or your circumstances either. You keep those urges bottled up too much. No wonder he passed me on to you." She rolled her eyes and scooted away from me. 

What did this mean? And how was I supposed to read the meaning between the lines?