Page 92 of Proof

Today was different, though. They’d come after me with a new kind of weapon,hisvoice, and I had to shut that down now or I wouldn’t survive even one more day in this place. And I needed to survive. I couldn’t explain why, but it just was. When I was ready to enter the bowels of hell, it’d be on my terms, not theirs.

I wrapped my fingers around the man’s neck. It was thinner than I expected, but what did it matter? A killer was a killer and someday I’d be one for real. I’d already been branded one, so why not turn fiction into fact? Who knew if I’d get this chance again?

Cass, please open your eyes for me,the man begged. Something sent surges of electricity through my head.

God, how were they doing this? Had I gone mad like they’d promised me I would? I could feel the man’s fingers wrapped around my wrists, but he wasn’t fighting to get free. Why not? The man was facing the last moments of his life and yet he wasn’t struggling as his oxygen was slowly being cut off.

“Butterflies,” the man before me said hoarsely. “You don’t like butterflies. I promised to always protect you and that means from butterflies too.”

Holy hell, I’d completely lost it. All of this was some kind of insane dream. I released the man as my head began to pound harder and harder. I could hear coughing and gagging sounds, but I now knew that they weren’t real.

Or were they?

What the fuckwasreal?

WasIeven real anymore?

I backed up the thirteen steps it would take to reach my cot. It wasn’t thirteen steps, though. It was more like five or six before my legs hit something. I knew everything about my cell. I knew the way it smelled. I knew that the single drip of water falling from the faucet was always exactly forty seconds apart. I knew how many steps it took to get to the toilet and the sink.

So why five or six steps and not thirteen?

And butterflies? Butterflies?

I hadn’t realized that I’d spoken the word aloud until that voice, that now hoarse voice, said, “Tell me about the butterflies, Cass. What don’t you like about them?”

“What’s happening?” I whispered because I felt like I was spinning around in circles and if I stopped, I’d never be able to regain my footing.

“The butterflies. They’re beautiful, aren’t they?”

I nodded. The voice was right. They really were beautiful. Even as I considered the thought, my stomach began to twist in on itself.

“Why don’t you like the butterflies?”

Exhaustion hit me like a ton of bricks. Why was I thinking about butterflies? How did the voice even know about them? I’d never told anyone…

Several images flashed through my brain all at once and I could barely make sense of any of them. I closed my eyes and tried to focus on just one of them. It was an old, grainy photograph.

“My mother,” I murmured as I studied the picture so it would never leave me again. The woman was pretty. Dark feathery hair that fell just below her ears, a big wide smile—the natural kind someone had when they were caught off guard by the flash of the photographer’s lens. She was holding a baby in her arms.

“She’s wearing a hospital gown,” I murmured as the picture became clearer and clearer. “She’s smiling like… like she’s really happy.” I couldn’t take my eyes off the picture and that was when I saw it. “A butterfly,” I whispered. “She has… she has a butterfly on her arm.”

“Do you mean a tattoo?”

I nodded. “It’s so beautiful. She’s so beautiful.”

The darkness in my head began to clear and one of the other images started to come together. Sitting on a log, the peace and quiet of the woods around us…us.

“JJ?” I whispered. I still couldn’t see anyone except the people in my head. But I knew the man sitting on the log next to me. I would always know him because he was a part of me.I was so afraid that it wouldn’t be his voice that answered. Or maybe I was afraid itwouldbe his voice. I didn’t know what I was anymore.

“Yeah, baby, it’s me,” I heard JJ say, his voice cracking. Why was he so upset? Had someone hurt him?

“Can you open your eyes for me, my love?” he pleaded.

The endearment was what convinced me that maybe my eyes weren’t open like I thought they’d been. And that itwasJJ who was asking me to open them. Even if it was some fucked-up way to finally send me over the line that separated the sane from the insane, maybe that was a good thing. Maybe insanity meant all I’d ever see, feel, touch, and hear would be gone. I’d be gone long before my life ended in a rotting, putrid cell. Maybe insanity meant I’d get to be with JJ forever.

Insane or not, JJ wanted me to open my eyes. I only knew one way to do that, so I allowed my senses to take in my cell’s sounds and smells.

They were all wrong. There was no foul stench, no dripping faucet. I couldn’t remember sitting down but I was, and the mattress beneath me was thick and soft. I could smell sandalwood. And the sound… it was the lapping of water against something.

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