Fire Beneath Me

Mary

There is a saying ‘you should never go to sleep angry’ and people often tell you to make up after a fight right away. I think everyone should listen to that advice. I had to learn it the hard way. I could still remember the fire, somewhere beneath me, and I could still feel my daughter’s fingernails sinking into my skin as she hold on to my arm. She was scared. I could still taste the smoke in my mouth and remember how the broken glass had felt when scratching against my naked thighs as I climbed out through the window. The firemen helped us out, me and my seventeen-year-old daughter, but my husband was not with us. I did not know he was still inside the house, I believed he had already been saved. Everything happened so fast. If I knew he was still inside, they would have never gotten me out of the house. I would have never left him in that burning hell. When I realized that he was not with us, the firemen had to use force to keep me from running back in to the flames that reminded me of a midsummer bonfire, burning orange against the pale blue night sky. He was gone.

I was devastated that my last words to my husband had been I hate you. We had been fighting over such a meaningless thing as household work. Everyone had fights like that, I knew. It was stupid. After the fight, Tom had stayed downstairs, sleeping on the couch, as I went upstairs into our bedroom. I remember being so upset it was hard to calm down. I had gone through a heated, imaginary conversation inside my head until I finally fell asleep. It must have been one o’clock at night, I think. That is what I told to the police.

I was woken up by my daughter Rita an hour later as I heard how she broke one of the windows upstairs. The noise that the breaking glass made startled me awake and I ran out of the bedroom to see what had happened. But I was met with thick, black smoke and flames roaming beneath me. They were climbing up the walls like thousand red snakes. I feared that the floor would crumble under my feet and I would fall into their hungry mouths. None of the fire alarms had gone off, I realized. I could not recall when they had been last inspected, it was years ago, I knew, and I felt regretful about it now. Suddenly, Rita had emerged somewhere and was beside me now. She grabbed my arm tight and was pulling me out of the broken window. I could hear sirens. They were coming closer and closer.

But the real hell broke loose when the cause of the fire was determined. It had been intentionally started. Fire scene inspectors found traces of gasoline downstairs in the living-room where Tom had been sleeping on the couch that night. I almost fainted, so sick I felt of the thought that Tom could have committed a suicide. And like that, by burning himself alive. I simply could not believe it. But it was even harder to believe what the police told me next. They told me, I had started the fire.

No. I could have not, never. My first reaction was an hysterical snort of pure amuse but soon my disbelieve turned into a shock. The crime scene analysis revealed that Tom could not have started the fire himself. And for my utter horror, my own daughter told the police she had seen me that night, walking down the stairs with a canister in my hand. And I had a motive too, as we had just been fighting with Tom. Actually, past few months, we had been fighting almost all the time, everyday, about everything. I was angry with him that night and I had already admitted that to the police.

However, I could not remember anything. Not then, not even now. I could not believe what the police were telling me. They told me, I had gone temporarily insane and that I had poured gasoline all over our living-room, lit it up and after that I had climbed upstairs and gone back to sleep like nothing happened. The sound of the breaking window had woken me up from my trance-like state of mind. I did not remember anything like that but they would not let me go. After twenty hours of interrogation, I was so tired and in such a shock, I could not realize what was going on. So I ended up admitting, it could have happened that way. They forced me to sign a paper describing my crime. They had me then. My ‘confession’ was the most important evidence in the case. The jury did not believe it had been a temporary insanity as I had confessed, so they ruled that I had committed an intentional killing and I was sentenced to a life imprisonment without a possibility to a parole. When they were reading the verdict to me I felt so nauseous it was indescribable. It felt something like the world was floating in an empty space and I was becoming a shadow somewhere in it. I could not get a grip on reality.

Everyday after that I have been trying to recall what really happened that night. Evidence does not lie, I know, but I still found it hard to accept. I could never take back what I had done and I felt remorse so bad it was difficult to get up in the mornings. I lost everything in my life: my husband, my home and my dear daughter who never came to see me in prison. I could not blame her for that. How could I have taken away her father from her. And her mother as well. She was left completely alone. I was alone as well, as I had lost all of my friends and relatives, everyone. My life had been mediocre, for sure, but I realized now how important even mediocre was. It was invaluable. I had stolen my husband’s future as well as my own. Everyday I stared at the walls of my cell and prayed that God would have the decency to take me away and end this unbearable suffering. But the relief was never offered to me and I was forced to go on living. Every other day I believed I was guilty and every other I was convinced that I was innocent.

Harriet

I was disgusted by it all. I think that humans are animals, cruel beasts and ugly beings in their nature, but some of us are more than others. It is hard to describe what being human really means, but I knew, this was not it. Mary had been my neighbor. I had known her and Tom both. At first, they had seemed normal, decent and nice people. Every time we met on a driveway, they greeted me with a warmth in their voice, and when we had time we engaged in an open-hearted conversation. I had babysat Rita a couple of times when she was little. I adored that child. She was a happy and brave young Missy, so lively and chatty. All that changed when she became a teenager. She started arguing with her parents a lot, often I could hear yelling across the street. I did not know what they were fighting about. I pitied the poor child. She seemed so lovely even in that age. Sometimes she came to talk to me on her own, just because she was thinking of me. I liked that since I was retired and a widow. Not many teenagers cared about older people like she did.

It was hard to swallow when I heard Mary had burned her husband alive. They were fighting constantly, yes, and I would not be surprised if they had gotten a divorce, but murder was another thing. Before that, I had assumed it only happened in movies. When Mary was convicted for life in prison, I celebrated, for it had been justice. At the same time, I grieved for little Rita, who was left to cope alone in this harsh world of ours.

Rita: 20 years later

The sun was shining and the last of the lingering snow was melting rapidly. I would go rollerskating later that day if the walkways were dry enough, I thought to myself, as it had been almost two years since I had last done so. It was a good time to start adding new hobbies to my day in order to keep myself busy and fit at the same time. During winter, it was always too easy to slip from one’s routines. It did not matter too much, though, as I was naturally slim and even without any workout, I knew, I looked better than most of my friends and colleagues.

I was quite content with my life as it was. I worked as an accountant in a fairly recognized law firm, and I had a successful husband with a great reputation and financial stability, and in addition to all that, we where expecting. My pregnancy was in an early state, however. I did not care too much of having children or being pregnant but it was one of the life goals, I felt. I did not want to take maternity leave when it would be time, but I tried to remind myself that I could return to work as soon as the baby was born. It seemed as if everything would be fine on its own and I would have nothing to worry about. My life often seemed to go that way.

But it was common with people like me, I knew that much. I never really worried about others, I took care of myself first. I never felt sad when I got criticism, and it was easy for me to push myself until I succeeded. I strongly believed that quitting was never an option. I took pride in what I did without being modest like so many others. I believed that modesty could carry no one to the top. Audacity and confidence were the ones I could thank for my achievements.

There was something else as well, though. I was aware of it. I chose not to concentrate on what was probably considered something wrong in me. However, I could feel the darkness growing inside me. The scars that life had left in me, or had not, to be precise. It was like an emptiness growling inside, ever so hungry. Nothing would satisfy it, nothing was enough. I had to become always better, more defiant, more powerful. It was like a fierce predator, a mother lioness, that needed to be heard. I needed to be better than everyone else and nothing less would do. Life had come to me easy, but it was often boring, mundane, soft. I craved something that would thrill me so that the adrenaline could be felt with every cell in the body.

I had felt like that only once, that night the fire had consumed our house and swallowed it in its hunger. My mother and father, they had been fighting for years. They hated each others, or it seemed so to me. Then they had started to blame me and argue with me, sometimes about my drinking and sometimes about drugs I had been using at the time. I felt it was unnecessary as every teenager drank alcohol and used drugs in my eyes. And nevertheless, they had been hypocritical as they were drunk every other night themselves. That made me angry. For over a month before the fire, they were arguing every day, every waking moment. It had felt unbearable to me.

At first I had been scared of getting caught. That is why after burning our house down, I falsely claimed that I had seen my mother go downstairs with a canister that night. It had thrilled me to see her suffer. I had felt good, instead of feeling remorseful. It made me powerful, I could do anything. It was the darkness inside me growling like a hungry wolf. I missed the feeling.

Not even Angels

Michael

The streets were sticky from the wet sand underneath the melting snow and the cold, drizzling rain that had lasted all day long. The thin, gray veil of fog covered the city and the night resembled a movie scene I once saw. The echo, that my shoes made against the ground, sounded like rubber balls bouncing of walls. I let a warm and deep breath escape my lips forming a white cloud that disappeared into the chilly air as I finally reached the outside stairs of my home. The light over the door, that would normally be triggered by movement, did not turn on. Without it, it took a good while for me to find the keyhole in the dark.

When I got inside I noticed that the outside light was not turned on at all. That could only mean that Anna had not been home since she left to work early in the morning. So, she was doing overtime but had not bothered to inform me. That was typical of her. Anna had lousy concentration skills and she did not know how to multi-task so she often simply forgot to call me. She would probably be running all over the city trying to carry out all her client’s wishes and had forgotten to look at the time. She worked as a party planner. I was not worried since all the stores would be closed soon and she would have to give up for today. I turned on every light in the house to expel the darkness, undressed my soaking wet clothes leaving them lying in the corner of the bathroom and ordered two pizzas from the restaurant nearby. I was so hungry I could almost see the hole in my stomach.

I had waited too long and it was too late at night. It had never taken this long for Anna to come home. The hand on the clock told me it was 1 AM and it was pitch black outside. I could not sleep for my stomach was turning from all the greasy food and the anxious feeling that something was wrong. Right then the telephone rang and I picked up the receiver in such a hurry it almost slipped my hand. On the other end a police officer introduced himself with a deep, raspy voice. I knew then, something bad had happened.

Detective Inspector Lucas Alby

The killer had no motive, whatsoever. He had no prior connection to the victim or at least we had not found one. Neither did he have any kind of previous criminal record. He was homeless and an alcoholic but that was all. People who had known him told us he often read the bible in a corner of some street and that he liked to chat with the bypassers who were kind enough to stay and listen. We heard that he had been a nice and friendly man with calm manners and no aggressive tendencies. In addition, no one who had known him knew that he carried a gun. The man himself had not said a word no matter how hard I tried to get him to talk. After two hours, he had not told me even his name.

The victim, Anna Evans, was thirty-two-years-old, career driven woman who had a husband but no children. The night when the crime had occurred, Anna Evans was working late and after finishing up she had gone to the gym that was located in the same building as her office. She had been in the showers at the time the killer surprised her. No one knew how the man had gotten in as all the doors were locked and the gym was private. Nothing made sense. Anna seemed to have no dirty secrets or any kind of relation to anything illegal.

I fed in my third coin into the vending machine which had already swallowed my two earlier attempts without a response. I pressed the button and this time thin coffee poured in to the bottom of the cardboard cup in a lazy dribble. I took the cup, and to my nuisance, it did not feel hot enough. I dragged myself back into the interrogation room. This time I simply sat on the chair facing the homeless man and stared at him. I said nothing and the clock on the wall moved forward slowly. Ten minutes, fifteen, twenty. I finished my coffee and then continued to wait. I did not know what to say. At last, I got up to leave and right then the man suddenly whispered:

“Have you ever seen an angel?”

I was taken aback by the question. I sat back down and the legs of my chair made a squeaking noise against the floor. I flinched as I was well aware how overweight I had gotten in the past few years.

“Angels? You mean chubby, naked children with golden hair and wings?” I asked as I was thinking of a play the fifth-graders had made last Christmas. My daughter had played the lead.

“No. Angels are not like that in real life. Have you not read what the bible says about angels?” He asked and leaned forward in his chair. I leaned back as a counter reaction and raised my chin up. I shook my head.

“Angels are not like you think at all. They are scary. They were created before man was. They are ancient. I saw angels last night.”

“I see. And how were the angels then?”

“They came to me in a blinding bright light. At first I could not see anything. But when my eyes grew accustomed to the light I saw them. And I knew right away, they were angels. They had four wings and burning wheels underneath them. And they had four faces. They were an utterly terrifying sight”, the man explained and I leaned forward so that our faces were real close now. I could see my reflection on his huge, sky blue eyes. I looked tired, I noticed.

“And what did these angels want?”

“They talked to me without opening their mouths. They were inside my head and I new what they wanted me to do. They wanted me to shoot that woman. They told me there was a devil growing inside her. I did not want to harm her but their will was stronger than my own.”

“Where did you get the gun?” I asked and pondered on what he meant by devil inside her.

“I got it from the angels”, he said. I could see sincerity in his blue eyes. He had to be beyond mad.

Detective Inspector Lucas Alby: five days later

Psychiatric evaluation ruled the man sane. That meant, he would get convicted for life. The whole story about the angels was ridiculous and I now believed he was simply lying in order to reduce his sentence. The autopsy had showed something interesting, however. Anna Evans had been pregnant. She had probably not been aware of it even herself as it was in an early stage. There was nothing out of the ordinary about the fetus. It was not a devil’s child, I believe. My theory was that Anna had perhaps had an affair or something like that, that had gotten her killed. However, there was no evidence to back that up. It bothered me continuously. I was a Christian myself but not profound: I visited church every Christmas, I had a picture of Jesus in my living room and my children were baptized but that was all. I had never read the bible and I had absolutely no idea what it said about angels. To me angels had always meant chubby children or creatures made out of bright light who’s job it was to protect humans. Or they would have been if I believed they were real in the first place.

Then something unexpected happened. After the case, my eleven-year-old daughter Mona started telling weird things. She said someone was standing outside her bedroom door at nights and that she could see bright light coming under the closed door. I had told nothing about the case to my family as I liked to keep my work and my family life strictly separated. So naturally, I thought she was just having nightmares. But then she told me that one night that someone had opened her door and come inside. At first she had gone blind but then she saw and she told me:

“It was like human but not really and it had six wings and it covered its face with two of them. And it had wheels instead of legs and they were on fire. Then it lowered its wings uncovering its face and I saw it had eyes all over its head. It did not speak to me but I know it's coming back tonight.”

I was petrified but I thought Mona had to had read my case files that I had one day carelessly left lying on the kitchen counter for a while. She did not admit to that but I guessed she was afraid that I would get angry. She was right. I would be furious.

I decided to stay awake that night and I sat in an armchair in our living room facing the door to my daughter’s bedroom. I sat there all night until my eyelids went heavy and my eyes felt coarse as if they had sand in them. But I managed to stay awake and come morning nothing had happened. I saw no one in the house and when Mona woke up she talked nothing about anyone visiting her. I went to work feeling dead tired and fell asleep on my desk while doing some paperwork.

I was startled awake by someone knocking on the door of my office. I urged the visitor to come in. Michael Evans, the husband of Anna Evans, stepped inside. I felt confused by the sudden visit but tried to straighten my blouse and got up to give the man a handshake. Then I offered him a chair but he would not sit down.

“I have seen them too. The angels. They came to me last night”, Michael explained to me with a calm voice. He seemed too calm as if he was in a trance of some sort. I could not make up an answer. I did not have an explanation to it all.

“They told me you have a daughter. They want her. That's what they told me.” I got goosebumps and I could feel cold sweat running down the back of my blouse. My heart was racing, I felt unable to breathe. What is going on?

“I went to your house this morning. I got your address from a kind police officer when I called here last night. You were not here. And you were not home this morning when I came by. You daughter opened the door. She told me you had already left for work.” Michael was explaining all this to me with a tranquil tone. I got an unnerving suspicion. Michael had a connection to his wife, obviously, but not to the man who had shot her. However, now he had met my daughter who claimed to have seen angels as well. The wheels inside my brain were turning swiftly as I thought of the possibility that the angels could have an reasonable explanation after all. I jumped out of my chair and ran straight outside into the gray and rainy afternoon. I got in my car and drove home as fast as I could. I had a feeling, I was in a hurry.

I got home too late. Inside my daughter’s room, against the window, hung her lifeless body from a rope. Her face had turned blue and her swollen tongue was hanging outside. On the dresser was a note. I recognized Mona’s handwriting. It read: No one can save us. Not even angels. 

Who were you?

Brigit

I sat on the floor and stared at the dead body lying lifelessly there. The face was familiar yet not. This is what I looked like when I was alive? I could see wrinkles and deep lines on the skin I did not remember and the glare in the eyes was empty. I had never thought myself as particularly beautiful but I never thought I was this ugly either. This was the first time seeing myself with an outsider’s eye. I snorted and lifted my head. The clock on the wall was ticking loudly. Two hours it was now. I had died two hours ago and no one else was aware yet. Outside the sky was beautifully clear and the air was vibrating hot. There were great tits and bullfinches singing as they flew in and out of the bird feeder gathering seeds. The small window in the corner of the kitchen had been left open and the smell of my corpse invited flies and fleas inside. I had not eaten anything that day but death had taken away the hunger. And the thirst too. I had grabbed the glass full of white wine with me as I went down and the wine had dried out all over the cabinet door and the floor. There was a big piece broken from the glass but it was otherwise intact, to my surprise.

Long five hours had passed before I heard someone coming through the front door. I stood up and waited until a familiar figure emerged into the kitchen. As soon as Nana saw me she screamed and dropped her purse, she always carried her working clothes in, on the floor. Nana was still working as a nurse in a nearby hospital even though she had already reached the retirement age four years ago. She was wearing her work shoes, you know, the big and bulky health shoes that looked like little, black boats. Her old knees made a crack as she went down to tend my corpse. She acted as a professional but it was too late, obviously. She called 911 and I was listening to her sobbing. I rested my hand gently on her shoulder but she could not feel it. She did not know I was still there.

Finally the police and the ambulance arrived and I was eavesdropping on their conversation. Someone made a claim that it had probably been some kind of a seizure. I wanted to scream that he was wrong but they could not hear me anyway. I would just have to wait until the autopsy results came in as at that point it would became apparent I had been poisoned. Someone had poisoned me, but who? I really wanted to know. It would have been possible to anyone to poison my wine especially when everyone knew I was the only one in the house who drank Pinot Grigio. The perpetrator could be anyone close to me. That felt so painful I could not leave before I knew who it had been.

That meant, unfortunately, that I was stuck in the house. It was not too long that every suspect had gathered in that house. Those were the people I had loved the most: Nana, my sister and my brother, my best friend, my psychologist and even the old man living next-door who I used to help with chores and gardening. I was standing at the living-room doorway overseeing them. Which one of you is my Judas? Who could have murdered me? Instead of sorrow I felt anger and disappointment. I think it was due to my new form as I could feel a difference in my soul. It felt empty in a way it never had before.

Nana was sitting on the cream-colored couch, her face buried into her hands, she was sobbing. The next-door neighbor sat on her right side and gently brushed her back. Beth, my sister, sat on Nana’s left side, staring emotionless with a wineglass on her hand. We had both loved our alcohol but as I drank white she preferred red. My brother Paul was standing in the middle of the room and pacing nervously around from time to time. He had always been emotionally reserved. I knew he would feel uncomfortable as he did not know how to cry or comfort others. My psychologist, Mr. Allen, or to me just Thomas, sat alone in the corner on a dark-green armchair observing others. That was his job, after all. Helen, who was my best friend, was the dearest to me. We had been friends since childhood. We had both been over thirty and unmarried before I died. That had made us even closer, we were like an old couple the two of us, I wanted to think. Helen was sitting on the floor with her legs crossed. She reminded me a lot of myself. Her hair was blond like mine but longer and had a warmer tone in it. She had tied it up on a loose bun and her make up was running down her face as she cried. Helen was smaller than me, and prettier. I did not feel jealousy about that though as I admired her so. I felt suddenly so cold when I thought of her as a suspect. I would not believe that. I was sure, that it had not been Helen.

At first, I could not believe anyone of them had murdered me but as I started to ponder on it I realized that everyone of them, surprisingly, had a motive. Nana had blamed me for grandpa’s death. That was kind of true since I had gotten myself in so much debt they needed to take care of me. They had took me in and used all their savings to pay out my debt, but it was not enough. My grandpa had to return to work from his retirement to earn more money. And soon it got too much for him and he had suffered a heart attack. I knew Nana had blamed me even though she was still nice to me. At times I could sense the hostility in her voice. Beth had the very same reason to hate me and she was brutally open about it. She had told me I was a burden to anyone who loved me. I had not taken that too seriously though, as she was an alcoholic and had recently gone through a divorce. Beth was angry with everyone in her life.

Paul, on the other hand, had stayed out of everything going on in our family. After our parents had died he became a hermit. But I knew he had a reason to hate me as well. When we were kids I had bullied my brother so much that that was probably the reason he was such a socially awkward loner right now. I had not done that on purpose, we were children and children bully each other, but I had been too mean, I guess, and he had been such a sensitive child. I had apologized of course but I knew it was because of me that he feared people even as an adult.

My psychologist, Thomas, what about him then. I was convinced that he was some sort of a sociopath himself. He was constantly trying to scare me and provoke me on purpose to get a reaction out of me. He seemed to enjoy my pain. Even though, I did open up to him, I did not trust him. Some instinct told me not to. Thomas thought it was just my imagination. He said it was convenient to me to not wholly trust him as that way I would not have to be totally honest with myself.

Lastly, there was old Otto, our lovely neighbor. No one could think anything bad about the man if they had not seen him get angry. He was conservative beyond belief, extremely racist and potty-mouthed when challenged into a political debate. If someone had a differing opinion he got real scary. Person with such strong believes was impossible to live with without getting into a fight with him now and then. I had fought with him sometimes. They say though, that a barking dog does not bite, but I was not sure about that.

One of you? Who was it? Show yourself.

Helen

I murdered my best friend. I had felt as if the space was getting too tiny for the two of us. One of us had to go or neither of us would get forward. We had both known our relationship was not a healthy one and was preventing us both living our life normally. Brigit had been positive that we should stay together but she did not convince me. Mr. Allen had told Brigit that she would need to cut contact with me because I was bad influence to her. What kind of a psychologist would say that, I did not know, but I thought he was right about going our separate ways. I had everything better in my life than she did, though. I was more beautiful than Brigit, and more successful and I had once gotten engaged but Brigit had ruined it for me. That was when I started to get bitter.

I solved the problem by poisoning her. Now I was sitting on a living-room floor and watched everyone around me. They did not know I was finally free.

Brigit

The days went by and I roamed the house restlessly. I knew that if I stayed too long I would not be able to move forward. I would get angrier and more bitter as the days passed by, until I would forget who I had been when I was alive. The human in me would wear off and I would became a creature of nightmares. I could feel it was already happening. But I could not leave before I knew who had murdered me.

At last, the police came back. Thomas came with them. What is happening? They told Nana to sit down and then started to talk. I was standing right next to them but they did not notice.

“We could confirm that Brigit had poisoned her wine herself earlier that day. I'm so sorry Mrs. Hayden”, one of the police explained. I could not understand. Big tears were running down Nana’s face.

“Excuse me, I have to say, that I don't believe it was Brigit per se but rather that it was Helen”, Thomas said. Nana looked at him straight in his eyes and answered:

“I think so too.”

I still did not get it. How could my best friend had done something like that.

“I think”, Thomas started saying, “Brigit never knew Helen was not real. She could never admit that she had invented Helen herself.”

That is when I saw Helen standing beside me. She told me:

 “Do you get it now? We were two souls trapped in one body. I always knew but you didn't want to see. But now we are free. No I can be with you and you don't have to go away when I come out.” 

Mother's Embrace

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Herman Enfield

Every one of them still alive had to be taken. The sight was hellish and the smell was even worse than that. I was well aware that people unable to process past traumatic experiences often fill the void by collecting things. I had seen that happen numerous times. Most of the things people suffering from hoarding collect is junk such as broken household items, excessive amounts of cheap clothes and electronics that are never put to a use and still have price tags on them. Piles of old magazines and news papers. Then there is the genuine garbage no one could justify, for example plastic litter, used paper towels, empty cans of food, basically any kind of waste. But animals? Animals that are reliant of their owner, unable to defend themselves. There were dozens of cats in the house as well as dogs, and from most of them you could see that they had not been properly taken care of. The dogs were caged outside without water or exercise and the cats, none of them neutered, were kept inside the house. They had defecated all around and some of them were not getting along. There had been fights as was proven by cuts and bite marks on them. We had already found couple of the cats dead beneath all the stuff and litter. It was hard to identify them as cats at first, so long had they been there. One of the cages outside had a dead dog in it as well. I asked how all this was possible but Mrs. Alborough could not answer since she was obviously ashamed. I could feel my stomach turning. I had dogs of my own, you know, two of them: a German shepherd called Chili and Bumba, who was a mixed breed of Basenji and Norwegian elkhound.

The cleaning team was ready to start their workload as soon as all the animals were removed from the property. All of them were to be examined by veterinarian and I knew that some of them would unfortunately be too socially unstable to be re-homed. The youngest cats were not accustomed to be handled by humans and some of the dogs were quite aggressive. I was furious. Who would not be. Though I was aware, that as a psychologist, I could not afford to pick sides and show to Mrs. Alborough the rage I was feeling towards her, I was still just a human being. That was why I needed couple minutes outside in order to calm my breath before going back in.

“Alright Mrs. Alborough. May I call you Emily? What about a nice little talk? I imagine this must be extremely hard for you.” She tried to dry out her tears on the sleeve of her worn-out blouse and I could hear her swallowing loudly.

“Can you tell me how you feel when you see your animals being taken away.”

“I feel bad. Those are my pets. How can someone just come here and take them away? I mean, I know I haven't been able to take care of them as much as I would have wanted to but they are still mine. Maybe if the government paid me more fees. My retirement money is not enough to take care of everybody. But nonetheless, they are my children.” This is how you take care of your children then, I thought but answered instead:

“How did you feel when we found that cat dead inside the walls? It must have upset you. What about the other one that had died in the cellar? Or the dog outside which had starved to death?” Pictures of dead, half-rotten carcasses were going through my mind.

“Oh, I felt so very ashamed. I didn't want anyone to see that. But I never meant any harm to any of those animals.”

“But can you not agree that if you are not able to take care of them all, maybe you should give some of them to be relocated to a home where they could receive the care they need?”

“Oh no, no. They are all so very dear to me. They are my children. You wouldn't give away your children, would you? I don't want to give them away, any of them.” Mrs. Alborough was sobbing and I could see tears running down on her round blushy cheeks. Strand of her greasy blond hair was wet from the sweat on her forehead. She is ugly, I thought to myself.

It was midday, and I was just leaving for lunch when I got the call. I tossed aside my jacket, I had just seconds earlier taken from the coat rack to put on. It landed on my oakwood desk. I sat down to my chair and lifted the phone. I introduced myself and waited for a while to get an answer from the other end.

“They found another surprise in the house. The workers who were checking the structures found a nice surprise underneath the cellar floor.” More dead cats, I guessed and rubbed my forehead.

“A dead baby. Actually, born dead. There was not much of it left really, so it took them a good while to figure out what they were dealing with. The baby had been there for a long time. Someone had wrapped it up in a big towel and then put into a plastic bag.” I could feel the collar of my blouse tightening and I felt as if it was hard to breathe. Suddenly, I was not hungry anymore.

“The police have been in the house. They took Mrs. Alborough back to the station. They would like you to interrogate the woman as they think you could maybe get something out of her. So far she hasn't said anything else but made a claim that she didn't know what was under there.”

“Alright, I'm on my way as soon as I cancel my next appointment.” I took a deep breath. I had no clue, whatsoever, what was going on in that woman’s head, and I was not sure I could work that out.

The first half-an-hour went by with me trying to get the woman to calm down. Emily Alborough was in an incoherent state of mind. She was trying to say something, I could not make sense of, and paced around the room in a restless manner. I sat there in silence and waited. Finally she sat down across me, wiped her face on a paper towel, that I had kindly offered to her, and took a deep, trembling breath. Then she waited for me to say something first but I stayed quiet since that was often the best way to pressure someone into speaking. I waited for her to feel uncomfortable enough so she would have to break the silence. Mrs. Alborough scrunched the paper towel into pieces and bit her lip anxiously. I waited.

“I don't want to talk,” she finally blurted out. I kept waiting without opening my mouth.

“It happened so long ago, there is no need to talk about it really. I meant no harm to anyone. I simply didn't know better. Moreover, it was my daughter who had the baby. Janice was completely out of control. I didn't know how to keep her disciplined.” I felt a warm feeling of success. She turned out to be easy, after all. She seemed like a person who had been so lonely for so long she had a natural need to be heard. Perhaps no one had listened to her before. I figured, that would be because it was obvious to anyone that she was not particularly bright. I could sense that she had probably been a misfit as a child. I tapped the surface of the table with my fingertips making a rushing noise and then I looked her right into her eyes. She looked back at me and seemed a bit taken aback by the gesture.

“Well. I guess I could tell you. But only you! And you have to tell the police I didn't mean anything bad to happen! I think they are intimidating. They seem to accuse me before listening to what I have to say.”

“Sure Emily. I will talk to them. I was brought here just for you.”

Janice

After my father died I had kept no contact with my mother, whatsoever. So, naturally, I was surprised to get a call from the police. I knew very well that my mother had been struggling after my father died and I had told her I wanted nothing to do with her. I had heard from my father’s side of the family, that mother had started to take in animals from shelters and it had turned into a messy problem. Mother had always been obsessive about everything, including me. She had embraced me or that is what she used to say to me when I was little. However, what that really meant was obsessive control. I guessed, that after she lost me, she had felt a need to have something to replace me and that is why the animals came into the picture.

My mother treated me like I was a baby even when I was a teenager. I had no permission to leave the house alone. I was her only child so I understood she wanted to protect me but it was more than that, though. I could not even go to a store without my mother or my father going with me. I mean, father would have let me go I am sure, but not my mother. That is why I escaped through my bedroom window during nights, to go to a house party or to some nightclub. I was underage but I was tall for my age and looked older than I was so I could easily sneak into bars. But mother caught me soon and put an end to it. She put a lock on my door and my window, and outside school I was kept locked in my room all times. It was too late though since I had already gotten pregnant.

Mother told me, that if my father would become aware of the pregnancy, he would throw me out. She had a lot of power over me back then. So in order to hide the pregnancy from my father, me and my mother tried our best to hide it. I used big, baggy clothes to hide the tummy. At the time, I was hardly eating anything so my belly did not even look as if I was pregnant. Mother was constantly verbally abusing me and she also brought dozens of mirrors into my room to shame me. I needed to see what I had become, she said. I could not escape it. I was a sinner. Nevertheless, she loved me and she would forgive me, she said. I felt like I was going mad and after a while I broke all the mirrors in the room. I remember sitting on the floor, covered with pieces of glass and blood on my hands.

When it was finally time to deliver the baby, mother had boiled water, kitchen scissors and a string to tie the umbilical cord with. She had brought me towels and placed them under me on the bed. I went into labor and it felt like it lasted forever, it was extremely painful. When the baby came out at last, there was nothing but silence. It was not breathing. I had known from the beginning that I would not be allowed to keep the baby, but this was worse. I yelled at my mother and tried to get up but she just calmly covered the baby with towels and said:

“It's already dead, Janice. There's nothing we can do.”

The days went by and I grew more and more depressed. My mother repeatedly told me that the baby had born dead because of my sins and I started to believe it. I blamed myself for murdering my own child.

After that, I wanted nothing to do with anyone. I had been away from school so much I felt left out. Mother trusted me even less than before. My father had to pick me up from school everyday even though it was only two kilometers away from our house. My father was the only one who seemed to care about me and then he died in a car accident. My mother got even worse after that and I knew I would not stay there. My only friend, who had gone everything with me without judging me, was Missy, my big, fat cat who had yellow stripes on her fur. I was trying to run away from mother with the cat with me, but my mother and I got into a fight at the door and I had to leave without Missy.

Herman Enfield

I had spent days with Mrs. Alborough, talking. I had been right with my suspicions that she had a need to open up to someone. She had never had a true friend in her life but now she considered me as one. I had talked with her daughter, Janice, also. All those dirty secrets the family had been hiding all these years, were now coming into the light for the first time.

Emily Alborough had been an orphan who had absolutely no information about her biological parents, none. She had been raised in an orphanage were she had been abused by the nurses as well as the other children. And that was the reason she had always felt a great need to be loved. Emily had gotten married right after she had turned 18 but the marriage did not meet her expectations for intimate relationship. It had been a practical one as her husband had supported her financially and she had not worked a day in her life. Her social life had been non-existing. Soon after the wedding they had discovered that Mrs. Alborough was not able to have children of her own, so they had adopted a little girl. On paper everything seemed to be okay and no one had been aware of Mrs. Alborough’s compulsive behavior. She had smothered the child from day one, and never told her, she had been adopted. That came to light only during my sessions with her.

Janice Alborough had become pregnant when she was a teenager. That is when the situation had escalated as Emily started locking her daughter up to her room and severely abuse her. It was clear from Mrs. Alborough’s words that she had been jealous of her daughter’s pregnancy and had feared that she would lose control over her if Janice was to become a mother herself. Nevertheless, that problem had been taken care of when the baby was born dead. Whether that was Mrs. Alborough’s doing, I could not be sure. She never admitted having anything to do with that. Emily had wrapped the baby and the placenta in a towel and then placed them into a plastic bag. She and her husband had been renovating their home at a time and so she managed to hide her dirty secret under the cellar’s floor boards and kept it between herself and her daughter for all these years. After her husband died and Janice Alborough ran away from her mother, Emily started to fill the void by taking in animals to act as a substitute for her lost daughter. Regardless, she would start showing abusive behavior towards the animals as she had for her child.

On paper, Mrs. Alborough received multiple diagnoses but even so, they did not depict the whole nature of her problems. Neither I nor anyone else could ever wholly understand her actions and the reasoning behind them. This case was one that stuck with me for a long time. And first time in my life, I could not feel empathy for my patient. There was something utterly disgusting about the woman. Of course, the way she had been abused as a child explained something about her own actions but nevertheless, the way she presented herself made me feel pure hatred for her. She had clearly shown some abnormal tendencies even as a child and I had a feeling that the abuse she had endured was partly due to her own behavior. I strongly believed that something had been off about her since birth. I could not help myself with those strong feelings about the woman, even thought I knew I should not have felt them.

 
After the case, I decided to retire. I was already at that age anyway.