Piece of Work

A few days later, there was a strong knock at the front door while I was reading a book in the same room as Mom. From the way I was standing to be in the same room as her, she knew that something was going on, but she never questioned me about it.

"Does Faye Kane live here?" a strong man's voice demanded when my mother opened the door.

"Yes?" Mom answered with question seasoning her voice. When she turned to look at me, her eyes were worried and shocked.

"We're going to have to take her into custody," another voice followed up. I stood up, putting my book down on the chair behind me, prepared for them to handcuff me. I knew that this day would come soon, where they would narrow the suspects down to me.

The police walked into the house and put my hands behind my back, locking the metal cuffs around my small wrists. The look Mom gave me, one of horror and shame, would plague me the most, out of everything that I'd done. She didn't even know what I had done, not at the time.

A couple of different policemen interrogated me about where I was that night, clichéd stuff like that. I humored them for a while before laughing and telling them exactly what had happened.

They were shocked that I was confessing so soon, but they didn't exactly complain about it, taking in the information that I gave them before walking out of the room. Soon after, a burly man came in and escorted me back to my cell.

The people there looked at me kind of funny, since I was a little young to be held in an adult facility. But, I was turning eighteen in a month anyway, and I was going to be tried as an adult.

It took a few months for my trial to come around, and when it did, I was ready. It wasn't like I had ever worked to hide what I did. To me, it was a freeing experience, even when I was behind bars. At least in jail, there was no Ben. He could not hit me, he could not degrade me. It was just me with my thoughts, and I praised myself for taking my life into my own hands instead of waiting for it to play out the way I wanted.

Mom came to visit me once while I was in prison, and she begged me to plead innocence due to insanity. That, however, didn't make any sense to me. I wasn't insane. Sure, I was driven to desperate measures because Ben hit me and I felt there was no other way out, but that didn't make me insane. In fact, killing him was the sanest and most empowering way that I could have ended the whole problem. In my mind, anyway.

In court, I had to repeat my story once again, and the jury listened, looking at me, their eyes judging. I just told my attorney that I was going to plead guilty, but the court wanted to hear my whole story anyway.

A couple of times, I remember, I paused to keep my emotions in check. It had been a while since I'd shown any emotion, the last time being when I cried while screaming at Ben, right before I pulled the trigger. Since then, I'd been cold, hollow. Nothing really mattered anymore.

I got sentenced to life in jail with a chance for parole after thirty years. Which was fine. It was a small price to pay in exchange for what I did. I knew what the consequences were when I shot Ben, so it didn't affect me at all to hear what my sentence was.

As I was taken out of the courthouse, I saw Mom's face, red and puffy from crying, and I felt a slight tug at my heart. At that moment, I wish Mom understood, but it wasn't like I could explain because I was gone again, ripped from her.

My only regret was that I was never close enough to Mom. My whole life, she only cared for me, which was more than what I could say about my father and brother, who fell out of my life as if they never existed. Or as if I never existed.

Maybe that was a factor of why I snapped. Too many hard times in a single life. Everyone has a breaking point. The difference from most people was that I'd actually found mine and bounded over the line that marked it instead of reaching for people to pull me back.

Now, I look upon everything that happened in my life, that junior year where my life changed. I'm up for parole in a month, but I know that I won't be getting out of jail. I never will.

Why? Because I don't regret it, not an inkling, even after all the time that I've spent rotting here.

If I could go back in my life and change something, it would be that I would have never met Ben that night.

But if I had met Ben, I wouldn't change what I did to free myself. It was what was right. Does that make me crazy? In some people's minds, sure. In mine, no. I'm not nearly as crazy as some of the people here, who seem more fit for a mental institution than a jail, but I'm not the judge of that.

So I look out at the lot in front of me, since it's free time. Instead of embracing the time to do whatever I please, I sit here and write my story, so maybe someone will understand. Maybe some girl will learn that she should get out of a relationship, and what will happen if she doesn't.

She'll end up like me. I guess there are worse things though... She could marry that man and be abused for the rest of her life. She could end up homeless after she leaves that man. She could get tied down with kids.

Or she could be dead. Her choice.

Me though, I've made mine. And I get a little more comfortable on my bench because I know that I have to get used to it here in jail.

I will not be leaving. Not until they carry my corpse away from the building, an unknown number of years from now.

And I'm okay with that.