It's Just Me

Blood. Blood everywhere, and it didn’t make him sick as he looked at the scene played out in front of him. Soft jazz music was playing elsewhere in the house, and it almost made the gruesome sight a little more romantic.

It’s kind of like a Tim Burton movie, isn’t it? he thought to himself as he crouched down, dipping one of his fingers down into the blood before he smeared it over his index finger and his thumb. The scent of it was metallic and oh so sweet to his nostrils.

A smirk formed on his lips as he let his gaze move from his bloodied fingers to the beautiful face of the woman he’d just murdered. Eva, he thought her name to himself. So beautiful, but such a liar.

Such a whore.

It was why she was dead now, after all.

“Looks like you won’t be making that date after all, Ev,” he whispered as he trailed his finger across her red-stained lips, leaving a smear of lipstick across the corner of her mouth. Or was it blood? Did it even matter?

Probably not.

He studied the scene for several more moments, reliving what it had felt like to kill her. It had been much more of a stress reliever than he’d thought it would be. He’d thought he would be scared, or maybe that he’d get sick. Never had Craig thought he was going to be this calm after murdering the woman he’d spent the last four years of his life with.

Then again, he’d never thought he’d see the day when Eva cheated on him, either. But it had happened.

The sound of a knock at the door pulled Craig out of his thoughts and he lifted his head to look in the direction of the door. It was probably her mother, or maybe her sister.

Or maybe even the asshole she was supposed to hook up with, he ventured. A smirk formed on his lips at that thought. If it was him, this was about to become a double homicide. Craig was anything but forgiving, and there was no way in Hell he’d let that asshole walk out of here alive if he was coming to get Eva.

A second knock sounded and Craig casually walked over to look through the peephole in the door, coming face to face with the man in question. He expected anger to flood through him; to feel jealousy that Eva—his sweet, loving, beautiful Eva—had even considered sleeping with this jackass.

But he didn’t. Craig just felt anticipation.

“Eva? Baby, are you in there?”

Baby? So now she’s letting other people call her ‘baby?’ Craig thought to himself, hands clenching in fists at his sides as he slowly backed away from the door, walking towards Eva. He grabbed her limp feet and started dragging her towards the bedroom at the back of the house, knowing that if the asshole found a way into the place, he’d follow the trail of blood.

That was just exactly what Craig wanted, he thought with a grin.

Once he had Eva in the bedroom, he walked over to the closet and stepped inside, concealing himself in the darkness as he waited for the sound of the door breaking down, or being unlocked. Anything to let him know that the asshole had gotten into the house.

He waited patiently, counting the seconds under his breath to measure time. First one minute went by, then two. Two turned to three, and so forth until it had been six minutes since he’d pulled her into the bedroom. He was beginning to wonder if the asshole had just left; if a late night booty call meant nothing to a man who’d called Eva ‘baby.’

But then he heard it.

The screen door on the backside of the house slammed against the doorframe, and then the sound of the back door’s window being broken sounded out. Footsteps could be heard faintly on the linoleum floor of the kitchen, before a manly scream filled the atmosphere of the house.

“Eva? Eva, where are you? Oh, God, please don’t be dead,” the man pleaded, though it was a prayer fallen upon deaf ears. No God would listen to an adulterer.

No God could save him now.

Another loud yell sounded out when the man reached the living room, the scene of the crime and the part of the house where there was the most blood. That was soon about to change, Craig thought darkly.

By the time he was done with this man, the walls would be painted red with his blood.

He could hear someone approaching the bedroom quickly, and that was when he grabbed the baseball bat from the back of the closet, long fingers clenching tightly around it as he peered through the cracks in the closet door, a sick grin tugging at the corners of his lips when he saw the man’s shocked, pained face for the first time after seeing Eva’s mangled body lying dead on the floor.

“Eva!”

If he had been like anyone else, Craig would have felt guilty for the murder when he heard the pain in the man’s voice as he crouched next to Eva’s body, his hands shakily touching her face, trying to feel any sign of life.

There was none. Craig had made sure of that.

“What did he do to you?” The man whispered, causing Craig to arch his eyebrow. What had ]he done to her?

Absolutely nothing that she hadn’t fucking deserved, that’s what.

The man was shaking as he continued whimpering, touching her face so softly it made Craig want to gag. He didn’t know who he was playing the act for; it wasn’t as though he knew someone was waiting in the closet to murder him, too.

“I’ll kill him,” the man whispered angrily. “Eva, I swear to God. He…”

The man didn’t get a chance to finish his sentence as Craig pushed through the closet doors quickly, wasting no time in hitting the man hard on the back of the neck, immediately knocking him to the ground.

“I’m afraid that isn’t gonna happen,” Craig murmured to the man as he turned him over onto his back, getting a better view of his face. He scoffed, not understanding what his sweet Eva ever could have seen in a man like this. He was pathetic, with a jaw like a horse’s and sunken eyes that looked almost skeletal.

Soon enough, he would be a skeleton. Soon enough, he would be dead too, just like his sweet Eva. Soon, he’d be gone, too.

Soon, he’d have his revenge.



“So tell me, Craig, how are you feeling today?”

Craig arched his eyebrow as he studied the doctor that was sitting in front of him, clipboard in hand and legs crossed neatly on his lap as he watched Craig for any sign of abnormal reaction. If it was appropriate, Craig would have smirked. He had this doctor wrapped around his pinky. If all went well, he’d be out of here and on his way home within the next month or so.

After four years spent in a state mental hospital, home sounded good.

“I’m feeling repulsed.”

It was a simple answer, though it was the typical kind of answer that Craig gave. Ever since arriving in this place, he’d made a point to stay under the radar. He never said too much, but he never said too little either. He never spent too much time with the other patients—he didn’t want their crazy rubbing off on him, after all—but then again, he socialized enough so that the doctors and nurses would think he was on his way to recovery.

Stupid fools. He wasn’t the one who needed recovery.

Eva had been. Too bad she’d never gotten a chance.

“Can you explain why you feel repulsed?” The doctor asked, voice as calm as it ever was. He jotted something down on his clipboard, holding it at an angle that Craig couldn’t see. Not that he’d be able to read it anyway. The man had hideous handwriting.

“I had nightmares about what I did to Eva,” he answered. Again, bringing up nightmares was standard for Craig. He pretended to have them; sometimes, he even screamed out in the middle of the night, knowing it would be an alibi for his nonexistent nightmares.

“The nightmares repulsed you?”

“No,” Craig shook his head, picking at the fraying strings of the white jacket he was wearing. It wasn’t a straightjacket; this wasn’t the middle ages after all. Still, most patients here wore white. Maybe it was so the doctors could pretend they were all innocent of the horrendous crimes they were here for.

But in Craig’s case, it really was true. He really was innocent.

He hadn’t murdered Eva. She’d made that choice herself.

“The nightmares didn’t repulse me,” Craig continued. “What I did to her did. I…” He stopped, frowning as he pretended to be thinking remorsefully. All his reactions were well-rehearsed. God only knew he had enough time between group sessions and afternoon naptime. “I just wish I had been rational. I shouldn’t have…There was so much blood,” he whispered.

The doctor didn’t say anything, and Craig pretended once again to continue thinking about the past, reminiscing it in his mind. It took a lot of self control to keep the satisfied, smug grin from tugging at the corners of his lips when he recalled the way her face had looked with all the blood splattered all over it. In a way, she’d been almost more beautiful than she had been in life.

He always had said red was her color.

“I feel disgusted that I could have done that to the woman I loved. It wasn’t me. It was…”

It was me, Craig thought to himself. It was me, and all of you should know that. But you can’t, or I’ll stay here and that just isn’t an option.

“It makes me realize how thankful I am that instead of just being locked away in some prison cell to rot for the rest of my life, the judge realized I needed help,” Craig continued, giving the doctor a hopeful smile as he lifted his head before he shook his head. “It’s crazy how…well, how insane I was before I came to Springville Meadows.”

“I’m glad you feel that way, Craig,” the doctor mused before he wrote something down on the pad of paper. “You’ve come a long way in the last four years since you became a patient here, wouldn’t you agree?”

“I would,” he agreed before he frowned when the doctor stood up. “Is today’s session already over?”

“I’m afraid it is, Craig,” the doctor nodded. “I’ve got paperwork I need to fill out, you know. Boring stuff,” he chuckled as Craig also stood up. He made sure to give the doctor a warm goodbye before he began making his way towards the room he’d called home for the last four years, Room 242 in the East Wing.

As he made his way, he nodded politely to the nurses at the station in the center of the floor, though he didn’t stop to make small talk with them. He was tired; perhaps from the talk that had never seemed to end with the doctor, or perhaps from reminiscing about the past.

When he got to his room, he sat down at the small desk that had been set up, pulling out the journal he’d been diligently keeping since being given the privilege of having pens and paper in his private quarters. It had taken him a year to be allowed anything relatively sharp, and that had set back his plans a bit.

He hadn’t realized that because of his crime, they’d keep something so simple as a pen away from him in a psych hospital.

Now, though, he was back on track. He’d flirted enough with Stacey, the nurse that covered the night shifts on Thursdays and Saturdays, to find out that the good doctor was going to recommend to the state that he be eligible for release in a few weeks, when the annual parole hearing he faced each year would arrive.

“He thinks you’re fantastic,” Stacey had told him. “He thinks you’re a model patient and that you’ve completely recovered, Craig.”

Recovered. It was a technical term, and one that most certainly didn’t apply to Craig. If anything, he’d recovered from his ability to feel human emotion. Before coming to Springville Meadows, he’d felt so much, had so much emotion.

Now, he lacked that. It was for the best.

He didn’t cry anymore when he thought of the betrayal he’d felt at Eva’s cheating. He didn’t feel rage anymore when he thought of her lover’s face, or the way he’d called her baby.

He didn’t feel remorse, regret, or any of the things he told the doctor he did, either.

He just felt cold. Numb, even. Not that the doctor or any of the nurses could see that, though. Craig had always been an excellent liar, and he’d become even better at it after winning the plea for insanity during the trial for Eva and her lover’s deaths.

Ten to fifteen, the judge had given him. Recommended maximum security, and no chance of parole. He’d been called everything from a sociopath to a schizoid. A few angry citizens of his town had even demanded the death penalty, though that had never had a chance because Craig had been careful with his cleanup.

There had been no fingerprints. There had been no DNA evidence behind that would be considered suspicious. After all, it was only to be expected that his DNA would be all over Eva’s body—they’d been intimate for a few years, and they’d been together for a bit longer than that. They lived together, and they had been a known couple for a long time. So the police couldn’t pin his DNA on her murder.

And as for her lover? Well, Craig’s excuse for that had been so simple it had been like taking candy from a baby.

“I have no idea who he is, or what he was doing in my house,” he had said on the stand at his own trial, after swearing honesty in front of a judge and twelve of his peers. “All I remember is that I found him in there, dead. I can’t honestly say who did that.”

Oh, but that had been such a delicious treat when the jury had believed him. His mother had always told him he’d had a way with words; a certain kind of charm that made even the most stoic nonbeliever take his word as truth.

Craig hadn’t faced charges for that man’s murder, and it had all been because of careful planning. Planning that had been so meticulous, it was almost perfectionistic, Craig thought with a smirk as he thought about what had happened that night.



“Such…a…fatass,” Craig muttered under his breath as he grabbed the man’s feet, dragging him out of the bedroom through the hallway about ten minutes after he’d hit him over the back of the head. He was unconscious right now, and soon, he’d be dead, too.

But not until Craig had everything in place.

He’d already put a tarp down on the floor; not only to make it easier to drag the man’s limp body, but to stop it from being blatantly obvious to the police who would inevitably find the bodies that his body had been moved.

He honestly couldn’t see what Eva saw in the man as he laid him beside her, watching as her blood soaked into the man’s sandy blonde hair. He wrinkled his nose in disgust when he watched the man start twitching his fingers, a sure sign that he was starting to come back from unconsciousness.

Damn. He should have hit him harder, Craig thought to himself as he started moving faster. His time frame was dwindling down, and he needed to get out of here before someone realized either of these two was missing. Well, not Eva so much. Her social life had become all but nonexistent with her friends and family in the last few months.

Probably because of her relationship with Craig, he thought sourly. They always had hated him.

At least now they had a reason.

“You stupid bastard,” Craig growled at the man, narrowing his eyes. “This is all your fucking fault. It’s your fault Eva’s dead.”

He wanted to bash the man’s skull in until it was nothing but mush. He wanted to stab him more times than Lizzy Borden had stabbed her father and stepmother. He wanted to rip the man’s guts out and scatter them around to show the world exactly how heartless and how inhuman he really was.

But Craig couldn’t do any of those things. No, he had to settle for less.

Besides, he didn’t have time to go all Jack The Ripper here. He had a job to do and he needed to do it quickly.

He walked into the kitchen, careful to avoid any blood so it wouldn’t track before he grabbed one of Eva’s kitchen knives. He’d gotten them for her for Christmas two years ago. He’d never thought he’d be using them to commit murder.

But then again, he’d never had a reason to think he would commit murder.

Once he had the knife in his hand, he walked back into the living room and set to work quickly. He first punched the man in the face, square in the eye so there was sure to be a black eye. Then he broke his nose. He took a little joy in beating the man up, not stopping until he was quite positive that there’d be several bruises and markings all across his body to indicate that there had been a struggle.

“Okay, up you go,” he growled at the limp, almost dead man as he hoisted him up, putting him over Eva just a little bit, so that it would look as though he’d been trying to shield her from attack.

Not that it would matter. Craig already knew that it was going to be obvious to the medical examiner that Eva had died first. He grabbed the knife from where he’d placed it on the floor and then reached around the front of the man, carefully slicing his jugular.

The blood didn’t flow like in those Hollywood movies, where blood spurted out at everything like a broken water sprinkler. It drizzled slowly, pouring over Eva’s already bloodied shirt and her pale skin.

He was dead in a matter of minutes. Craig made sure by checking his pulse before he stood up, dusting off his hands with a satisfied smirk.

“My work isn’t done,” he reminded himself, knowing that there were still a few things he needed to get done before the police arrived here. He started by grabbing the knife and the tarps, wrapping them up before he stuffed them into a black duffel bag. He made sure to wipe the knife clean of any prints he may have accidentally left on it before he shoved it back into the bag, zipping it up.

Next, he took off the elbow-length gloves and the face mask that he’d been wearing while killing the man, shoving them into the outer pocket of the duffel bag. It had prevented any trace evidence from being left on the man’s body. If there were no skin cells left, and no fingerprints, no one could blame this death on Craig.

He already knew there was no evading being prosecuted for Eva’s death. The circumstances were too right, and besides, he didn’t have an alibi for tonight. He hadn’t thought he’d need one, because he hadn’t premeditated her murder.

Too bad he hadn’t, or he wouldn’t have to face any prison time, he thought sourly.

After he had all of the evidence in the black back, he walked back through the house to the kitchen, going through the back door, pulling on a pair of fresh vinyl gloves from under the kitchen counter to avoid leaving prints on the wood as he did so by pushing it open through the broken glass. It was already nearing four o’clock in the morning, and Craig needed to get the hell out of here.

Someone was bound to notice the man missing. Maybe a girlfriend or a wife. Perhaps a mother, Craig thought to himself. He could see a fat slob like this loser living in his parents’ basement.

He walked through the back alleyway towards a parking lot where he’d left his car parked earlier on, wanting to surprise Eva. He had always loved surprising her, and tonight hadn’t been an exception. She hadn’t realized that he was going to be at home, waiting for her. He’d told her she was going to be in Hollywood, helping his friend with moving.

He’d meant to surprise her by showing her tickets for the cruise he’d booked for them. Instead, she’d surprised him by talking on the phone with her lover, promising that yes, she’d be at the hotel on time and that no, her boyfriend had no idea and that he wasn’t even in town.

That had been when Craig had realized he needed to kill her. It was when something had snapped inside of him.

He remembered the way she’d screamed when he’d wrapped his arms around her from behind after she’d hung up the phone and turned her back to the mirror to grab something from underneath the bed.

“What’s the matter, baby? It’s just me,” he’d whispered into her ear as he’d wrapped his arms tightly around her; so tightly his arms had become almost like a vice grip. “You fucking whore,” he had also added under his breath, letting her know that he’d heard everything.

He pushed those thoughts out of his mind, not having time to think about it as he drove towards the city limits towards the abandoned farm he drove by from time to time. It was the perfect place to dispose of the evidence he had in the trunk of his car. It was a place he could light it all on fire, getting rid of any proof that the police may try to find that he had been the killer of both of them.



Craig was so caught up in his thoughts that he didn’t even realize that Stacey was standing in his doorway until she cleared her throat, knocking on the doorframe a little bit.

“It’s ten, Craig,” she gave him an apologetic smile. “Lights out.”

Craig frowned playfully up at her, putting on a small pout. He hadn’t been truly writing anything worthwhile in his journal; just junk that he knew would look good when the doctor looked through it for any sign that he wasn’t ready to be released back into the general population of the world.

“Aww,” he pouted. “Just a few more minutes, Stace?”

She gave him a guilty look, but then shook her head as she crossed her arms over her chest. “I’m sorry, Craig. You know I can’t do that, even if you are my favorite patient,” she winked at him as she admitted the last part. “Just don’t tell anybody else that.”

“I won’t,” he promised, chuckling. “It’s just me, remember? Just Craig. I won’t say anything. Secret’s safe with me,” he added in a whisper.

She blushed a little as he said the words. If he’d been the way he was four years ago, he would have felt guilty of making a girl blush that wasn’t Eva. He would have felt like somehow, he’d done something that constituted as cheating or otherwise being unfaithful to her, even though a logical person would know that wasn’t the case.

The Craig tonight, however, had no emotion. He didn’t care one way or the other if Stacey had developed a crush on him.

“Oh, alright,” Craig finally relented as she gave him a knowing smile as he closed the leather journal, pulling its strap tight around the front before he handed it to her. She seemed surprised as she took it, looking from the book up to him.

“What’s this for?”

Craig just shrugged as he tugged the white long sleeve shirt he was wearing up and over his head, tossing it into the hamper of dirty clothes on the other wall before he made his way over to his bed, next pulling his grey sweats off to expose his boxers.

“I finished the last page. Figured the doc would probably want to read through it. Y’know, to make sure he’s not releasing a psychopath,” he joked lightly as he fluffed his pillow up, pushing the blankets down so that he could get ready to go to sleep.

“Alright. I’ll get it to him,” she told him before she flipped the light switch off. “Good night, Craig,” she added in a quieter voice as she pulled the door to his room shut, leaving him in darkness. The only light in the room came from the tiny square window in the door from the light in the hallway that was left on all night. The narrow rectangular window on the opposite wall was too small to let in any real light from the street lights three stories below, though sometimes it gave him a decent view of the grassy park that lay adjacent to the hospital.

Sleep found Craig easily that night, and he couldn’t help but feel excitement as he closed his eyes. He could feel it, he thought to himself as he rolled over onto his side. The doctor was going to release him soon, and he’d finally be set free from this hell. He just needed to be patient for a little while longer. If he could keep the act up for just a little bit longer, he would be fine.



When Craig woke up the next morning, it was to the usual sound of the door opening and the light switch being turned on. He opened his eyes to see one of the morning nurses standing there. Her name was Marsha, and all he could ever think about whenever he saw her was the Brady Bunch, even though she looked nothing like Marsha Brady.

“Up and at ‘em, Craig,” Marsha told him as she walked over to his desk, setting a small tray of pills and a cup of water on it. “Your morning pills, and some water to wash them down with.”

Craig fought the urge to roll his eyes, though he nodded and put a pleasant smile on his face as he pushed the blankets off of himself, walking over to the small chest of drawers where he kept his clothes. He pulled out a pair of sweatpants and a similar white shirt to the one he’d worn the day before, and then turned to face Marsha.

“The doctor wants to talk with you again today,” she told him as she flipped through a notebook which was probably filled with the ramblings of one of the other crazy patients here.

“Oh?” Craig asked. “Just the usual session, or…?”

“I think this time it’s about the parole date. Word is he’s going to recommend you for release,” she noted, lifting her eyes to study him carefully.

Craig had never liked Marsha, and she had never liked him.

She saw through his cracks and he knew it. If only he could kill her, too. But that would be too messy, and it would set him back on ever getting out of this place. If he killed Marsha, he’d never be released. He’d be forced onto medications; restrained, and probably put in an isolation cell for so long, he’d probably start turning grey before he got out.

Still, though. The thought of seeing her lifeless body with blood staining her crisply ironed white uniform almost brought a smile to his face.

“That’s a surprise,” Craig murmured modestly as he made the bed neatly, not wanting anything to be out of place in his room. Everything had to be just so.

“It certainly is,” Marsha told him before she sighed. “Finish taking your pills and then go eat breakfast. I need to check on the rest of the patients.”

She didn’t say so much as another word as she walked out of his room, leaving him alone again. Craig used the time alone to think carefully about his plan. He studied the pills carefully, making sure that there was nothing suspicious about them. He didn’t entirely trust that Marsha wouldn’t try to poison him or something sick like that.

He decided they were normal and took them, though he left out the small bluish-white one and the pink one, knowing that they were medications for his alleged ‘conditions.’ He had no conditions, and he wasn’t going to just take pills for them if he didn’t have them.

After he finished taking the pills, he stuffed the discarded ones into his pocket, knowing he’d be able to dispose of them in just a few moments in the communal bathroom when he went to take his ritual morning piss. After that, he’d join everybody else in the dining room. He’d make a little chit chat for appearances, and then he’d join everyone in the morning group session. It was all the same routine, day in and day out. It got old quick.

But after four years, he’d learned to deal with it. Dealing with a few minor annoyances was far easier than dealing with a lifetime of being stuck with crazy people.

Breakfast was the same as it always was on Sunday mornings: French toast and eggs with a slice of overcooked bacon and some toast. It was all tasteless to Craig’s palate, though perhaps that was because Eva’s cooking had spoiled him for the years he’d been with her. She’d been an amazing cook. Seemed she was amazing at everything she’d done.

Especially lying, he thought to himself.

Edgar and Ernesto, the twin brothers who had been involuntarily committed to this place (weren’t they all involuntarily committed to this place?) a few years back were sitting on either side of him, neither one saying a word. Craig liked Edgar and Ernesto; not because they were as crazy as they came, but because they, for the most part, remained silent.

Craig liked silence. It gave him time to think, time to plan.

Time to work on perfecting his technique even more.

Finishing breakfast didn’t take long, and he began humming a short, cheerful tune under his breath as he made his way down the hallway towards the room where the morning’s group session would be. He was almost inside the room when a hand reached out and touched his shoulder, causing him to turn around. He came face to face with the doctor, and a genuine smile formed on his face.

If they weren’t under these circumstances, Craig thought to himself, he could see himself being friends with the doctor.

“I’ve got something I need to talk with you about, Craig,” he smiled at Craig before he nodded his head towards his office. “Why don’t you come with me?”

“But what about group session?” Craig asked, arching his eyebrow. “We’re never allowed to miss it, Doctor.”

The doctor just gave him a small smile before chuckling. “I’ll let it slide this morning, Craig. I think it’s important.”

Craig nodded. If it was important enough for the doctor that he missed morning session—which he never enjoyed anyway, except for the crazy ramblings from his fellow patients—then it was important enough for him to miss it, too. He turned on his heel and started following the doctor back down the hallway towards the wing where the doctor’s office, along with a few other off-limits rooms were located.

When they got to the doctor’s office, Craig sat down in his usual spot, folding his hands over his lap. He kept them still and didn’t tap his foot; both would be signs that he was nervous, and he didn’t want to give the doctor any reason to suspect that there was something off about Craig. Especially not now; not when he was so close to being able to get out of this place.

He noted that his leather journal was sitting on the doctor’s desk, and he thought back to anything he might have written in it that would garner a second visit to the doctor’s office in less than twenty-four hours. He could think of nothing, and he realized that it probably was nothing.

“Stacey gave me this last night, on your request,” the doctor smiled at Craig, realizing that he’d noticed the journal. “I gave it a read-through this morning. You have nice handwriting; very easy to read.”

Craig chuckled, nodding modestly as he waited for the doctor to continue speaking.

“It seems clear to me that whatever psychosis you were in has dissipated. The medications have worked, Craig. The therapy, has worked. There’s not one page in this journal on which you didn’t express remorse and deep regret for what you did four years ago.”

“I do regret,” Craig agreed, though he wasn’t agreeing that he regretted killing Eva.

He regretted not spilling more of her blood.

“Your parole is coming up in a few weeks, and I thought I’d let you know that I’ll be recommending to the board that you be released. It’s my professional opinion that you’re back to your old self, Craig. Congratulations,” he smiled with pride.

Craig nodded, accepting the congratulatory remark modestly before he stood up, knowing that the meeting had ended. “Thank you, doctor. It means a lot to me. I’ll always be grateful for how you helped me. You saved my life, doctor.”

No, really. You did. If it hadn’t been for you, there is a possibility I could have gotten the death penalty, he thought to himself. Though, it hadn’t been likely. It had been decided very on in his case that he and his lawyer would be using the temporary insanity defense.

After all, what other kind of person would just randomly murder their girlfriend in their home?

Only an insane person could do something like that.

Or at least, that was how everyone else saw it. To Craig, it was normal. It was a decent reaction for having found out that the love of his life, his soul mate, the woman he’d thought he’d spend forever with, had been cheating on him with some fucking nobody.

The doctor smiled and then nodded before telling Craig that he was free to return to the group session or to the rec room, if he would prefer that. Craig opted to join group for the sole purpose that he needed to make it especially clear that he was still willing to accept their help. He couldn’t help but smile as he sat down, ready to start listening as everyone talked about their various dark wishes and fantasies. In just a few weeks’ time, hopefully he wouldn’t be here. He’d be at home, in the new apartment he had been paying the monthly rent for since he’d been locked up. He’d told the doctor he was paying for a friend to stay there, and he’d told the cops the same thing. Truth was, he did have a friend living there. Her name was Rae, and he’d met her here in the hospital. She’d been released after a month, but for that month that they’d known each other here, they’d developed a strong friendship, and it was one he wanted to pursue once he was out of the hospital.

The morning session didn’t take much longer, and afterwards everyone was free to do whatever it was that they wanted. Craig opted to go to the rec room so that he could watch a few hours of TV. Maybe he’d even chat with someone for awhile. And then later tonight, after the evening meal had been eaten and the nightly meds had been passed around like candy, Craig would use the floor’s phone to call Rae. He only ever called her once a month or so, but it was important that he let her know he’d be returning home within a month, if things went right.



For Craig, the next three weeks were a blur. Each day, he continued following the same routine as he had for the entire time he’d been in Springville Meadows, though now there were some significant changes to his schedule. The doctor had enrolled him in some daily living classes so that when he was released, he’d be able to function normally again.

He was in a cooking class, and in it he’d met a cute little brunette that reminded him of Eva in every way from the shape of her curvy hips to her heart-shaped lips. Her name was Ana, and he hated her. In the class, he was given knives for the first time in four years, and he had seriously contemplated recreating Eva’s murder with Ana. He refrained, however, and calmly chopped, diced, and sliced whatever vegetable or steak came his way to cook.

He had also been placed into another class that he couldn’t quite recall the name of. Mostly, it was just an economics class. The people in there talked about how to successfully get a job, even with the fact that everyone in the class had been in the hospital for quite some time. Their daily ‘assignments’ included everything from relearning how to write checks and how to check a bank statement to making lists for groceries and such.

It was all boring, and none of it captured Craig’s attention. He didn’t see why he needed to relearn the things they taught, mostly for the reason that he had never forgotten them in the first place. Only crazy people forgot things they’d been doing for their whole life, and Craig definitely wasn’t crazy.

He had also started calling Rae on a regular basis. Every three nights, he talked to her on the phone. Always aware of the fact that there was a possibility that someone could be listening in, they only talked about menial subjects. How’s the new dog, what’s the weather like. Those sorts of questions were bland, but they helped strengthen the illusion that he was normal.

And right now, he definitely wanted to come across as normal, Craig thought to himself.

Tonight, Craig was spending some time alone in his room. There had been nothing interesting on TV, and group session was over for the night. Tonight, he felt different than he normally did. He felt nervous. He felt anxious.

He felt worried.

What if the doctor didn’t believe his act after all? What if tomorrow, when the doctor attended the meeting that Craig had declined, the doctor recommended a life sentence in a maximum security psych ward?

That won’t happen, Craig told himself. You’ve played it too smart for that. You’ve outsmarted them. You’re gonna be getting out of here in just a few days and then, you can go home and this whole hell will be behind you.

He tried to rationalize his worry with the fact that he had no real reason to be worried. Stacey had come by tonight to give him his nightly pills earlier on, and she had told him that in the morning, Marsha would be bringing him his suitcase so that he could begin packing up the few personal items he was allowed to have in his room. She’d also given him a hug, something she’d never done before. It was meant as a goodbye hug, she’d told him.

She’d wished him well.

Everything pointed to the option that yes, he was going to be released within the next twenty-four to forty-eight hours. His mother had already been called, and she was coming to pick him up. His apartment was clean, according to Rae, and she’d switched the sheets in his bedroom so that they’d be fresh for him to sleep on. She had gone through the classifieds and circled options for jobs that he might be interested in pursuing after he got out of here.

It was all going to be fine.

A knock on the doorframe pulled him out of his thoughts, and he smiled when he saw Stacey standing there. She looked like she’d been crying, and it concerned him. Though he hadn’t really practiced feeling human for the last four years, he had empathy for Stacey.

She was genuine. She cared about people. She was the kind of person the world needed more of.

“It’s ten o’clock, Craig,” she whispered. Her quiet voice was an obvious attempt to prevent him from hearing how broken her voice was, how upset she was. It was futile; he could already see the distress written all over her pretty face.

“Stace, what’s wrong?” He asked her, though he knew she probably wouldn’t answer.

That would be blurring the lines between patient and nurse, and that just couldn’t happen. Except, it had. It had happened with him and the doctor, who he considered more of a friend than a doctor. It had happened with him and Stacey, too. She had become sort of like a younger sister to him, someone he never liked seeing hurt.

She shook her head, biting her bottom lip as she tried furiously to brush the tears out of her eyes. “I’m fine, Craig. It’s ten.”

“You already mentioned that,” he murmured, putting on a small smile as he stood a foot or so away from her. Close enough to be a comfort to her if she needed, but not so close that she’d feel threatened. He’d learned early on the proper distances to stand from people to make them feel secure.

She seemed to ponder telling him for several minutes. She opened her mouth and then closed it several times, an obvious sign that something was wrong before she broke down in tears, her cheeks becoming wet. Craig hesitated to hug her, but then decided it would be a normal, human response.

“Oliver is dead,” she told him, clutching on to the front of his shirt. “He…He was found murdered,” she added in a broken whisper, the tears starting to fall even faster out of her eyes.

Craig’s blood boiled at her words. He already knew from past conversations that Oliver was Stacey’s longtime boyfriend, and that recently, he’d proposed to her. He didn’t know Oliver personally, but he’d been glad that Stacey had someone like him. She deserved a good guy, especially after all the shit she went through here at Springville Meadows.

Craig didn’t say a word, just continued letting her wet his shirt with tears before she finally pulled away after ten or fifteen minutes, her eyes thoroughly reddened and her cheeks stained with dried tears.

“It’s after ten,” she whispered to him, backing away, a small, halfhearted smile on her face. “Goodnight, Craig. Good luck tomorrow, and thank you.”

She didn’t say anything else to him as she flipped the light switch off, blackening the room before she pulled the door shut behind herself. It would have made anyone else feel a little used that she’d cried on his shoulder and then left with no explanation, but it didn’t make Craig feel anything. He was too angry to feel anything else.

Someone had hurt Stacey. Stacey didn’t deserve that.

When he got out of here tomorrow, he’d find them. And he’d make them pay. But this time, he wasn’t going to be careless, like he had been with Eva’s murder. This time, he was going to premeditate. And this time, no one would know it had been him.



Two more days passed, and then three. Each day followed the same routine as the last four years since he’d been here, and it was becoming increasingly annoying to him as he waited for the doctor to come and give him word that he was being released. His suitcase was already sitting neatly in the corner of the room, waiting to be packed.

Craig had avoided packing just yet. He didn’t want to look too eager, after all.

He had spent most of the last three days alone. He hadn’t seen Stacey since she’d told him that her boyfriend had been murdered, and that left him with Marsha and another nurse, a new one whose name he knew, but had forgotten.

At the moment, he was sitting in the rec room, playing a game of chess, if it could be called that, with a seventeen year old boy that called himself Goober. Craig didn’t actually know his name; he’d never gotten to know any of their real names, truth be told. Everyone here had their own nickname, and that was what he knew them by.

“I win, I win!” Goober exclaimed excitedly as he made a move that wasn’t exactly legal to chess, though Craig allowed him to win as he gave the kid a halfhearted smile.

“Looks like it,” he nodded before he looked up, seeing Marsha standing there looking as displeased as she ever did.

“The doctor wants to see you,” she told him before she turned to walk away, muttering something under her breath. It was things like that that made Craig think Marsha was the one who should be locked up instead of kids like Goober, who’s only real ‘insane’ crime had been to light his dog on fire a year or so ago.

Craig said goodbye to Goober and then slowly started making his way towards the doctor’s office down the short corridor. He knew that Marsha wouldn’t have bothered to come and get him if it wasn’t something important, and immediately his stomach began to tie itself in knots.

What if he was going to stop him from being released?

When he walked into the office, the doctor was already sitting there, a neat pile of paperwork sitting in front of him along with a pen sitting next to it. Craig knocked on the doorframe before walking inside, taking a seat in the chair he always sat next to.

“I see that Marsha came and got you,” the doctor smiled at Craig, who nodded. He almost felt like he was a child being reprimanded in a principal’s office, but this visit could prove to have far more repercussions than a simple school administrator ever could.

“She did,” he told the doctor before he let out a small, nervous sound. “She didn’t say what you wanted to talk with me about, though.”

The doctor just smiled and then lifted the first page of the pile in front of him up, handing it across the desk to Craig, who wondered what he was supposed to do with it. At the doctor’s advice, he began to read the words that were printed in neat, black lines on the paper.

Dr. Lafayette,
Your recommendation for the release of the patient Craig Edward Mabbitt has been carefully reviewed, and your recommendation has been accepted.

There was more writing underneath those first two lines, but Craig couldn’t bother to read them as he looked up at the doctor, who had a pleasant smile on his face as he watched Craig’s face brighten significantly after reading.

“It’s official, Craig. You’re free to go tonight at four o’clock,” he told Craig before he stood up. “We’ll need to sign some paperwork, of course, and you’ll need to make the proper arrangements to have someone come and pick you up.”

“I can call my mother,” he smiled at the doctor. “She wasn’t expecting me to be released quite so soon.”

“No one was expecting you to be released this quickly. It was a rather easy referral,” the doctor told him as he watched Craig scribble down his signature at the end of the paper as requested. “The board had their doubts, but it wasn’t hard to prove your sanity, Craig. Congratulations.”

Craig and the doctor talked for a few moments, mostly about nothing important before Craig excused himself so that he could start to pack up the items in his room. There wasn’t much in there, but there was enough that he did need to pack that it would take awhile.

He packed everything with as much precision as he could, carefully making sure that they were placed perfectly inside the suitcase so that he would have room for everything he needed. He wanted to make sure that he didn’t run out of room, because he’d only been given one suitcase. Probably from Rae, he thought to himself with a small smile. At least she’d thought ahead enough in advance to know he’d need something to pack his belongings in.

By the time he finished packing and had been given permission to use the phone to call his mother to have her pick him up, it was already three thirty. It wouldn’t take her long for her to get to him, considering he was still in the same town he’d always lived in. The phone call was short, and even in the midst of her shock that he was being released, she found a way to put in a snide comment.

“I honestly don’t know why you don’t just stay there, Craig. It’s not as though a sane person murders his girlfriend,” she had muttered into the phone.

Yes, well, a sane person didn’t hold their child’s fingers to a hot stove for taking an extra cookie after dinner either, Craig had thought to himself, though he’d refrained from speaking the words. His mother was the only person that he knew that had a car, and without a car, he couldn’t get home.

At four o’clock, he retrieved the items he’d been institutionalized with, a single pair of clothes, a dead cell phone, an outdated iPod that he’d forgotten he even had, and $4.36 and signed himself out of Springville Meadows for the last time as he walked outside. The sky was grey and drizzling rain as he stepped out onto the curb, dragging his suitcase behind him. He found a small alcove to duck inside in an attempt to keep dry.

His mother took her sweet time coming to pick him up, though it wasn’t a surprise to Craig as he waited for upwards of an hour until he saw her old, rusted Cadillac coming up the empty street. She slowed to a stop in front of the old building before he walked over to the trunk. She popped it open for him and then he tossed his suitcase inside along with his extra clothes before he walked to the front, getting in the passenger seat.

Craig didn’t say a word to his mother as she began driving, his hands folded neatly on his chest. He suddenly remembered that he had been so anxious to get out of Springville Meadows that he hadn’t even bothered to say goodbye to Goober, or to Marsha, or even to the doctor.

Oh, well. Marsha hated you anyway, and Goober probably won’t even remember you tomorrow. The doctor…well, shit. I shoulda at least said goodbye to him, Craig thought to himself as he listened absentmindedly to the annoying radio talk show host that his mother was listening to ramble on about the political situation Americans were facing these days.

“You know you can’t stay at my place, right?” His mother asked him as she arched an eyebrow, taking a puff off of her lipstick-stained cigarette.

“Yeah, I know. Just drop me off on the old block and I can get home from there,” he told her.

He wasn’t going to bother telling her where his new apartment was, because he knew if he did, she’d be over all the time, insisting that he owed her something not only for the fact that he was even alive (she had been thinking about an abortion when she’d found out she’d been pregnant, she would constantly remind him) but for the fact that she’d bothered to come pick him up today.

She shrugged, not saying a word as she drove towards the side of town that most people shied away from. It took a good fifteen minutes for her to reach his old block before she pulled over.

“Be quick. I don’t want to get jacked or something,” she snapped at him, popping the trunk open for him before she turned the radio up. Craig bit his tongue to stop himself from saying something sharp back at her, knowing it wouldn’t be in his best interests to do so.

Like most mothers, his knew too much.

She drove off just as soon as he had the suitcase out and her trunk closed, obviously not worried that she was leaving her son in a less than desirable area of town in the rain with no money. It was nothing Craig hadn’t expected from her, however, so he found that it didn’t really bother him all that much as he started walking towards the brick building at the end of the block that would be his new home.

It was a place Rae had found. It had been cheap, it had been in as safe an area as he needed, and the neighbors never asked questions. That was all he needed in a home, and it would suit him just fine. As for Rae, she was welcome to continue living there if she wanted, and she knew it. Craig didn’t exactly have many friends these days, and he could probably use some socialization anyway.

The walk didn’t take him longer, though it probably would have gone a little bit faster if it hadn’t been raining and if there hadn’t been a suitcase slowing him down. Once inside the building, he fished for a piece of paper in his back pocket and pulled it out, reading what he’d hastily scribbled down a few days before.

Top floor, third door left of the stairwell. Apartment 31E.

Craig looked up the long, narrow stairwell and let out a small sigh as he began walking up them. It would take awhile to get to the top floor, he thought to himself, but he wasn’t going to complain. He was home now; home where lights didn’t need to go off at ten, he wouldn’t have pills shoved down his throat, and he wouldn’t have to keep up appearances. Now, he was free to be himself. He was free now, and that freedom wasn’t something Craig planned on letting go of any time soon.

It took Craig ten minutes to lug his suitcase to the top of the stairwell, and when he got there, he scowled upon realizing that the light in the ceiling was burnt out, leaving the entire floor in an eerie darkness that would make for the perfect setting of an indie horror movie.

He followed the directions that Rae had given him and then stopped when he came upon a door that read the numbers she’d given him. Feeling a little awkward as he raised his hand to knock on the door quietly, he could only hope that she was home like she’d said she would be tonight.

“The door’s open!”

It was Rae’s voice that called out as he twisted the old-school doorknob, making him wonder if the door even locked at all. Not that it would really matter, he thought to himself as an afterthought as he pushed the door open before he quickly shut it after getting his suitcase inside.

The first thing he noticed about the apartment wasn’t the walls and how some of them were exposed brick, the others painted various shades of red and grey. He also didn’t notice immediately the way Rae had decorated the place with items that would only look normal in a house if it were Halloween.

No, the first thing he noticed was the stench of blood and the strong odor of bleach.

“Rae? It’s just me, Craig. Where are you?”

“Living room!”

She sounded almost too cheerful, which made Craig wonder just what in the hell was going on. The Rae he had known when she’d been in Springville Meadows had never been cheery, let alone gleeful, like her voice sounded now.

With the stench, it really made him wonder what had happened. Had she killed the cat like she’d threatened to after it had scratched up the curtains last week?

When he walked into the living room, the sight in front of him was definitely not what he’d been expecting upon coming home tonight. There was a tarp laid out on the floor, protecting the furniture and the hardwood flooring from the spatter of blood from an unidentified source.

There was definitely too much blood for it to be just a dead cat, Craig realized.

“Rae, what happened?”

Perhaps he should have been a little more concerned that his new apartment was clearly a murder scene, and maybe a normal person would have been panicking, calling the police, or running away. But as luck would have it, Craig hadn’t been born a normal person. He looked down at Rae and instead of seeing a monster like he should have when he saw the spatter of blood all over her face and clothes, he saw the sweet, innocent girl who’d been his only real friend for the last couple years.

“The bitch lied to you, Craig,” Rae told him as she looked up, swiping some sweat from her forehead, leaving a smear of blood there in the process. “She said her boyfriend was murdered, but she lied. She cheated on him and then he left her. I know you liked her, but she honestly wasn’t much of a friend to you if she lied now, was she?”

Craig didn’t say a word, just arched his eyebrow. He remembered telling Rae that Stacey’s boyfriend had been killed; not because she’d known Oliver or Stacey, but because he’d known that Rae could help him track down the sonofabitch who’d caused Stacey’s heart to break.

That was when he saw her.

Lying in the corner of the room, body splayed out unnaturally on an old blue tarp, was Stacey. The back of her head was bashed in and nearby lay a bloodied brick, the obvious murder weapon.

“Rae…What did you do?” He whispered, a groan falling from his lips as he watched her go back to scrubbing a bit of blood off the exposed wooden floor.

She looked up and then looked over at Stacey before shrugging, looking back at him as she tucked some dark hair behind her ear.

“She lied, Craig. I know you hate liars.”

“You killed Stacey,” Craig muttered under his breath. “Because you found out she lied to me about her boyfriend being killed?”

Rae nodded, and then started speaking again, as though he needed further explanation for her actions. “Don’t you get it? She was trying to use you,” she murmured, dropping the brush she’d been using on the floor before she stood up. “She wanted you to go and kill whoever hurt Oliver so that you’d get put back in that…that hell so she could keep seeing you. She was crazy, Craig. She needed to die.”

Craig didn’t say a word as he walked out of the room. He didn’t know how he was supposed to comprehend what had happened; what he’d walked into. Hadn’t he spent the last four years planning how not to commit murder like this?

Rae didn’t come looking for him and he figured it was probably because she was worried about his reaction. He would be too, he supposed, if he were in her position. After all, he could do any number of things. He could walk out and choose to never see her again, leaving the fact that she’d murdered for him in vain. He could call the police and watch as she spent the rest of her life locked up in some loony bin.

He could kill her.

But he wouldn’t do any of those things. He couldn’t, because the truth was, he and Rae were closer than that. If she’d killed in his name, it had been for a good reason. He just needed to help her perfect her technique a little, that was all. After all, she was far too messy and the more blood there was, the more opportunity there was to be found.

He finally decided to go back in to the living room. When he did, he found Rae concentrating on something, though what it was, he couldn’t tell. He crouched behind her and then reached out to touch her shoulder, causing her to jump and nearly fall over before he caught her, a small smile tugging at the corners of his mouth.

“Hey, relax,” he told her before he pushed some hair out of her eyes. “It’s just me.”

She gave him a halfhearted smile and opened her mouth to say something, though Craig stopped her by pressing two fingers against her lips before he spoke again.

“Thank you for looking out for me,” he smiled at her. “Now, let’s figure out how to get the body out of here and the mess cleaned up without anybody noticing.”