"For the charge of serial homicide, the jury finds the defendant guilty"
From the back of the jury, I smile. Like everyone else, I smiled. They had been sentenced. Sentenced to life. They won't be coming after me... or anyone. I felt free. Free to do what ever I wanted but I didn't.
From where I had been seated I could see the fountain of tears pour out of their eyes. They couldn't accept it. They couldn't accept being locked away in a max security prison with no hope of freedom. Seeing the tears soak the carpet under their feet, I smiled more but not too much.
Unable to accept it, they ran but didn't get that far. The guards launched onto them, blocking my view of them. I could hear them dragging themselves out of the mass, still desperate to run from what they couldn't accept. Seeing the futility of their actions, I smiled.
Their denial turned to fury. They tore themselves from the floor and sprinted to the nearest door. Locked. I made sure of that myself. They bashed themselves against the door, letting out all of the fury they withheld. They screeched at the guards, desperate for at least a glimmer of hope in this dark and dingy courtroom.
Then they stopped clawing the cold doors and turned to the heap of guards slumping towards them. They begged, pleaded for a change to be rid of the life sentence dragging them down. The life sentence that once clung to me.
With no more effort to resist, they collapsed. They crawled up into a small ball, hiding from who they were framed to be. Me. Now, it was my time to act. I lit a match, nobody could see it yet, and dropped it onto the dry, flammable carpet below me.
It was risky but it was exhilarating as well. I could be caught. Someone could see me with the match and survive but that's the fun part. I could say it was them. They did it as a final fuck you to the government before burning in a pyre of flames. Who would they believe? That a random person started the fire or my story. My lies.
As I fled from the burning courthouse, I could hear the screams of people as their flesh burnt off their faces. I could see people start the fire alarms only to be covered head to toe with gasoline. A chunk of burning debris hit me, the cuts on my body being cauterized as I tugged myself out.
I was met with a clearing. I couldn't see anyone around me, they were most likely dead. I laughed. If I survived. No. When I survived, the city of Culpa shall fear me only with a new alias. I'll get away with this and do it all again and I don't regret a damn thing. I'll toy with these people so long as I live.
And then I saw it. Something sophisticated but yet felt so animalistic. It bent reality to it whims and it was bored of me. Panicked, I fell the ground. Desperate, I grabbed the first thing I could reach. A cross. A smile was carved onto where I would assume the face would be and something resembling a voice drilled into my ears. "Why would they want to help you?"
The Alexandria courtroom fire. 20 dead. 10 missing. No survivors.
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