Begin in Darkness

Somehow, I'd done it. My hand was still numb from the force of recoil, but I succeeded. They were dead, and I was covered in their blood. I looked up at my superior, a high ranking police officer, as he nodded approvingly. How was this justice? I looked down at my victims, once refutable criminals, but still, they were children. Siblings, a 14 year old boy, and his 19 year old sister...warm blood still trickling from their mouth and noses.

 

"Earlston...is this right?"
"What do you mean? Come on, we'll let the investigations department clean up this mess."
"No, wait. How is this okay? Two children are dead."
"They attacked you, and you defended yourself, that's all."
"I killed two children with this." I held the baton forward, "They only had pocket knives."

The officer shook his head, then looked at me with sympathy. I saw the stronger tone in his eyes, that said 'grow up', but I didn't care. I don't care what anybody said, this was wrong. I knew these children, they weren't bad people, they weren't. They were only defending themselves.

The thin cut on my leg was stinging, and my left arm was still motionless. I know I would get in no trouble for this, but I still killed innocent children. What was I going to do about justice in myself? Deputy Earlston couldn't understand this, I suppose.

"Look, I know you're still in training, Deputy Sylva, but this job is not a pretty one. You did only what you had to do, okay?" He places a hand on my left shoulder, I couldn't feel it. "Besides, we're more focused on getting you to the hospital right now, to get this patched up. We take too long, you could bleed to death."

How did I end up in this position? I'd just turned 21, but I was a legalized murderer. I know these children didn't kill Mrs. Botnam, I delivered news of her death to them. I saw what Deputy Earlston called pretend, those were real tears. She was their mother, they could never have killed her.

I looked back at the bodies, and the pain in my body went completely numb. The girl’s face was moist with blood and tears, and the color in her cheeks had not yet faded. Her eyes seemed to be looking at me, inquiring. The question sent my heart into the pit of my stomach, and I almost heaved with the thought of it. ‘Why? You said you would protect us…”

Then, it felt good to be free of the uniform. As I lay on the grey sofa in my living room flipping through the channels on television, I grew angrier and angrier with the news. It burned my face hot, how they could hide this?

“Two people died today at 10:34 AM in an attempting the assault of a police officer. 14 and 19 year old Jamie and Carrie Botnam, under arrest for the murder of 43 year old Maggie Botnam, resisted arrest from Officer Sylva, and assaulted her with knives before being brought down. Deputy Earlston, Deputy Sylva’s superior officer claims—“

I turned the T.V. off, and sat for a moment in silence. I rubbed my cut leg with my right arm, going into thought. Earlston had demanded I arrest the children, and stated he would wait outside and that I could call for back-up if I needed it.

“I’m sorry…I tried, I really did.”
“You said you know we didn’t do it! Why are you doing this to us if you know we didn’t do anything!?”
“I have my orders…”
“You’re no better than they are!”

I was trying to reason with them. They were right, I said I would help them, that I knew they were innocent. I said I would, but when everything went down, nobody needed a damn rookie telling them how to do their jobs. If the children didn’t do it, then who did? If I couldn’t find someone within 3 days, they were to be taken in…I couldn’t find anyone. I failed them. No wonder Carrie was so angry with me, she had every right to be.

Jamie was strong, silent. He refused to look at me, but I couldn’t warm myself as tears fell from his cheek while he held his head low, glaring back at me, alert. He was a big kid, and very athletic. The coach said he was great at basketball. When I first spoke to these children in private, they were crying then, too. They smiled, they hugged me and thanked me. Now, they hated me. Now I wasn’t helping them, it was me or them.

Jamie weighed 179 lbs, and Carrie weighed 134 lbs, 10 more than me. I didn’t think I would be able to take them, but I thought I could reason with them. Put in their shoes, I’d have fought back, too, to be honest.

I recall that, as I reached for Carrie, she ran back, and I chased her a few steps before catching her arm, and wrapping a cuff tight onto her wrist. As I pulled her to a stop, she pushed me backwards on my momentum, into a wall, and tried to pin me there, before I swept my left leg around, and used my right knee to force her to her knee, and try to finish handcuffing her. Jamie grabbed me from behind, easily dangling me in the air as he held my arms folded awkwardly behind my back, in a painful position. He only held me there…

“Please, just leave us alone! You’re not helping anything!”

Carrie kept her distance, yelling at me, frantically trying to get the handcuffs off. I cannot recall everything she said, but I know that things did not fully begin until I managed to wrestle my right arm free from Jamie, and clubbed him with the nightstick, spinning my body too hard, and he let me go as he moved from the second swing, pushing me back by my left arm, the only one he had in his grasp. I fell on it, and I remember the pain as I heard the sickening pop of my arm slipping out of place. I was afraid to try to move my arm, and the feel made my stomach queasy. I didn’t want to move, but I panicked as I saw Carrie trying to draw out a knife.

“Please go away, I have to defend myself.”

I grasped for my radio with my right arm, and Carrie saw me, and ran only three steps before slamming full force into me. The air seeped out of my body as her shoulder slammed into the width of my torso, and I cursed feeling body armor wouldn’t be necessary as I heaved for air hitting the ground. Carrie reached up for the radio as I held it out of her arm’s length, but it didn’t matter.

“Jamie, get it, or she’ll call someone!”

There was no need to bother, his demeanor about all of this was calm, but as she finished speaking he’d kicked the radio from my hand, and it hurt through into my forearm. This was a first. I’d only arrested 5 people before now, and none of them fought me back. I felt my heartbeat roaring into my ear as I swung my right arm out of Carrie’s reach. Jamie caught it, but they only pinned me.

They were breathing as heavy as I was. Carrie had her body over mine, her forearm pressed just under my neck and holding me down. Jamie was holding my only arm down. I couldn’t move Carrie, if I could’ve sat up just a little, I’d have felt better, but instead I felt smothered beneath her. This little b***h…I was pissed at the thought, but I couldn’t move her with brute force. She shifted for a moment, obviously now, she intended to let me go, to get up and move off of me. Then, I only saw it as an opportunity to fight for freedom.

I slammed my knee into her stomach the instant I had room to move it, and she coughed into my face as she fell back on me, instinctively trying to curl up, and Jamie gave me room to do it again as he tried to push her off of me, and embarrassingly enough, I felt smug for a moment, victorious. Jamie drug me, then slung my body against a wall, and swung a punch at me that I managed to maneuver out of. I slammed my foot into his groin, then as he lurched forward, I brought my knee into his face. He spewed blood on me as he cried out, and fell backwards, shuttering for a moment, then lying motionless. I had fallen on him, and I saw his face, there was blood flowing heavily from his nose, down his face, and starting to collect beneath his head.

I felt sickened by the image, and I felt queasy once more thinking of what’d happened. I was sitting up on the couch now, as I recalled once more, writing the police report, the day’s events. I killed them in cold blood, not defense.

In the short amount of time that’d passed, Carrie had just looked up from her fetal position in time to see her brother fall. That was the first time I saw that look…’Why?’. She ran at me, swinging the knife like a maniac. I ducked from the first diagonal cut, barely avoiding it, then I ran against her, slamming her into the opposite wall and snatching her left hand by the cuffs wrapped around it, but the moment left me open, as her knife fell into my right arm. She was aiming for my chest, but I saw it coming at the last minute, and flinched. The knife stabbed in, and I stumbled back, pulling it out on her frozen grasp. She was no killer…she was terrified at what she’d done.

I saw that in her eyes, but then, all I saw that I cared about was ‘she stabbed me…she’s trying to kill me…’. I stumbled back, as she leaned against the wall for support. She looked up at me as I stepped further back for a moment, taken by fear, unsure of what to do. The wild look in her eyes told me she was driven only by the murder of her brother. The tears streaming down her face now…she was so pretty before. She was a radiant, cheerful girl. She was to marry the coming weekend…but I slammed my nightstick into her face, to save myself. There would be no marriage, now. She convulsed as she hit the ground, and her voice seeped through, whining monotone. I could see the mark of her reformed face through the auburn hair spread across her face, lying in the blood.

“Deputy Sylva, are you alright in there?”

Damn…Earlston. My voice choked in my throat, as I struggled to speak. My body ached…I guess now, fear was too much. I would go to jail. I sought to save lives, but now I would be persecuted for doing the thing I wished most to prevent. Then again, haven’t some always said that the police were just another, self dignified gain?

My left leg suddenly gave out on me, as Carrie stabbed her knife into it, and I fell. She crawled quickly, scrambling over me and pushing herself up on her hand to bring the knife down with all she could. I panicked, looking at her dangling jaw, blood running into my face, tears and crimson drops painting me for what I was. I quickly slammed my baton forward, and she fell back as a mist of blood sprayed from a pre opened wound. She was dead on top of me, and I was struggling to climb from beneath her, by the time Earlston got his a*s through the locked door.

I was a killer, I was wrong. They didn’t deserve that…nobody did. Maybe the law dismissed this as self defense, but I couldn’t, it was too much. I let my temper take me, and I killed children. I should’ve been arrested, not them.