>_> I don't care. I didn't write this for the public amusement, but out of boredom.
My Angel.
“Tell me about Angel.”
The psychiatrist was not happy to be there. He was currently speaking to a convicted convict, trying to figure out what is going through his mind. As an added catch, Robert was not allowed any information about the case and was not allowed to know anything about the patient. All he was told was that the convict seemed to like saying “My Angel” over and over.
“Her name is not Angel, psychiatrist.”
“You can call me Rob.”
“Her name is not Angel.”
“Then, what is her name?”
Benjamin did not answer immediately. He hesitated, and Rob thought that he was preparing to tell a lie. Ben just sat there, and eventually a small smile came on his face. As they both continued to sit there, uncomfortable, Ben didn’t speak.
“Ben?”
“I don’t remember.”
“Wasn’t she your wife?”
“I think so.”
“Most men worry about forgetting their wife’s birthdays, not names. I know I do.”
“Angel has no birthday.”
“Well, she was born sometime.”
“Of course, I mean that she doesn’t celebrate.”
“Why not?”
“She can’t speak.”
“She can’t?”
“No, she hasn’t been able to speak since…The Incident.”
“The Incident?”
“My Angel doesn’t like to speak about it.”
Rob was generally uncomfortable now. In his experience, people who act like this often have more to hide than they’re conscious knows, which means that it would be his job to bring his subconscious to confess about whatever The Incident is.
“So, how is she health-wise?”
“She isn’t.”
At that, Ben laughed - a lot. Ben was in tears by the time that he finally calmed down. Robert made a note of this, not that this was too uncommon in psychopaths.
“Oh?”
“Well, she’s not really sick. She’s pale though, and so cold…so so cold…My Angel is always so cold.”
“Why’s that?”
“She’s always been cold since The Incident.”
“You keep mentioning this Incident.”
“My Angel doesn’t talk about it.”
“Your Angel isn’t here. You can talk to me, Ben.”
“Hm.”
“So, what happened?”
“Nothing, really. It was a slight misunderstanding. Our friend, we’ll call him Mr. Friend, was concerned about My Angel. Mr. Friend said that My Angel was always crying and upset about our relationship.”
“She wasn’t happy about your marriage?”
“No, quite the contrary. Mr. Friend sat me down and we had a nice long talk. He said that I need to speak to Angel and we need to shape up our relationship, or it’s time to let her go.”
“How did you react to that?”
“I told him that I would. That I would. What a lie.”
“You didn’t?”
“Well, I spoke to Angel. She said that she was just never happy and that she felt full of fear when she was around me.”
“Fear?”
“She called it… ‘temporary feeling devout of happiness’, as if I was some evil entity that meant to harm her. I did love her, so you imagine that it pained me so to hear her talk like this.”
“What did you decide to do?”
“It wasn’t really a decision. It was more like fate. Eventually we decided to go to see a marriage counselor, and that didn’t work out well.”
“What happened there?”
“Mr. Marriage, that’s what I’ll call him, didn’t like the look of my marriage right from the start. I could tell by the look in his eyes that he didn’t see anything in me. Which, in itself, is good because I sure as shoot surprised him.”
“How?”
“On one particular session, our last session, he said that he believed that she needed to find a new man. He called me ‘mentally unfit to be with another human being’. The bastard took My Angel away.”
“Wow.”
“Yes. At the end of the session, I tried to leave with My Angel. She was in tears when the whitecoats pulled me out of the room and into the back of the truck. I was taken to the Institute.”
“The institute?”
“…of mental correction. Three days they kept me in solitary confiement, as what they called a ‘temporary relief from society’. They tested me extensively on the fourth day. On the fifth day, I was free.”
“They didn’t think you were insane?”
“They did, I’m sure, but a mysterious murder at the Institute of the director required them to make the less suspicious inmates, that’s what I called them, free. I was less suspicious, it seems.”
“Interesting.”
“When I got home, I found out that My Angel wanted to leave me. She said she was already pregnant with a man that loved her.”
“Already? It was only five days.”
“She says that they’d been seeing each other for a year, ever since she started to get depressed.”
“Who was he?”
“Mr. Friend.”
“Your friend took your wife?”
“That’s when things went downhill. I never meant to have Mr. Friend taken care of, it just sorta happened. What really happened was that we were yelling and yelling, and then he grabbed my shoulder and told me to calm down and that My Angel needed to leave me. How DARE he grab my shoulder? I grabbed the steak knife on the kitchen counter, and he regretted grabbing me. His regret began to spill down the…whole in his heart…and when he fell, it spilled all over the floor.”
Robert’s hand was shaking. In five years as a professional psychiatrist, he had never heard a patient confess to a murder. Small, petty crimes like stealing a pen or some groceries, once even a carjacking, but NEVER a murder. Rob knew that this particular session was being monitored, and no doubt the Monitors were surprised by this revelation.
“Wha-…what happened next?”
“Mr. Friend died. The official story was that he was murdered by a burglar, but I knew different, and that made me better than the police could ever be. I’m not arrogant, Robert, but instead I am just generally right. After the police came and cleaned up the mess, Angel confessed to me that Mr. Friend was in love with her, but she didn’t feel the same way. She cried on my shoulder, and confessed that she wanted to leave with Mr. Friend because she was unfaithful to me and got pregnant. I let her cry, I shed no tears for Mr. Friend.”
“What happened next? Was that The Incident?”
“No. The Incident came four months later, when Angel started to show that she was, indeed, pregnant. She told me that the baby might not come out alive, due to some complications in her body.”
“Really?”
“She couldn’t bear the child, and I deemed her unworthy. It was quick, it was painless…mostly. That night, I slipped cyanide into her drinking water.”
“Dear god…”
“The morning she was passed on. The baby I suspect had died as well.”
“…”
“I hid her underneath the floorboards for 5 months, when the baby was due. She was not worthy of seeing the light of day.”
“Did…the police…?”
“No. The police are too dimwitted. They didn’t even investigate.”
“What happened after the five months?”
“There was an awful stench and the most horrid mess…I gave her a bath, but she was so cold and so stiff…so we went for a swim in the pool. When a local girl saw My Angel in the pool, she began to scream. The local girl sadly drowned that afternoon, partly of divine intervention, partly of…Benine Intervention. Ha! I made a joke.”
Robert’s head was spinning. How many murders had he confessed to? Three?
“After the local girl’s raping and dea-”
“Raping?”
“Oh, didn’t I say? It turns out that, before her tragic drowning, she was raped. You see, Angel and I hadn’t had intercourse in so long…”
“…My god.”
“Anyway, then we moved. After we moved, I was picked up by the local police for speeding. They saw that I was…gifted, and sent me to you.”
Speeding. All the crimes ended by a speeding ticket?
Ben wouldn’t talk anymore, and the police sent him away. A few days later, Angie Maylae Angell had a proper funeral, and Robert attended. Rob didn’t know the woman, but he did know what she went through, and he wept for her.
Robert couldn’t stomach psychiatry much after that, and so only did private practice with non-convicts. He did, in fact, attend Benjamin Angell’s execution. He shuddered as he heard Ben’s last words.
“My Angel.”