Chapter 1
The shadows danced on the walls of the recreation hall, like dark specters summoned by her words. The inmates leaned forward, their eyes fixed on the quiet girl in the hotseat, her story unraveling like a thread of black silk.
"I was always the quiet one, the one everybody trusted and nobody noticed. The one little girls wanted to help them cross the street because I never squeezed their hands tightly in impatience. I graduated from college, one of the best, to begin to live the life I dreamed of. Ale making. It was a cash-miner among boys my age, so why not? For that singular decision, I sit here today, entombed in this plastic throne, the hotseat, where the cruelest among us are laid bare."
Every occupant of the hotseat owes the house answers to any question asked. Today, all voted for Legion's boss, the most quiet but the cruellest. But even the air was still on that hot afternoon. For the boss was crying, her tears rolling down her face like mercury, reflecting the dim light of the recreation hall.
"I was disowned by my 'well-respected, rich aristocrat' parents for choosing such a lowly career. They never liked me, I wasn't ambitious enough. I had just given them the excuse to throw me out. But that's when my life began. Faced with pressure and my own needs, I went all out into the streets, like a ship without anchor, lost in the stormy sea of desperation. Gang fights, strip clubs, trafficking and all that. I had a torture method named after me, a whispered legend in the dark alleys where I reigned."
Here she paused, her eyes gleaming like polished onyx in the dim light. There was a collective leaning forward, as though everybody discovered at the same time that no one knew her real name.
"I lived on the upside for over a year, a golden era of chaos and power. Till I went broke and hadn't been recalled by my parents, as I hoped. My older brother, an ambitious political aspirant, flooded town with his campaign strategies while I was dying inside, consumed by the green-eyed monster of envy. Of course, he was sponsored by the old money. In hateful, angry bitterness, I fled the town to a bigger city where I was sure the shadow of my parents' name had never crossed. I got a job as a lowly ales salesgirl, I reverted to the old me who would never hurt a fly, a chameleon blending into the shadows, waiting for my next strike."
The trusty quiet salesgirl who called out greetings from her bicycle every morning to strangers, scattering breadcrumbs of kindness to lure her prey. Oh, how they were fooled and I, loved. Soon the single men would request grocery pick-ups and the flirty married ones would request home delivery. The fools, they danced in the spider's web, oblivious to the fatal thread that bound them.
"Then the police discovered the first body. A child, not more than 12, wrapped up in laundry bags at the mouth of the river, like a discarded doll. She was washed up by waves because I was sure I threw her in. She just happened to stumble into my single-room apartment without knocking, a fateful misstep into the labyrinth of my madness. She was the daughter of my boss and she reminded me so much of that much-beloved brother of mine, a painful echo of the past."
A general sharp intake of breath punctuated her story, like the soft hiss of a knife slicing through the air.
"That was when it occurred to me. Crimes on the rise in this city would be to my advantage. I presented myself to the police department, a concerned private investigator scared for the safety of his town, a mask of righteousness hiding the monster within. Yes, I masqueraded as a guy, a shape-shifter in the game of shadows. I had set loose on the city wanton bullies under my payroll who I'd end up turning in with evidence after 'private investigation'. It was fun, a macabre waltz of power and deception. I hired bullies as a girl, and caught them as a guy detective, a twisted game of cat and mouse where I held all the strings."
They trusted me more for my mysterious appearance and 'hidden talent', little did they know that I hid something bigger, a Pandora's box of horrors waiting to unleash. My plans, a labyrinth of deceit where the truth was the greatest lie.
"We went on that way till I had the entire Police department in my hands, a puppet master pulling the strings of justice. It became boring, so I disappeared, a ghost vanishing into the night. I went back home, calmly and stealthily, like a thief in my own house. No one noticed, for they were blind to the shadows that lurked within."
"The very night I entered town, my elder brother was murdered, a sacrifice to the darkness that consumed me. He was the only surviving heir of my parents, a barrier to my inheritance, a throne I coveted. It was easy, he was a heavy sleeper and I knew where the spare key was, a secret path to his bedroom, a shortcut to his life. Yes, he was killed by yours truly, a bloody handprint on the wall, a signature of my madness."
I disappeared again the same night and returned a week later, having heard the news, as the grieving daughter to comfort her darling old parents, a performance worthy of an Oscar, a masterpiece of deceit.
"The deception was so well executed that nobody in the world saw reason to doubt me, for I was the quiet one, the trustworthy one, the one they never noticed. Well, except the coroner who examined my brother's wounds and insisted that whoever attacked had used a knife from the family kitchen, a whisper of suspicion, a thread of truth that would unravel my tapestry of lies. But who cared? My parents restored my inheritance, but I possessed the hugest amount of greed in the world, a bottomless pit that swallowed everything whole."
Their health suddenly began to worsen, everybody blamed old age and all was right with the world, a conspiracy of silence where everyone played their part.
"The plan was simple: they die a bit earlier, I get rich and disappear a bit sooner, a Faustian bargain where I traded my soul for the world. They eventually died and sent to a morgue, specially arranged by their lawyer, a macabre ritual where the dead were pawns in my game."
Everything was arranged and the wheels were turning smoothly, until the coroner decided to order further testing with his license and claims of suspicious tissue damage, a fly in the ointment, a crack in the façade.
"It was discovered that the victims had been exposed to fungal toxins, linked to mold in air vents and water pipes, a slow, wheezy death, a creeping shadow that consumed them from within. Turned out I poisoned their air conditioners with toxic mold which poisoned their lungs, a murder most foul, a crime of patience and precision."
A couple of officers arrived at the house, just as I finished packing, with a search warrant, the walls closing in, the game up.
"They wouldn't tell me what they were searching for and I couldn't have beat them in a brawl, for I was still just a girl, a fragile vessel filled with darkness and deceit.
After exhausting, alert two hours, some pipes, bolts and plastic tubes all stained with greenish substance were found under my secret sound board. I didn't know how they got to my room, did I? I'll never have agreed to anything, but my wits failed and I tried to run, Two agents appeared in the hallway to cuff me, the handcuffs clicking shut, the end of the road."
I appeared in series of court rulings, where a damning reference was made to a case of the use of exactly the same rare toxic mold by one of my bullies in the city I once ran to. He was called in from jail and instantly recognized my girl face as his hirer. A whisper of suspicion, a thread of truth that would unravel my tapestry of lies.
"A handcuffed, toothy smile was my reply to the verdict, a twisted grin that hid the abyss within. And that was how an 11-year imprisonment timeframe was extended to life imprisonment, a sentence that fit the crime, a punishment that fit the sin."
So, here I am, paying for my greedy deceit, a prisoner of my own making, a labyrinth of my own design.
The tears now rolled in balls and half the inmates were repressing sniffs, their faces a mix of horror and fascination, like moths drawn to a flame.
The entire recreation hour was taken up; but it was worth the time, a haunting melody of darkness and deceit, a siren's call to the depths of the human soul.
