Thy Kingdom Come

Aoife sews me back up, since my stitches split open while I was riding her hard, and slips me some prescription drugs when she’s done.

“Naw, thanks.” I refuse the offering because they are the reason my life turned to shite.

“Maybe I can see ye next week?”

She surprises me, but I nod. “If I’m still alive, then aye.”

I’m not being melodramatic. I live each day, not knowing if I’ll wake come morning. That’s my life now.

An officer comes to get me, cuffing my ankles and wrists before we commence a walk to my cell. “Y’ve got more letters,” he says stiffly. “That’s twenty this week. Who’s writin’ ye?”

With a shrug, I reply, “I can’t say I know who.”

And I mean it because since being here, I’ve not read one letter. Nor have I seen one visitor. There’ve been many of each, but I’m not interested in either. Nothing they say, nothing I read will make a difference.

“What d’ya want me to do with them?”

With nothing but firm resolve, I state, “Burn them. Burn them all.”

Five Years Later

Days and nights, nights and days, I don’t know what’s real anymore.

I’ve been locked in solitary confinement now for a hundred, or maybe it’s two hundred days? I really don’t know. I don’t mind the quiet. It’s here where I can lose myself to fiction, a life where I live happily ever after.

I barely remember their faces anymore, the faces which shaped my past. I cling onto small memories, my fragile mind filling in the blanks because I haven’t seen another human being in months. The door whines open, blinding me as the light fractures the darkness.

“Get up and shower,” an officer demands. “Someone is here to see ye.”

I try to speak, but no words come out. Maybe I’ve lost my voice. The scratching on the walls I made with my fingernails is the only way I communicate; it was the only way I could speak all those years ago. Chief Constable…I’ve forgotten his name, forbade me to have any paints. He said a murderer doesn’t deserve any luxuries, and he’s right.

When I think I can speak, I hoarsely utter, “Just leave me be.”

Letting prisoners “out” for an hour a day for exercise, access to showers and phones, and receiving visitors is seen as the officers respecting us as human beings, but when they remember, we’re made aware that they’re doing us a favor—a favor they’ll call in on in one form or another.

But this officer is different.

I’ve forgotten his name, but he’s different because he cares.

“Come now, ye surely don’t want to see yer sister lookin’ and smellin’ the way ye do.”

Sister?

“Will ya do me a kindness and tell her to fuck off?”

He laughs, standing in the doorway as I curl myself into a ball on the hard floor. “We’ll get ya sorted. Come on.”

This arsehole won’t take no for an answer, but I don’t want to see Babydoll. She is the last person I want to see.

“Tell Camilla—”

“Camilla?” he says, interrupting me. “She says to me her name is Ha

Ha

But Ha

Confusion pounds at my temples, but I push past it because Ha

Coming to a shaky stand, I use the walls as support as I stumble out. The officer helps me stay upright as he leads me down the long corridor. I suddenly miss the confines of my cell. It’s too open…too real. I don’t want real.

The officer tosses my arse into the shower where I clean myself, scrubbing the filth from my skin. Once I’m dressed, I look at my reflection in the mirror, looking over my shoulder because the reflection I see isn’t mine.

This aul’ lad…is this me?

My hair is long, as is my beard. There are creases around my eyes, probably from constantly squinting in the dark. I don’t recognize this man, this man who looks so much like the man I killed.

“Ya feelin’ all right?” the officer asks.

“Happy days,” I reply, prodding my cheeks.

“We’re away to the visits room,” he explains like I’m supposed to know what that means.

Once he cuffs me, he leads me through the prison while I keep my head down. I’m not interested in knowing where I am. I just want this done and over with. Once we get to a room surrounded by bars, he stops and goes to uncuff me.

“Naw, leave them on,” I say. I don’t trust my hands. I don’t trust they won’t reach out and throttle Fiona for bringing Ha

He nods and unlocks the door.

There are a few families speaking with their loved ones. Tears are being shed as they catch up on what’s happening outside these walls. I search the room, but I don’t see Fiona. The officer leads me to a table where a young woman is sitting, obviously uncomfortable being here.

When he stops by the table, indicating she is here to see me, I arch a brow, confused. “We should head. I don’t know her.”

But when she turns over her shoulder, when I lock eyes with her, I realize that I do know her. I just don’t know this version of her.

“Bout ye, Punky?”

I stare at her, words escaping me because there is no way this is Ha

“Will ye sit?”

All I can do is slump into the hard seat, placing my cuffed hands on the table as I try to get comfortable. The cuffs make her uncomfortable.

The officer nods with a smile and leaves us alone, but he stands close by.

“Ha

She nods slowly. “Aye, it’s me.”

“But yer so grown.”

“That’s what happens when ye get older. Ye grow,” she sarcastically says, rolling her eyes. “Maybe if ya bothered to see me, or answer my letters, y’d know it was me.”

“How old are ye?”

Her lips part, and pity overcomes her. “I’m sixteen. Almost seventeen. Y’ve been in here for ten years.”

Shaking my head, I refuse to accept this future. The Ha

“Ethan?”

When tears fill her eyes, the truth slaps me the fuck awake, and after ten fucking years, I see clearly. I see the life I’ve missed.

“What’s happened to him?”

She wipes her nose and sighs. “Why wouldn’t ya see anyone? Why did ye push us away? Ya promised me ye’d come back, but ya never did.”

“Yer coming back?”

“Of course, I am.”

Those words were spoken a lifetime ago.

“We wrote. We visited. Ya didn’t even want to come to Dad’s funeral. How could ya turn yer back on us, Punky? Ye were all we had.”

Co

“And that’s the reason so. I’m nothin’. I offer ye nothin’ but trouble. Yer better off without me.”

She narrows her eyes, and at this moment, I see her—the stubborn six-year-old I left behind without an explanation as to why. I broke her heart.

“Ach, that’s fucking bullshit!” she spits, her anger also growing with age, it seems. “No one told us what happened. Ya just disappeared. D’ya know how that feels? The day Dad died, ya died with him. We lost everythin’.”

I do understand how that feels because that’s what happened to me when my ma died. And I did the same thing to the twins. I’m ashamed.

But her comment has me arching a brow.

“What d’ye mean?” That wasn’t supposed to happen.