For Escape

Escape

Once upon a time life was simple. Then it all went horribly wrong. The
world went from simplistic to materialistic. When I lived in the
country it was all about ducks and cows and sheep. Daddy worked in the
new hospital. I was happy in my youth, entertained by skipping with my
friends, playing hopscotch or swinging faster and faster around the
poles, on which the schools name was mounted. Of course, when Hannah
had given me the doll, brought back from China, it had felt fantastic,
but it was just a toy then, nothing more complicated - what you saw was
what you got, it didn't go any deeper than that. I mean, I'm not saying
that I was some kind of country bumpkin, running around in dungarees as
a five year old and caking my brothers and me in mud. Or that I never
got any new toys - just that they weren't important, just as clothes
and figure, hair and intelligence weren't. Your social status wasn't
decided by these material things, but your personality - and even if
that wasn't particularly good, young children are so willing to forgive
and to try to be friends with anyone. They have no inhibitions, and it
makes life so much easier. There was no maliciousness or spite.

But then Daddy got another 'better' job, which meant he got more money
for it, I'll never know if he preferred it, I never speak to him that
much now. We moved to London and everything seemed fine. For the first
time in my life I had my own bedroom - and television, when the
fighting about what to watch each evening between my brothers and I
grew too much for my parents. My father had simply gone out one day and
bought happiness from money, which I soon found out would be a vitally
important factor in my unhappiness.

School started: Big mistake in the City number one. I was miserable. I
knew no one, but they knew each other. They'd moved from the prep
school to this one, and weren't going to accept new people easily. They
sparked a hostile element in me, which was draped lavishly in
unhappiness. One that provoked murder. A murder so horrid it landed a
ten year old child in a juvenile mental institute for the criminally
insane. They couldn't believe such an 'innocent' could know what they
were doing. They didn't think such youth could mean the violence,
anger, the means and intelligence to plot a murder. That frustrated the
child.

It frustrated me beyond belief. They blamed it on my upbringing,
television and even film. They deemed that my evilness didn't reach the
actual want to murder, only that it would be interesting to see what
happened when you slit someone's throat before stabbing them fifteen
times. Just like what I'd seen on the cartoons, a spur of the moment
thing. Of course they over looked the fact that ten year olds don't
generally tend to carry meat knives around in their bags Instead they
convinced themselves that I was mad, insane, psychiatrically unstable,
to protect each other from the harsh reality of the world - that a
child can really be dangerous. They didn't want their little bubble of
the perfect world to be popped. Denial is a strong emotion. A comfort,
but its deadly.

So I played along with their littler charade, I made the society feel
safe again. My schooling continued inside. They tested me over and
over. 'What do you see in this?' asked the irritatingly over-perky
doctor, as he held an impossible array of squiggled colours on a square
piece of cardboard in my face.
'Flowers,' I lied sweety, knowing that was what they wanted to hear,
when really I saw daggers and serpents, but I wanted to get out more
than I wanted to freak them out. In their insistent bubble I also
believed that if I said had been truthful, they would have shunned and
criticised me for lying. How ironic the world is. I suppose after all
of it, you could say I lied myself out of hospital, although I wouldn't
be the first person.
'Why did you do it to Nina?' was another frequently asked
question.
'Because I didn't think it would hurt her. I thought she'd be okay -
just like the animals in the cartoons.' A sickly sweet excuse, backed
up by the televised violence subjected on the youth of the nineties.
The cartoons stopped.

But why did I really do it? Simply because I hated her. She made my
blood boil at the very sight - the way she held herself, the way she
looked at me and treated me like dirt. The way she thought she could
get away with it because of my innocence, and ignorance of city life,
of how you had to dress right, be thin and pretty as well as having the
latest toys to be 'popular'. To be liked was what everybody yearned
for. Everybody but me.

*

'Ew, look at the new girl,' Nina sneered at me on the very first day.
'Love the dungarees and pigtails look - is that authentic mud?'
Her drones smaned; I blushed, my snow white skin reddening. I looked
at their clothes: tight jeans or sports track-suits, foul feeling
synthetic fibres and tight tops - 'boob-tubes', which fell down at
regular intervals due to the lack of 'boobs' to hold the tops up. Their
hair was slicked back with a tub of grease in a completely unnatural
way, or into buns. Some had their hair falling down carelessly, cut
into chunky layers with chunky highlights to match. I felt small, young
and inadequate and cursed the school silently for not having a dress
code.

I tottered past with my back pack firmly on my shoulders and saw how
they had shoulder bags. Ten years old and yet they were so grown up. So
tarty. The phrase 'Old before their time' sprung to mind frequently
when I was around them. The thing was, really they were the ones who
look ridiculous, not me. I should have laughed, but there's safety in
numbers. I was the minority; the different; I was the ridiculous
one.

Needless to say I didn't make friends easily. I was too unwilling to
change. Too strong minded to conform - to substitute happiness for
individuality. I wanted to be liked for myself. So instead I got misery
and eventually murderous tendencies.

The school weeks continued in the same tedious manner. Everyday I would
be teased, forced to sit in my on my own in lessons, isolated. I became
socially frustrated, with no other source of communication outside of
my family. Even the teachers were unsympathetic. I think they too
thought I was a lost cause, trapped in a world of mud stained clothes
and, rather bizarrely, sheep shearing.

At least not until the day of the final straw of my patience with Nina,
and her seemingly ever increasing horde of minions. In the summer term
of my first hellish year, another new girl arrived. I saw salvation in
her and immediately took her under my wing, showing her the ropes of
the school. Charlie was quiet, like me, and I thought she really liked
me. For several weeks we got on amazingly, until she started to go
quiet on me. She still sat next to me out of class, perhaps out of
pity, but at playtime she would avoid me. Eventually I found out why:
Nina, in her usual malicious ways had been telling Charlie sick rumours
about me. Rumours which should have been enough to put off even a
person without an ounce of gullibility in them. I had to hand it to
Nina, she was very clever, or perhaps scheming is a better word. The
tales were outrageous, and yet believable because of their subtle
delivery. A skill Nina no doubt picked up from one of her supposedly
cool, but undoubtedly crueller siblings. It almost made you feel sorry
for her. Almost.

The rumours drove me wild. I was labelled 'slut', 'whore' and
'prostitute'. Every time I heard the names I could feel a ball of
hatred welling up inside me, growing with the enormity of the rumours.
I don't know whether I was angered so much by the nature of the
rumours, that I'd been so incorrectly labelled - it was more that I'd
been labelled AT ALL. Conformity was one thing I was against and I
hated the fact that just by being born I was a statistic, but having a
name hung above my head - to be branded with century's worth of
stereotypical ideas - that made me angrier than should have been
humanly possible.

So as Charlie drifted from me and into the clutches of my nemesis, my
plans returned to me, and in my ever increasing madness, induced by the
unfairness of life, I began to wonder whether any of them were feasible
enough to work. At night my mind turned over constantly. I couldn't
sleep and therefore big bags and yawns became my newest characteristic.
They were characteristics that were the cause of more ridicule, and the
ridicule just kept fuelling my desire for an end. A phrase kept on
playing over in my mind, focussing it on its task:
Nina, Nina, Nina: Pretty, pert and popular.
That phrase alone, sneering at me from my minds eye, drove me
on.

One day I realised that is was simple. I really believed that in my
youthful state, that I could get away with it.

In the end the whole affair came down to a bit of an impulse reaction.
The previous day must have been particularly challenging for me, as I
remember returning home on the eve of the death and grabbing the first
kitchen knife that came to hand. I held it up to my face, the cold
metal glinting dramatically in the light. I shivered as I felt the cold
metal, before slipping it into its plastic sheath, like a swordsman
preparing for battle. I slipped the dagger into my bag - if I was going
to do this, it was going to have to be now.

I didn't give the knife another thought until just before, which meant
I had to wait a day. Despite being young, Nina and I both walked home
from school, along a small path leading through dense bushes. I was
determined that that walk was going to be her last.

I waited after school for her and followed at a safe pace silently,
observing her, waiting for the perfect time to pounce. I never thought
twice about it - I knew she deserved it. My hands were shaking with
anticipation; the thrill was exciting me, the adrenaline lifting me to
an all time high.

Then the chance I'd been waiting for: she dropped her Gameboy. Foolish,
I thought, not only is she giving a motive for murder, she's distracted
and off her guard. She never had a chance - she's asking for it more
than she knows.

I wrapped my arms around her harshly, placing one on the make-up
encrusted face, covering her mouth and stifling screams which she may
have attempted. In reality she was too shocked to do anything, it was
too easy - a slit to her throat, blood spurting everywhere, a look of
twisted horror and a disturbing calm. It looked so right with her lip
gloss smudged across her face.

I couldn't stop then. A strange form of demented madness had taken over
me. I let the body flop to the ground, where I stabbed it fifteen
times. With each blow I could feel the ball of hatred decreasing in
size, shrinking and shrinking.

When it had vanished I stared at the lifeless body with disgust, my
face screwing up with a look of distaste. I felt no remorse, but
instead took a tissue from its packet and wiped the knife clean, before
dropping it onto the corpse.

I straightened up, hoisted my bag onto my back and continued home
solemnly, dropping the knife into a nearby waste disposal unit for
incineration.

I knew the police would come. The murder had been the talk of the
school for a while, before Nina was shortly forgotten by all but the
closest of the drones. I stayed out of the conversations, not daring to
attract attention, but not denying suspicion. And there was suspicion.
Suspicion about how coincidental it was her death occurred on the path
to both our homes, and after she had stolen my only friend. My silence
spoke volumes. Soon everyone was convinced it had been me - some even
claimed they had seen the glint of metal in my bag, others that there
was blood in my hair the next day. They all recoiled more than usual if
I went close to them. The teachers noticed me, with a watchful eye.
They didn't let me use scissors. It was then I knew that the police
would come.

Even my mother had noticed something. Her usual inobservance and
ignorance of all things me had suddenly been destroyed. It amused me
that it took murder for her to notice my unhappiness. I was very
careful about the clothes I had worn that day, but she had still
spotted them. There was a small amount of blood on the cuff, but
evidently it proved too much.

Perhaps she called the police, or perhaps they heard the rumours, but
one way or another I ended up at the police station being questioned.
My mother was legally required to be there, but she was constantly
clock-watching impatiently, but with an air of calm that was on the
verge of fazing me. I stared at the police officer as he prepared to
question me.
'Why did u do it?' he asked.
'Do what?' I replied. I had already decided in advance that I would toy
with the police force. Eventually I would admit the crime, but it would
be fun to see the frustration build up first.
'Kill her.'
'Kill who?'
'Nina Richards.'
'I repeat: who?'
'This isn't going to help, y'know.'
'Help who?'
'Help you of course.'
'Me, why do I need help? Mummy he's scaring me.' The art of
manipulation is such a fun skill, just as using the innocence of youth
as an excuse.
'Look, darling,' my mother said, wearily and strained, probably wanting
to get back to the toy-boy she had waiting in some posh hotel room. She
thought I didn't know, but nothing escapes my watchful eye. Not that
she's been particularly subtle about it. I reckon dad knows to, but is
in denial. Poor fool. 'Just answer the nice mans questions and we can
go home.'
'But?' I tried to defend myself, but was cut off; her patience
certainly was wearing thin.
'Just do it,' she snapped.
'So why did you do it?' the officer asked again.
'Because.'
'So you admit it then? You admit you killed Nina Richards?'
'Yes, I suppose.'
'You suppose?' my mother asked outraged, emitting short gasps of fake
shock, put on to make her seem like the victim.
'Alright, fine, I admit it. I killed Nina Richards, there; you got it
recorded on your little tape now, eh? I guess you'll want to know why
too? Because she made my life a misery, and I hated her that much - she
deserved it,' I yelled indignantly.
'But how could you do that to her - to me?' my mother cried
selfishly
'Well, you should have known I was upset, I was obvious enough about
it. I mean what type of a mother are you anyway, when you didn't even
notice a meat knife was missing?'
'I was busy darling; I've had a lot to sort out since to move.'
'That's right, you've been so absorbed in your new found cosmopolitan
lifestyle that you've completely forgotten I exist!'
My mother fell silent, obviously upset by my outrage. I ignored her, I
felt untouchable now.
'So, officer,' I sneered, 'what now?'

*

Next I had found myself in juvenile prison, but not for long. They
performed several psychiatric tests, which I answered in such a way
that the result, combined with what I had done, led to them classifying
me as 'psychiatrically unstable', another stereotype, although I didn't
seem to mind this one as much. Maybe it was because I was away from
everything I hated now; maybe I just wanted to make a new start, even
if it was in a white padded room.

I was moved to a psychiatric hospital - a much nicer alternative to
prison, and where I am now. Supposedly I'm meant to stay here for my
rehabilitation, but I have another plan. I'm going to try and escape. I
hate being trapped in here; I have done for the past four years.
Patronised when I was the more intelligent than them - even now they
talk to me like an invalid. I need to get out and I'm prepared to go to
any lengths - I've killed before because I didn't like something, so
what's going to stop me now?