Page 170 - Musings 2020

With great difficulty, she steadied herself and ran towards the nearest police station chanting
the name of mother Mary. “Mur…murder!”, she gasped. Followed by a party of police,
Scarlett led the way. She led them to the spot where once laid a dead man. Or so she thought.
There was no man to be seen, no blood anywhere. The roads were as black as a thundercloud
instead of the deep maroon that she saw a few minutes ago. She feared her hallucinations
were returning. Did she imagine the murder of the man who haunted her every night? It was
as if the lord was trying to help her, telling her what to do. The police were exasperated.
Scarlett explained to them of her past. They decided to drop Scarlett home out of courtesy.
Puzzled, astounded and a little spooked, Scarlett went to bed hoping for a night of peace.

The following morning felt rather normal. She poured herself her routine coffee and picked
up the newspaper to start job hunting once more. She had almost forgotten the incidents of
the last night, however, there was no doubt her delusions were returning. She had to see her
doctor sooner than later. She decided to visit the doctor instead of searching for a job that day
and flipped through the newspaper casually instead when something caught her attention. A
news article about the murder she had reported. But something was not quite right. The
article said the murder had taken place 3 hours later than her visit to the police station, at the
very same spot. She was in trouble. She was now most definitely the prime suspect of this
murder, that had taken place later, exactly as she had described. Knock on the door. “Police!
Open up”, a deep voice said. This was bad. Her history with crimes and Psychosis and her
relationship with the victim meant that she would be sent back to the asylum. Or worse, to
prison.

She was not ready to go back to that place. She had just started building her life again. It was
all spoiled. The worst part, she didn’t even know if she was guilty. She was now used to not
trusting her senses and memories. She thought fast and decided to make a run for it. She
jumped out the window onto the back alley of her apartment. Police had surrounded the
whole place, but this was one place she knew she could escape from. She ran into the subway
station nearby and ran into the tunnels. She knew staying underground would be the best for
her to stay out of sight. She needed to find out if she was guilty. Her thoughts wandered to all
the possibilities. Only if she could find out if someone else had the intention of killing that
man.

“His house, I might find something there!”, she thought. She made her way to his house, a
place she could never forget. The place where she had committed the greatest mistake of her
life and now, she had come there to find out if she had done it all over again. She went around
the perimeter of the house trying to find a way to enter unnoticed. She found a ladder leading
to the roof from there she could make way through the vent of the fireplace.

It was a bad idea. She entered the house, covered in soot and she had just jumped into the
fireplace of a house in broad daylight. There was a good chance that someone had seen her.
The good news was that the house seemed empty. She scoured through the house desperately
in search of something that would free her of guilt and punishment. She had gone through
almost everything, there was nothing that could help her. The only place left was the
basement. She had to search for quite a few seconds until she found the light switch. She
slowly walked down the wooden stairs. There it was on the wall of the basement, a map to
her life. Every important detail of her life was on that wall. It wasn’t surprising for her. She

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