@Makino

---

---

Hushed whispers he heard a lot lately when the guard called his name through the bars, opened the iron door with his key and led him down the long, chilly hallway. There was something about it, the unknown, the quiet, the cold. Something unspoken about these distant mutters. Something terrifying yet beautiful.


Another day, same routine and the one-sided conversation during his walk was a reminder no one else ever needed to hear, no one but him. He didn’t want to respond or look behind. But at the same time, a part of him wanted to react more than anything. Unfortunately, the only way he could do... was follow and listen from a distance.


Footfall after another, a solid minute of silence passed as he momentarily stared at his handcuffed wrists then went to his ankles, secured by the shackles. Stange really, how these wicked illusions with the softest sounds he ever captured, seemed to bring the loudest heartbeats.


It helped him stomp on the guilt of his brutal crimes that wanted him to care, but he could not. For he had gone away and he could never come back any more, not like before.


At last the guard pushed him inside the Interrogation room and the door screeched shut from behind, the lights were dimmed, and there was no beauty left but the soundproof grey walls, the large wooden table, chairs and the surveillance cameras at the four corners of the ceiling. Perhaps the designe of this nearly empty space was to maximize the suspect's discomfort and sense of powerlessness from the moment one steps inside. But to Colton, it was just an obstacle with inability to return and fall in love with his crime scenes all over again...



There was nothing else to be said aside the floating images he recalled, moving in and out: bright blue eyes, redhaired female and a field of sun-warmed grass, a mouth saying, Colton, Colton, Colton, making it sound like a song. The face bloomed like a flower on a single stem, names ebbing away from him, two words: blood and snow. Red and white flashed, tree branches lit up like the vaulted ceiling of a church.


He refused to repeat his innocence inside that world but rather, taste the pleasure of losing it again. After all, serial killers don't stare the devil in the eyes and come out without some of his sins.

.

The silence did nothing but intensify his gaze, grey visual orbs with the exact lustrous color of a polished shard of metal, fixated onto unfamiliar watery blue ones with no sense of curiosity or compassion, or any feeling for that matter. And there she is, a lithe black-haired female dressed in a button-up white shirt, black skirt and black high heels. Add the black jacket slung over her shoulder, and the woman's aura particularly screamed Crime Fighter in disguise.





The common thing about women like herself and boxes, he thought, is that you can open them up. Even though they're completely boring on the outside, there might be something interesting on the inside. So while she's using these stupid, boring Introduction methods, he's literally imagining what it would be like to cut her open and see what she has got in there.

Reply? That's not real entertainment. Therefore, Colton decided to be quiet, painting a picture of uncommunicativeness with his eyes whilst his indifferent stance and blank expression remained; a statue, there was no motion towards or against her.

.

It has always been a very common scenario that people walk in circles mainly when they do not have reliable cues, answers, signs of nervousness, or perhaps a habit. However, a specific trait made him believe hers was different; each footfall, each click of heels, and every slow step was a mocking temptation to deliberately cause frustration.


Little did she know, he was studying her body language all along.

He let his eyes do the analytic job, rolling from the left to the right, right to the left; so deceptively scanning her posture, the pace, the position of her chin and shoulders without any minor shift of his body.


Then she sat across him, the repulsion of eye-contact between them— that exchangeable concentration with which a predator stalks its prey nearly made him smile; a battle of one staring through another.



Now that she's facing him, she had to remind him of the little time he had, one month to be exact before his death sentence. Cleary her primary ability was to spin wheels of manipulation with simple two-step process: Give him what he craves, and then threaten to take it away.


There was a charm about that pen— A pen at first, and a weapon second. Just one quick move, he thought. One single snatch and he can aim that writing tool at her throat; puncturing deep into the flesh repeatedly, over and over and over until he ends up ramming against her Spine. And he pictured her pain. The desperation in her eyes. She will to cry out for help, but soon learns that no one will listen.


Yet he did not respond, for his reptilian stare was already locked and giving up was no option. When his imagination was running wild, it was ingenious for him to stay calm- to patience, and to allow things to come as planned.


It went beyond any of those few-seconds-too-long gazes shared between strangers. A dialog without words. Absorption without expression. As if telling her what to think and blast it in. It must be so wrong. It seemed so sinful. It rushed him on so quickly to its own conclusions his mind hasn't time to protest.


“Funny thing about chains,” came his voice, a whisper to silence, a reply to this game.“They're everywhere, once you know how to look for them.”

Then, he leaned closer, more carefully. Eyeing the small bruise on her collarbone, and one on her right wrist as well. Could it be he found a weakness? The certainty wore on him, that he couldn't help but wickedly smirk.

“There's lots of kinds of chains,” he continued. "You can't see most of them. That's a funny thing, now that I think of it.”

He did not need to raise his voice, or wage war with fists, for the source of his power was in the curve of his semi-smile. Could a woman like herself be a victim of abuse? Looking back at the ring in her left hand, or perhaps a surviving wife of domestic violence.

“So you tell me, did you really mean it when you say ‘in sickness and in health, for richer or for poorer, until death do us part or did you add a silent clause, ‘unless you abuse or disappoint me?’ What is the cost of the marriage and how capable are you of hiding the burden of your chains?”

She wants to understand, she says. Fine, he will turn her inside out, take her apart, and build her back together – all in the span of one month.