Entry # B22

A Mother’s Confession

by

Joseph Alan Gharagheer

My name is Rachel Maddox, and it was on this day, October 31st, 2012, that I killed four people. Not hours after committing these crimes, I now sit down to write to you my official confession, hands still stained scarlet from the deeds I’ve done. My lip still quivers, unable to shake the vivid imagery from my mind. It is not my intention to absolve myself of any guilt, but rather to explain my actions, so that my children aren’t left to wonder what could have driven their mother to commit such heinous crimes. It was in fact because of my children that I forced myself to muster enough strength to do what had to be done in the first place. I hope that one day they can understand why I did what I did. Now that that has been established, I can continue with the details.

It all started at a Halloween party. Looking back, it was foolish to go to this party in the first place, but I needed a night out, and it was the children’s father’s turn to take them trick or treating anyways, so they were staying the night at his house for the evening. I took advantage of the situation and allowed myself to get fairly intoxicated, so intoxicated in fact that I didn’t even notice when I was drugged. At first I thought that my drowsiness was just a side effect of the drinking, but before I knew it I could no longer concentrate, and the next memory I have is waking up.

When I finally came to, it was the tight metal chain around my throat that woke me in the first place. I felt it being tugged against my skin, and I choked loudly as I opened my eyes. Even whilst being choked, my surroundings still took a minute to come into clarity. I tried to reach up to grab at the cold chain that continued to constrict around me, causing me more and more pain the longer it held on, but I realized for the first time that my hands were shackled to the table I was leaning back against. I attempted to struggle but found that I couldn’t move as my feet were also shackled. I looked around me at my surroundings as I continued to choke, tears dripping from my eyes, and my heart began to pound when I saw the others. There were two more people shackled just like me, a young man in a pirate’s costume, and a girl in a black dress with cat ears on her head. Neither of them looked any older than 25. On the other side of the room was the scariest part, however. A bearded man sat in a chair, simply staring at us, watching us squirm, with a sick smile on his face. He had a glass of something in his hand, which he sipped on, legs crossed in front of him as if he was watching some kind of show for his entertainment.

I only had one thought in my mind. I had to get out of this sick situation. I had to see my kids again, whatever it took. That’s what I kept thinking to myself when the man finally pressed a button loosening my chain around my neck. I was finally able to breathe, and I heaved and cried for several seconds, but ultimately calmed myself down. I had to remain calm for the children. Getting home to them was my top priority, so when the man finally spoke, explaining to us what he wanted from us, I knew I would comply. Years ago I would have never gone through with the things his asked of me, but becoming a mother changed everything.

When the man spoke, he kept it simple. He got straight to the point in telling us what we wanted. He said that whichever one of us was brave enough to murder the other two would be allowed to leave in one piece. He asked each one of us if we could do it. First, was the Pirate. That poor man thought that surely there was no way that any one of us would comply, and so he told the sick bastard to go to Hell. Following his lead, the Cat said something similar to the man, with much fouler language. And finally, the man asked me. He referred to me as “Nurse” as that was the costume I had chosen for the party. Once he asked me, I wasted no time. I felt remorse for the other two, but they were nowhere as important to me as my children were, and they needed their mother. I told the man that I would do it, and he smiled, pressing another button. This one released my shackles and I stepped down from my table, following his instructions.

The chain remained around my neck as I walked to the table in the center of the room containing the tools. It seemed to be unraveling from somewhere behind the table that I had been on. The man told me I could use whatever was on the table, but that I had to be creative, and if he was pleased with my “work” then he would release me. The Pirate and the Cat begged me to stop and consider what I was doing. I couldn’t stop. I couldn’t think about it. If I did, I might not have had the courage to go through with what needed to be done.

I went to work on the Pirate first, using an ice cream scooper to remove his eyeballs from his skill. It was one of the metal ones, with the lever to help slide the ice cream, or in this case the eye ball, out of the scooper. I drowned out his screams with a power drill, which I used to slowly disconnect the flesh and bones on the man’s arms from the rest of his body. Blood, chunks of flesh, and bone dust littered my costume, making it look like I was meant to be some sort of zombie nurse. I used a large mallet on the man’s kneecaps, and just when he was almost dead, I finished the job by burying a hatchet into his forehead.

When it came to the Cat, I got more personal with it. I personally reached my hand into her mouth and sliced her tongue off with a switchblade. I wrapped a long lock of her curly hair around the head of a hammer and pulled until I ripped it from her skull. I dug my fingernails into her sides and ripped them open by repeatedly scratching away at her flesh. I sliced a line down her abdomen and then stuck the claw of a hammer and a screwdriver in her open wounds, tugging her meat to the side and ripping it off of her body. She panted, open, as she died a hideous creature, a sad shadow of the beautiful girl she once was.

This was when the man told me I needed to use the tools on myself. After everything I did for him. After the horrors I caused. He was going back on his word. I grabbed a hold of the hatchet and quickly hacked away at the chain that bound me, cutting myself loose. I grabbed the dragging chain and ran towards the man. He hadn’t expected this, and fell backwards in his chair, where I had the perfect opportunity to wrap the metal chain around his own neck. I knew nothing about this man, yet we shared the intimate moment of staring into each other’s eyes as I extinguished his life. After his last breath, I began to heave. I freaked out and lost it for several hours, until I finally pulled myself together long enough to get to this pen and paper.

Ironically, even though I did what I did to see my children again, I can’t drive the screams from my head. The images of what I’ve done are burned into my memory and the tears keep flowing. To have my children see me this way would poison their memory of me, and honestly, I don’t think it would be safe for them. So, even now, I’m doing what I think will be best for them. As I write this final paragraph, I am grabbing the gun that I found in the man’s cabinet with my left hand, and I’m holding it up to my temple. To my children, I love you, and I hope one day you’ll understand.

“I don’t get it,” Mark said, setting down the letter. “We searched four times and other than her strangled ex husband, there are no bodies.”

Jason hung up his phone. “They just searched the bitch’s house. They found her children brutally murdered, still in their Halloween costumes. Get this. Her son was a pirate, and her daughter was a cat.”