Mind Games

Oh, he’d dream of her, all right. He’d dream of that little bitch. And he’d find a way to make her pay.

He closed his eyes, brought the picture into his head, and for the first time, slept almost peacefully.

But instead of in a picture, she slept in a bed with white sheets. He thought he heard rain, just a distant rainfall, thought he saw curtains stirring at an open window.

When he shifted on his cot, wanting more because the breeze felt cool and sweet, she shifted in the bed.

While he dreamed of her, she dreamed of him.

And she looked down on him, the man who’d killed her parents. He slept with one arm dangling off the side of the cot. Sweat stuck some of his shaggy hair to his cheek. She could smell the hair, the sweat. She could hear him breathing.

She could breathe, but her parents couldn’t.

And still, and still, what the deputy said about prison rang true. It was like a cage, the little window, the hard, bare floor, the hard, bare walls. He couldn’t close a door when he used the toilet or walk outside to listen to the night sounds if he couldn’t sleep. Or turn on a light and read a book.

She could hear men snoring, all in their cots, in their cells. Trapped like Riggs was inside four hard walls.

She walked to the door, put her hands on it. Looked out as she imagined he would look out, at more and more cage doors, for all of his life.

He could breathe, she thought again. He could sneeze and snore and sweat. But he couldn’t really live.

Her parents danced together, held hands when they died together.

Riggs would never have anyone to love him, to hold hands with him or make babies with him, no one to walk in the woods with him or kiss him good night.

Maybe that was worse than death.

She was glad she’d seen and felt and heard where he’d spend his life that wasn’t a real life at all.

When she turned back, his eyes were open and on her.

Her breath caught; her stomach trembled. But she made herself stare right at him.

She’d be grown-up. She’d be … dignified.

“I see you. Little bitch, I see you.”

“I just wanted a look at your new home. It really suits you.”

“I’ll find you, and when I do, you’ll wish you’d been home in bed when I did your parents. You’d have died quick, and now you won’t.”

His hate poured off him, and covered her like a blanket made of tiny needles.

“I can leave, you can’t. You don’t scare me.”

As she pushed herself awake, she heard him say, “I will.”

Hugging her elbows tight, she sat in the dark. He wouldn’t make her turn the light on like a baby. Dark or not, she sat in bed in Grammie’s house—no, her house, too, now. She sat in her own house while the soft rain brought a soft breeze through the window.

And he, miles and miles away, slept—somehow she knew he still slept—sweating on a cot in a cell.

In the morning she’d put on whatever clothes she wanted and walk outside. She’d do cartwheels on the grass still wet from the rain, play with dogs, feed chickens.

He’d never do those things.

So she wouldn’t be afraid.

Because the dream had dried out her throat, she got up, ran the water cold in the bathroom, scooped some into her hand, into her mouth.