Fiction Friday: The Confession

I'm not sure, but I think Fiction Friday might be winding up.

***

Daphne breathed out deeply. Her advocate gave her an encouraging nod.

"Yes," she said finally. "I did do it."

The gravity of those words hit her with unexpected force. She expected a gnawing vortex to open, to swallow her whole. To swallow the whole room, perhaps the whole world. Nothing could ever be the same again. Nothing.

But that's all that happened: nothing.

There was silence.

Daphne thought it would never end.

"Why?" asked Detective Jones.

It was a simple word. A simple question. A punctuation to the silence.

Daphne stared at her advocate, hoping beyond hope he would crack a big smile and yell, "Surprise! It's all a big joke! This isn't really happening!"

But it was really happening.

She knew that. Nothing would change that.

She looked at her hands. She opened her mouth. She furrowed her brows. She closed her mouth.

How could she possible make them understand? How could they ever understand? Had they ever known that welling of anger? That spark of fury? That unstoppable torrent of feeling?

She didn't understand it. How could they? It had happened in another life, to another person.

She remembered the mechanics, but the emotion was unreal.

Why.

The question echoed in her mind.

Was there an answer? A real answer? She could say something. She could make something up. Give some simple story of anger or rage. Something they could understand.

But could she ever really tell them what it had been like? Those striking moments of life and death, darkness and light? Between the conception and the creation, between the emotion and the response.

Why?

There was no answer. Not really.

Why?

"I don't know," she said simply, a smile playing her lips.