Jury Trial

Has it really been fifteen years? I sat calmly in the jury box, watching the man on trial. He was a lean, jolly-looking man in his early fifties. His hair was the stately salt and pepper of his age. Dressed in his charcoal grey suit, he looked every inch a patriarch of this community. No one would ever guess that he was a serial killer.

Arnold Redford, aka Dewight Arlington, had been a very different man fifteen years ago. He’d been cold and cruel, and he’d murdered seven different families for the fun of it.

Including my own.

I was just a child then, the terrified youngest of the last family he’d destroyed. He told me that I was special, that I was going to be his legacy. He’d never been caught; he just… Faded away into society, taking the terror of his crimes with him. He didn’t take my terror, though. Night after night, I felt the weight of his portly body on mine, pressing me into the bed. I woke up to the feel of his sweaty hands on my body in places no full-grown man’s hands should be. That pig would whisper words of love and admiration, of love and necessity to me as he took my innocence from me. He destroyed me during those two weeks of hell. Even now, fifteen years later, I couldn’t maintain a healthy relationship. There was a coldness to me; my potential lovers couldn’t touch me. I would freeze and scream when they got too close.

I knew what was wrong. I knew what was happening, but I was helpless to stop it. It was as if he’d rewired me during our time together. But I was no longer the weakling five-year-old he’d abducted and made to suffer in the wake of his killing spree. I’d told the police and the media and anyone else I could everything about the demon. I’d been as articulate as any five-year-old could be about what he’d done to me, about what he was. But no one listened. No one could see beyond the little girl to the dire warning she carried. And then had come the counselors, the doctors, the full might of the healthcare system to save this lost little lamb with words of healing and ‘moving on’.

I’d disappeared as soon as I was old enough. Changed my name, even managed to change my face. I didn’t want healing, I didn’t want to move on. Dewight Arlington took everything from me! A loving mother and father who were shining examples of faith and happiness. Two older brothers who loved me and would have done anything to keep me safe. Who had done everything they could to protect me from the monster in their midst. That monster stole the life I was meant to have. He tore apart my world on a selfish whim, replacing the security of my life with white-knuckled terror anytime a man got close to me.

I wanted revenge.

My new identity afforded me a unique opportunity to track my abuser to his new life. The hardest part had been the killings themselves. I wasn’t a violent person, but I had to make it look real. I didn't have a choice, not if I wanted to get back what he took from me. Every detail he’d bragged to me about during our time together. Every speck of evidence the media had released… I’d been meticulous to make it look identical to his crime scenes. One happy family to make people shudder. Another happy family to bring the old terror back into the public consciousness. And finally, a third happy family to point the idiot cops right at Dewight’s stupid face. Dewight had always preferred to destroy happy families. He said that unhappy families were already in hell. It was the happy families that were the threat.

As the trial progressed, I started to get less and less satisfaction out of it, though. Wasn’t revenge supposed to be sweet? He didn’t cry or blubber or anything. He just had this look on his face of perpetual shock as the new evidence bore out his old crimes. I’d even managed to get his fingerprints from his house!

The Prosecution even used my old testimony to destroy the Defense’s arguments. I wasn’t well-spoken back then, and hearing my own voice, aghast with repulsion and horror, fill the courtroom made me cringe. One of the other jurors placed a reassuring hand on my back as I sat rigidly listening to myself warn the officer about ‘the bad man’ and try to explain the things he’d done to me. The murmuring in the courtroom was all sympathetic, and I soaked it in.

Deliberations took less than an hour once we were allowed to have them. Many were beyond words with the despicable crimes the monster had committed.

Guilty. Guilty of 10 counts of murder.

I thought I would have to sway some jury members, but it was unanimous. Guilty of premeditated murder. The maximum sentence was to be leveled against him; he would die for the lives he took. Finally, I would have peace after fifteen years of suffering, knowing that he was still out there. When the foreman read the sentence out loud in the courtroom, it took everything in me not to burst into happy tears. That might have given me away.

Taking a deep, cleansing breath, I looked up as the prisoner was led away and into the eyes of my tormentor. I flinched, my first mistake. Everyone else was glaring at him, but this was the man who had taken my life away from me and then subjected me to two weeks of horrors. Now that he had eye contact, he stared deep into my eyes until recognition hit. To my dismay, he started to laugh that full-bellied, joyful laugh that still gave me nightmares. This drove the courtroom wild, but I was frozen in place. He’d put the places together.

“My legacy,” he chuckled merrily as he was led away. And just like that, my victory was turned to ash.