The day grows dark as I sit in this cell not even waiting any more, or hoping. He is out there free, the real murderer, while I am left here to rot. I protested my innocence right from the start, but the facts were against me, and fate.
It was a moonless winter night and I was walking home from a party. Everything was damp from the clingy fog and to make matters worse, I was quite drunk, so it should have been no surprise to find I had lost my way, even though I knew the city from having spent all my life living and working in its sprawl. But there I was hopelessly lost, trying to find a street sign which was near to ground level, when suddenly the night was broken by a piercing scream; of course I was disoriented as to its direction, but it was obviously a cry of terror from someone whose doom was imminent, if not already arrived. I ran to offer assistance; the scream having sobered me somewhat.
As I went by a dim street-light the scream came again, this time it was cut off in mid cry as if the person had suddenly run out of breath, or was stopped perhaps by a hand over the mouth, or more sinisterly, by death. I still had no clear idea as to the direction I should run, and I thought that it would be too late, if the sudden cessation of the scream was anything to go by, but I would do what I could. Then I heard shouting and footsteps echoing in the fog as if running.
There was more shouting from two people this time, then a second set of footsteps running.
Like a wraith, from out of the fog came a wild looking figure, I was only able to take the briefest look at him before we collided, running head-first into each other. He was a man about my own build and height, in his early thirties. There was blood on his face and clothes, and his hair was disarrayed. He obviously had been in a struggle, for his white shirt was torn at the collar and his clothes were in disarray.
We ran into each other with such force we crashed to the pavement. I was stunned momentarily, mainly by the impact of our heads, as if I had run straight into a lamp-post. On coming to my senses I noticed that he too had been stupefied by our collision. We looked at each other for long moments, neither of us speaking or making any effort to move. He bore an uncanny resemblance to my-self: the same raised black eyebrows, same out-thrust chin; even the suit he wore was similar. But in his eyes there was a madness I would remember for the rest of my days. It was a madness I had glimpsed in recurring recent nightmares.
For what seemed an age but what must have been in reality only a few short seconds we studied each other. I was dumbfounded at his appearance. For here was a complete stranger staring back at me as if from a mirror, and I wondered then if perhaps he was my doppelganger. The only dissimilarity being the wound on his face, a small hole in his cheek that was bleeding, which I supposed at the time was the cause of the blood on his person. He was the first to speak: “So we meet at last,” he said.
I had no idea what he meant and could not fathom why he should say such a thing, but I had the strongest feeling I had met him before. As I formulated a question, the running footsteps coming towards us grew very loud and he made to run off and would have done so, but I took a hold of his coat and pulled him back.
We grappled furiously then, with him growing more and more frantic as the footsteps came nearer. All of a sudden there was a searing pain in my face as he stabbed me with something he had been holding all the while. I involuntarily put my hands to the wound and gave him his chance to make his escape.
For a moment I stood there, anger welling up in me, and indignation at his assault upon my person, and then I gave chase, following the sound of his drumming feet just yards ahead. By now there were more shouts all around in the fog, they registered somewhere in my mind, but vaguely, most of my consciousness being taken with the chase and trying to close the gap between us, but of course, I didn’t know it at the time, he was running for his life, or at the least his liberty, while I was running from a sense of justice, and something else: I was intrigued, mystified, by his words: ‘so we meet at last.’
He gained distance with his every step for I was starting to flag, the alcohol still in my system taking its toll. Still I pursued him, but it was useless for he was too far ahead and his footsteps were fading. Then, looming out of the mist in front of me was another figure, this time all in black. I made to run past him to keep up the chase but I was rugby tackled and brought down. I struggled and shouted out: “Let me go. You’ve got the wrong man.”
From out of the fog yet another policeman came and between them they subdued me. It was then it dawned on me the seriousness of my predicament and I protested my innocence, but to no avail.
I was arrested and detained. My clothes were taken for analysis. The blood on them that I had picked up from my collision with the real culprit matched that of the murder victim.
Her face and throat had been severely slashed many times. The blood from the wound on my face was the same as that on the nail file which was found along the way I had been running. It also had a fingerprint from the dead woman. All other prints on it were too smudged to be of any use. And lastly but the most damning of all, the only witness swore she saw the girl stab me with the file before I murdered her.
Through all the long weeks of the trial I waited and hoped, but it was as if my fate had been decided and nothing was going to change it. My only hope was that the real murderer of the crime would come forward and give himself up and confess, or maybe his madness would make him commit one more heinous murder.
But I do not hold out any hope of that now that I am here, for not many are ever released from this place for the criminally insane.
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