Exhibit B
October 23, 2021
They let me have a pen in here. Can you believe that?
Dr. Montgomery says I need to start keeping a journal. I’m not sure about it yet. It wasn’t optional but I can keep it to myself. Everything is supposed to be private, a place for my thoughts to roam freely, to dance across the page.
But what if I don’t want to be in my own head?
(I can’t believe they let me have a pen. Didn’t they read the articles?)
October 28, 2021
They took the pen away.
Montgomery insisted, I needed to write, so I have a snub-nosed charcoal stick now. Inelegant, and my hand is a mess, but… I get it. I’m a whole mess, right now, anyway. Kevin knocked out one of my teeth, I’ve got a black eye. All because of her, just like every other time.
The Girl from the Subway.
I wish I’d never seen a subway. Or the pretty blond that caught my attention, then didn’t pay any of her own to her surroundings when she got off.
God, I cannot stand her.
I hate her.
She’s laughing at me.
November 7, 2021
He says I don’t really see her, but I do. I know this because she tells me all the things that I cannot know and should not know.
First, she told me stories of her childhood; warm summers, and Christmases packed with family from all over, and mommy and daddy kissing scraped knees, then of volleyball and art classes and her first kiss and her first dance, and she told me how she’d never gotten past that, because of me.
Then it was about the others, the ones before. Parts of their lives, opportunities I’d stolen, which the girl promised were whispered to her from the other side.
She likes, now, to tell me all about the horrible things the other inmates have done. That’s why I didn’t feel too bad about what happened to Kevin.
But I miss my pen. The charcoal sucks.
November 20, 2021
It’s hard to write today because someone is being very loud.
“Bring me back,” she demands when I ask her what she wants. “Bring me back, bring me back, bring me back.”
“I can’t, Valerie,” I tell her, always. “I’m sorry.”
“Then suffer.”
I think she wants me to tell the truth about all of them, but I’m not sure. When I ask, she only cackles.
It’s what she did when I asked if confessing to her murder would make her go away, too.
December 5, 2021
Well, I did it.
I told them about the girls in the park, where to take the dogs.
Dr. Montgomery looked like a ghost, more like one than the girl.
“Are there any more?” he asked, and I told him no. I looked him straight in the face, too, because it meant I didn’t have to look at her.
Valerie fumed over his shoulder at me, livid. I pretended like I didn’t notice.
December 20, 2021
It wasn’t enough, and Montgomery isn’t stupid. I spilled it, this time. Told them about my first one, when I was in my early twenties. About how I travelled, about how I managed to hide, about the types of victims I chose along the way. That’s how you get away with it, you know—you be careful, and you move.
Valerie sat quietly. I’ve gotten so used to her badgering, I forget she’s see-through, but she was so still she actually looked like a ghost.
When he left, I asked her if this was going to be enough, if she would be at peace, if I could find my own.
She stared through me with hollow eyes, and I guessed that was my answer. It was the only one I got.
January 15, 2021
I’m looking at the death penalty.
I’m not really surprised. At first, I was relieved.
“’Til death do us part, right?” I muttered last night, right before I closed my eyes. And then she touched my face.
That’s one of the rules; she can touch me, but never vice versa. Her skin is frozen cobwebs, breaking, scattering, crawling across the nerve-endings she makes contact with. Valerie has started bringing friends, and I recognize every one of them.
“No,” she told me, acid in my ears. “We are so much more than that, thanks to you. We shall never part.”
Writing helps. I wonder if there will be pens in hell.