Suspense Short Story – The Lottery Murder (Part 9): The End is Near
Photo credit: bendzso from morguefile.com
Collins awoke in a gown, tubes in his arms, handcuffed to the railing of his bed. He remembered throwing up on himself, the press, telling the doctor in the car what he was on. He had confused klonopin with clonidine. He remembered Jesus warning him about this and getting them confused himself, probably intentionally. He looked up at the tubes in his arms, saline solution with an ethanol drip and another saline bag with a morphine drip. He felt better than he had in days.
He thought about Lana decapitated, her pretty little head separated from her body. He remembered her mother, Liberty, all the fires. Lana loved fire, everyone in Liberty knew it but no one cared enough to think much about it and he couldn’t blame them. What the hell had happened? He felt like a part of his brain was missing. He wondered for the first time if maybe he had killed Lana. He couldn’t imagine himself being fit enough to slice anyone’s head off, he decided he’d have to see the pictures. If it was a clean cut, it probably wasn’t him, but that didn’t necessarily mean anything. He laughed a bit to himself. It felt good to be on real drugs again, opiates and alcohol. He was finally thinking clearly again. He didn’t think he had murdered her before while he was still loaded, it was only after going through withdrawal that he had begun to have doubts. Two different versions of crazy, but he knew the one he preferred.
He remembered giving Lana money, suspecting she was buying up the houses in Liberty after she had burned them. It didn’t make sense to him, nothing did. No one in Liberty could afford to keep up with their insurance payments. Most had sold the land for dirt. What had Lana been up to? He should have thought about that more, but he hadn’t cared at the time. He still didn’t. He barely cared about his own ass but he was starting to care. He had the feeling he was going to jail, and then to prison. He didn’t like being handcuffed to the bed. He needed Abrams and Harris, maybe they could figure this out. And why did Jesus confuse him like that with the drugs?
It was the damn lottery. Lana had wanted a piece, Abrams, Harris, they wanted a piece, Jesus wanted a piece. He sure as hell wanted to keep his, it was his curse and his savior. Hell, it was still better than where he had been. Life was at least a bit more interesting but he was out his league. Even in death Lana was killing him and the others that were still alive were even more dangerous.
Collins tried to think. Had he killed Lana, had he really chopped her head off? He would have panicked if he wasn’t drugged. He didn’t even know what the hell he had been up to, he should have just moved into some cave as soon as he’d won the lottery, he should have bought a few kilos of heroin and cases of scotch and started running from the start. All he had wanted to do was clean up and start fresh but the cleaning up had destroyed him, it was too late for that and he should’ve known, he should have been smarter.
But he definitely felt better as the drugs were being loaded back into his system. Maybe he was delusional but certain things were starting to click into place, the warped gears of his mind were starting to grind again. And he still had his millions. He could post bail and disappear, go off to some island, continue his stupid life.
Harris entered the room. Good old stupid young Harris. What the hell had happened to Abrams? Collins had a bad feeling.
“How much do you remember?” asked Harris.
“Where is Abrams? I think I need to talk to Abrams.”
“You’ll be able to do that.”
Harris looked suspicious and apprehensive. Not a good sign.
“They’ve frozen my assets?” asked Collins.
“We over billed you and set up an account, $200,000. You thinking about running?” asked Harris.
“You think I did it.”
“Did you?”
Collins looked again at the tubes in his arms, at the ceiling, at Harris.
“I don’t know.”
***
TO BE CONTINUED…
