Word count: 1950
My name is Samuela Andrade and this is my confession letter.
I was not very well informed about how I should write this, or what information I should put in a confession letter other than, of course, my confession. For this reason, I will let my heart speak — which, in most cases, is not a good idea.
I'm eighteen years old and in my last year of high school. I repeated seventh grade and was never an amazing student. Up to Elementary School, I got very good grades, especially in mathematics, and from High School on it just went downhill.
A lot of people might say there's no justification for what I did, but honestly, there's no justification for most things most people do, even if they're good things. There is no reason to do charity, it's just "because". So there is no logical reason for what I did.
I can also begin to say that I think that no action is committed by the use of logic alone. Actions are inherently emotional things, and logic is reserved for the world of thoughts, but that's just what I think and I'm no renowned philosopher.
Anyway, I can list some things that motivated me, maybe that would be interesting.
For as long as I can remember, I have always been bubbly. I had emotions that were too strong for my small child's body, and after I watched Peter Pan, I started saying that I was a fairy. In the movie they explain that fairies are so small that they can only feel one emotion at a time, which is why they are so impulsive and why Tinker Bell tried to kill Wendy.
It would be cute for a little girl to call herself a fairy if she was up to seven years old, after that it's just weird, at least for her classmates. I was eleven. And I was a fairy, I was sure of it!
Once I went with a pair of wings that were worn like a backpack, and I was laughed at for the rest of my days. To this day, some remember me as the little fairy. And being called a fairy doesn't seem insulting at all unless you're a man with fragile masculinity or if a snotty elementary school kid said it.
It was always the tone of voice, the way they said it, with those expressions of disgust and mocking laughter. Unfortunately I didn't learn so quickly that they were laughing at me and not with me.
And I hated them all. Except Miriam. I loved Miriam. She was my only friend. My best friend.
We played fairies together. We did everything together. We could be ourselves with each other and laugh all the time. She had full, curly hair and eyes so kind that they could melt anyone. And I was a white girl with messy hair and crooked teeth. Miriam was beautiful, it was like looking at God.
And because she was beautiful and smart and charismatic, I wasn't her only friend. She was friends with everyone. It wasn't long before she no longer had time for me, and that was okay. She was not my property.
Because of her popularity, I stopped being bullied so much and nowadays almost no one messes with me, but I also owe that to my anger issues.
I still remember the first day it happened, my first explosion, in seventh grade. I broke the school mirror with my mind. Yes, with the mind. I stared at it so hard that it cracked into thousands of little pieces, and I spent a long time staring at what was left of my reflection, very scared. I thought I had hallucinated. But I knew I hadn't hallucinated because my hand wasn't cut.
And that wasn't the scariest part. The scariest part was when I realized that no one would ever believe me. So I took one of the pieces of the mirror and cut the knuckles on my left hand, because I'm left-handed, to pretend that I broke the mirror with a punch. But since I was cutting my left hand with my non-dominant hand, I ended up using too much force and opening a huge wound on the back of my hand.
If the sound of the mirror breaking wasn't enough, my scream certainly was. A bunch of students left the classroom to go and see what was going on, and they found me there, hunched over my bleeding hand, the red liquid running down my arm and onto my sneakers, and the mirror shattered.
I was taken to the counselor, and then they passed me on to the principal's office. I tried to go with the lie that I had slipped, and it obviously didn't stick. So I just confessed, like I'm doing now. I told him I had broken the mirror on purpose (but I didn't mention the mind thing) because I was angry. When they asked me why I was angry, I said I didn't know, and I really didn't know. I just felt so, so angry all the time.
After this event, I developed an addiction to self-harm that I thought was insurmountable. It was so good to feel my flesh tearing, it was so good to feel something so strong that it made me scream. Not even masturbation gave me the same pleasure. I moaned in pain and pleasure as I ran my blades across my skin, my arms, my wrists, my thighs, my belly, wherever I felt itchy. This itch, this desire to tear. What was so bad about that? I wasn't hurting anyone but myself.
My parents didn't want to take me to a psychologist because it was too expensive and they never cared much about me either. They divorced a long time ago and I was always just something that came every other week, from one house to another, an ugly ghost with deep circles under my eyes wandering around.
So I made the big mistake of telling Miriam. I told her that I broke the mirror with my mind, and she didn't believe me. My Miriam, who played fairies with me, who had made a friendship bracelet with me, the most understanding girl in the world, the beautiful Miriam with the sweet eyes, hadn't believed me. My heart broke into more pieces than the mirror.
I felt crazy, maybe I was going crazy! But then it happened again, and again, and again, over the years. I moved objects with my mind, crushed aluminum cans, broke things, whatever I wanted. I don't know how I do it. I don't know how it happens and I don't know how it's possible, but it happens. I swear.
An then that bitch Miriam spread it all over the school. She said it wasn't her intention, but hell is paved with good intentions. Now the fairy also thought she had super powers. Not even the teachers took me seriously.
The school psychologist tried to help me, and I said there was no way out. I was alone, without Miriam and without sanity. I tried to show her my powers, how real they were, but of course it didn't work right away and only made the situation worse.
I immersed myself in books, I read all the time, and I didn't talk to anyone. Soon it stopped being fun to mess with me, so everyone just pretended I wasn't there. An ugly ghost with deep circles under her eyes wandering around. I barely passed the subjects, I didn't open my mouth.
Last year I tried to kill myself and Miriam came to visit me in the hospital. She said she was sorry. And that she missed me. And that she was going to make up for lost time. I no longer had the strength to fight. I didn't have the strength to deny her help or her excuses. I just breathed, feeling my whole body hurt, but I breathed, and Miriam took it as agreement.
She surprised me. She went back to hanging out with me alone, saying she didn't like the people at that school. She said she believed me, but I knew it was just out of pity. I also discovered that it was actually her friends who had discarded her, and since she probably felt some guilt when I tried to kill myself, now was the perfect time to rekindle the friendship. But I was at rock bottom. So I would accept anything, even if it was to be someone's last option. I could live on crumbs.
Miriam got me to see a psychologist. She followed my slow improvement. She gave me gifts, walked me home every day and helped me study. And I showed her my powers. She was horrified, and that's okay. I think even after seeing it, she still didn't believe it. She didn't talk about it, didn't mention the subject.
We traveled to the beach together in July and it was good to feel the sun on my skin, but not so good to feel people's eyes on my scars. And they weren't even discreet. They were raised scars, deformed and wrinkled, darker than my skin and drawing attention.
Miriam and I had sex. She praised my body and I kissed her and the next thing I knew we had already had sex. I had sex with Miriam, the girl with not-so-sweet eyes anymore.
When classes resumed two months ago, once again an intimate matter leaked. Everyone knew that Miriam and I had sex, and I knew it wasn't me who told everybody, so there was only one person left. But everything was fine. It was okay. Miriam was all I had and I would accept crumbs.
Just when I thought everything was getting better, she was gone again. It was so easy for Miriam to disappear from my life that I wondered if everything we went through had really happened. I asked myself why she was doing that, I wanted to understand what was going on in her head. Maybe the problem really was me. All the evidence pointed to me as the problem person. Maybe I was the antagonist of my own story.
And then we get to yesterday. I lost my sketchbook. They took it from me. They set fire to my sketchbook and called me an abuser. I asked where they got it from and all eyes went to Miriam. The dots connected.
My art burned on the ground. I couldn't feel anything. Nothing but anger, anger and anger. My heart was beating so hard that I thought I was going to have a heart attack. The itching intensified, more, and more, and more, and in the blink of an eye... All of them. All lying in front of me.
Hard, immobile, still warm. With eyes bulging out of the sockets, cracked skulls expelling a strange liquid. Blood coming out of the ears. We were in a small square near the school. So I did what I had learned to do from an early age.
I took a large enough rock and crushed their skulls inside until they were unrecognizable. I crushed Miriam's face so much that I almost put a hole in her head. I hit and hit and hit without stopping, my muscles burned with the repetition of the same movement, my teeth grinded and my blood boiled, but my eyes expressed nothing.
I stayed there until I heard screams, and then sirens, and then they dragged me away from the bodies; caught red handed.
Cause of death: head trauma, of course.
Because being a murderer was better than being crazy. And no one would believe me if I said I killed them with my mind.
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