"Waiting--"

"How many people have you killed?" Freya asked.

"Maybe you can stop him, but I can't." Annabelle said, staring intensely at the road ahead as she marched down on the accelerator.

"Annabelle stop the car," Freya said with a shaky breath but Annabelle didn't look like she wanted to, it didn't even seem like she was hearing her mother.

She drove further down the highway and turned down a dirt road that led to a river or swamp, not once lifting her foot from the accelerator.

"When you've been hospitalized for schizophrenia, no one trusts you to tell your own story," Freya said.

" Oh, don't worry, I won't be the one telling the story," she replied with a smile.

"Ann stop the car and let us help you, trust me, we can!" Freya shouted.

" What if I don't want help?" She retorted.

" Why Ann, why?" Freya asked in a pleading tone. "Tell me why you're doing this."

"It's because all of this is your fault!" She shouted.

" How?!"

" If you didn't have me with that lowlife, that excuse of a father, you think I would have turned out to be this way?!"

" It doesn't really matter now, does it?" Freya asked in a small voice.

" Not really."

" You know, now that I think about it, it's not schizophrenia. You're using your mental condition as an excuse to hurt people." Freya said, looking at her daughter in disgust.

" Think what you want, but like I said, maybe you can stop him but I can't," she replied. "He has already chosen his next victim," she added as she brought the car to an abrupt stop.

" I love you baby." Freya whispered, tears running down her face.

Annabelle reached forward and opened the glove compartment, got out gloves and a knife with a sturdy build and blade about six inches long.

Without much delays, she planted the knife into the gut of her mother as hard as she could, there was a sharp intake of breath, blood gushed out of the wound and she felt like she was losing consciousness.

Leaving the knife deep in her mother's gut, she looked deeply into her eyes and chuckled. Somehow the stunned look on her mother's face was hilarious to her.

"Now this probably isn't schizophrenia, it's me fulfilling my driving need to hurt someone."

She angled the knife upwards under the ribs to puncture the heart and surrounding arteries. She got down from the car and walked over to the passenger's side of the car, opened the door and watched her mother's body fall limply to the ground with a thud.

She squatted just above her and stared down at her face for a while before she stabbed the knife into the inner thigh of her right leg, twisted it and pulled the blade back out. Blood sprawled everywhere, more and more skin tore as she pushed the knife in and out of the body slowly until she finally dropped the knife, looked closely at what she'd done and nodded in satisfaction.

She got up and opened the back seat door, there were a couple of things on the chair and floor of the car, among which was a flashlight, gloves, garbage bags, ice pick and a pair of handcuffs.

"On second thought--" she trailed off as she shook her head and closed the door.

She picked up both her mother's hands and dragged her body in the direction of the thick muddy water nearby. She dragged the body several yards into the thick muddy water and exhaled.

She sat on the ground, crossed her legs and sat on them as she stared at the spot where she had just brutally murdered her mother.

"Code white." She muttered to herself and let out a dry chuckle. She had always hated those two words, they made her feel like she was a monster and everyone always had to be alerted when she was acting irrationally.

She hated the psych ward, she hated how they never let her have her privacy, she hated how she always had to strip naked under a light in front of so many eyes just so they could check for wounds or drugs and worst of all, she hated her nights at the psych ward. Being alone in a room at night was the perfect time for the voices in her head to speak to her, it was the time she got tormented the most, it was the time she hurt herself the most and the time she hated herself the most.

It wasn't too bad when she still had a roommate but it became worse the first night her roommate was taken away. She had tried to explain to the nurses that she'd never intentionally hurt Jenn but the look on Jenn's face shut her up.

Jenn looked at her like she was a monster, she looked like she couldn't wait to leave there. Annabelle didn't want to blame her at first but Jenn was her first and only friend and Jenn knew about her diagnosis so she thought Jenn would try to understand and be with her.

Thinking about it now, she smiled as she realized that she didn't have to go there anymore, she didn't have to see Elenora anymore, her mother was gone. She was going to live her life the way she wanted to, go where she wanted, do as she pleased and nobody was going to stop her.

She was certain now that the girl that was in the psych ward a few months ago isn't the same girl that was sitting on the ground in front of a swamp at 4am in the morning, enjoying the feeling of what she had just done.

The feeling that came from passing a knife in and out of her neighbour's dog, she experienced a better one a few moments ago and now, she was so certain she was about to get more of that feeling.

"The only way to reform people is to kill them." She repeated to herself with a small smile as she got up and walked back to the car.

She placed a hand on the steering wheel and revved the engine to life as she stared silently ahead. After a short while, she breathed in deeply and exhaled as she began driving slowly, mumbling words to herself.

"Put victims' numbers down, follow them, check up on them, wait in the dark, waiting, waiting--."

~~~~~~~

Mostly it is loss which teaches us about the worth of things.