I startle when there’s suddenly a hand on my back and I almost jump out of my skin. Which is silly. Realistically I know it’s Gil, because he’s the only one in the room besides her, the freak that would be pulling off the end-scene of Saw if given the chance. I guess my nerves are still in fight mode.
“You okay?”
That’s a loaded question I don’t have an immediate answer to, so I don’t peel off all the layers of what’s going on inside me and just answer.
“Pretty spooked. I hope the cops will be here soon.”
He nods.
“How are you feeling?”
“Really? I’m just fucking glad this will be over soon.”
Yeah, that’s something I can understand. A small part of me is squealing that we’ve got her and everything can go back to normal.
“Fuck,” I yelp as I remember what Celia was doing when we entered the room. I walk to the table and take in the damage she did. Something inside of me breaks and tears fill my eyes. This bitch, she just keeps on ruining my life. And for fucking what? I haven’t done anything to her. First she takes away my sense of security, then she almost burns down my house and now she’s breaking my livelihood. Fuck that. I’m done with her. God, at this moment I just freaking wish she would’ve jumped out of the fucking window. With shaking hands I turn to Gil, who’s standing beside me. He sees my struggle and my emotions, which isn’t that weird, because I’m an open book when it comes to my emotions. He pulls me into his arms and holds me.
“We can get you a new laptop. It’ll be okay.”
Ugh, such a man, wanting to fix my problems when I just want my emotions to be validated.
There’s a knock on the door and I’m pulled along as Gil keeps holding me while he answers. Two police officers are standing in the hallway, and I recognize one of them from the night we reported the knife that was being stuck in my door. That’s a relief. He’s already familiar with the story and he’ll understand we haven’t just cuffed an innocent girl against her wishes. Well, we did cuff her against her wishes, but she’s not innocent.
We let them in, and the new officer looks apprehensive when he takes in the situation. Yeah, I guess it’s not every day for them they see two civilians take in the bad guy themselves. Look at us, all vigilante badasses.
“Miss?” the first officer says as he walks over to Celia. She looks up at him, hisses, and spits at him. This girl is so far more gone than we could have ever imagined, I don’t want to consider all the other possible ways this could’ve turned out. When he reaches out to her to touch her, Celia opens her mouth and starts screaming. And when I say screaming, I mean screaming. Her mouth is fully opened and she’s screeching at the top of her lungs, making my ears hurt and I press my hands against them as I try to hide my face in Gil’s shirt. I look at her from the corner of my eye, hoping, praying even, she’ll stop now, but she doesn’t. The officer who’s touching her quickly pulls his hand back as if he touched something that’s burning hot. And just as quickly as she started screaming, she stops. The officer steps away from her as he wipes his face with a handkerchief, all the while keeping his eyes glued to her.
“This is the girl you’ve been telling us about?”
“She is,” Gil answers. “She’s been harassing us for quite some time. It had stopped for a while when she was getting settled on the right meds for her paranoid schizophrenia, but she was released from treatment in a mental hospital a while back and everything started over again. She has seemed to spiral since then.”
Officer two looks stunned as he stares at her with an open mouth. “What the hell is she talking about?” he asks no-one in particular.
“Fuck if I know,” is all I can say. I just need this to be over.
“What are you going to do?” Gil asks as he starts rubbing circles over my lower back.
“We’re going to take her in for breaking and entering. Then we’re going to take her in on an emergency observation on account of her being a danger to both herself and others. Based on the observation, a judge might be able to get her an extended admittance so she can get the proper help she needs. As you’re the victim,” he says while focussing on me as I’m the one that pressed charges after the incident with the knife and the fire, “we’ll keep you updated on whether or not she’ll be let go, or if she gets admitted.”
While the idea of Celia getting sent away is thrilling, I’m not looking forward to not knowing what’ll happen for certain for a while. But seeing the officer walk over to take Celia in, is a sight for sore eyes. Celia just keeps mumbling, lost in her own world. Now that he doesn’t try to get her attention, she just lets him do his thing. The officer pulls out his own handcuffs and puts it on her free wrist. He looks surprised when he sees what we’ve used to secure her and raises a brow in question as he looks at Gil.
“Can you get the key?” he asks, and Gil finally lets me go. I immediately miss his warmth and comfort. I toy with one of the broken pieces of my laptop. There’s so much stuff on that drive that may or may not have been backed up that I don’t want to think about it. If I start thinking about it, I'll break down and I don’t want to. Maybe it won’t be so bad. Maybe the hard drive is salvable. Or whatever it was those nerdy tech guys were able to do. If they were able to save my stories, I swear I would stop calling them nerdy techy guys and start giving them the proper recognition.
Gil hands over the little key to the officer, as he uncuffs her and immediately re-cuffs her with his own. This seems counterproductive, but I keep myself out of it and let them do their job.
“We’re taking her in now. We will contact you once we can tell you more. We’ll send someone over to take your statements about today.”
“Thank you officers,” I tell them as they leave and the ball in my stomach starts to loosen up.
When Celia walks past me, she gives me a look that gives me goosebumps. Her eyes are both filled with hate and totally blank at the same time, which should be impossible, but she pulls it off nonetheless. As a shiver runs down my spine, I press myself against Gil again to find comfort. I’ll probably remember this day for quite some time.