The Statement.

Trigger warning? Probably. If you have a weak stomach. Or PTSD. Or nightmares.

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I must have been in custody at the jail about a year and a half. The prosecutor was dragging her ass about giving up the discovery. I'd only recently seen the morgue photos.

That? That was all bad. If there were one thing I could unsee, those photos are it.

As bad as those photos were, though, they didn't prepare me for his statement. Seventeen pages of gory details. Seventeen pages of his thoughts while dismembering a human corpse, someone he once claimed to love. Seventeen pages of confessions, except they sounded more like braggadocio.

He admitted he'd beaten TheMan. He blamed that on me. "She made me lose my temper!" he told detectives.

I was well under his thumb by the time he'd killed TheMan. So much so I wasn't even allowed keys to our apartment. Sometimes, he'd take advantage of the deadbolt locks on both the front and back doors and lock us in for the day. He'd made me quit my $27/hr job because YOU SUCK ALL THE COCKS IN THE BOILER ROOM ON COFFEE BREAK. He'd taken my vehicle and left it in one of the hundreds of parking garages surrounding the downtown area and refused to tell me where. He'd decided I was going to stay home and take care of TheMan as he slipped deeper and deeper into dementia.

TheMan hated me. He hit me. He pinched me. He spat at me. He told me I ruined everything, that GinsuBoy was supposed to marry him, but he married me instead. He would sit next to me on the couch and shit his pants, then laugh. He would come out of his bedroom and piss in the living room corner, then laugh. He would tell me how much he missed my husband's cock in his mouth. He would lock himself in the bathroom and smear shit on the walls.

This wasn't a job I was mentally, or emotionally, equipped to handle. Eventually, I snapped. I demanded he put TheMan in a facility that could care for him properly. I pointed out he had enough income to secure something quite nice. I told him I would go back to work, that I made more in 2 weeks than he and TheMan brought in together, that TheMan's income wouldn't be missed. I told him he could quit working and I would support us. Anything. Anything to not have to do what I was doing anymore. I couldn't do it anymore. COULD NOT.

Request denied.

Except, he wasn't understanding, this wasn't a request. In a rare bout of bravery, I stood my ground. Of course, it did nothing except send him into a rage. A rage that he took out on TheMan. A rage that, ultimately, drove him to kill TheMan.

GinsuBoy was hard to read. I suppose most sociopaths are, though. Sometimes, I could tell when he was lying. Mostly, though, I just never really knew for sure. He loved spinning elaborate tales sprinkled with just enough truth to make you wonder. It was all part of the head games he loved to play. Keep me off kilter just enough to make me doubt. Doubt myself, my sanity, my reality, my worth, my judgement, my...everything. I didn't walk on eggshells, I walked on thin ice. At any moment I expected my icy world to give way and to drown in an abyss.

The Court Shuffle always began in the wee hours of the morning. We'd be awakened at 3:30am for breakfast. Breakfast was always at 3:30am. On days you were scheduled for court, it behooved you to get up and eat breakfast. Lunch was inedible. Well, for me it was. I just couldn't get that bologna past my nose. The smell alone was enough to make one retch.

We'd be locked back in our cells around 4am. At 5am, we were sent for medication and allowed to shower before court. They'd start herding us up around 5:30, by 6am we were cuffed and ready to go. We'd be shuffled from bullpen to bullpen until we reached our courtroom bullpen several hours later.

The courtroom bullpens were always bitterly cold. It didn't matter what season it was, it always felt like the dead of winter. I remember wearing long johns and a t-shirt under my pale blue DOC's, even in summer. I remember all of the concrete. I remember the steel benches. I remember the chipped, worn cell bars. I remember the stale odor of millions of bodies that passed before me, cigarette smoke, and urine mingling together. It clung to my clothing, hair, and skin like cheap perfume. I remember how everything was so hollow it echoed. I remember how all of that steel and concrete held the cold.

Fuck, it was cold.

My attorney had stopped by the courtroom bullpen that morning before our appearance. He motioned me to come to the bars of the cell so he could speak to me with some semblance of privacy. He handed me a stack of papers that had been neatly stapled into a packet of sorts. He leaned in and whispered to me, "I'm not supposed to give you a copy of this, but I thought you might want one. Keep this to yourself. Keep this hidden."

"What is it?" I asked.

"It's his statement. Just read it. I'll see you in the courtroom," he replied, as he turned to leave.

I looked down at the statement I held in my hands, and I began to tremble. My entire body was shivering. My teeth were chattering. My knees were wobbly. I needed to sit down. My feet felt like lead as I struggled those few short steps back to the frigid, steel bench. My chest was tightening. My breath became labored.

My head was spinning.

I stared at the first page for what seemed like an eternity, my eyes unable to focus on the words before me. I'd seen the result of his actions in the morgue photos. Now, I was going to find out what those actions were. He'd told me so many different stories over the years I wasn't sure what he'd actually done.

I didn't know what was real and what wasn't.

Finally, I began to read. I was stunned by how truthful he'd been. I never expected him to take any responsibility for what he'd done. He spent years holding this over my head. He spent years wielding it like a razor sharp sword. He'd made some changes to the statement, but the original wording could be read through the scribble marks.

He blamed me for him losing his temper.

He said he'd dragged TheMan into the bathroom after he'd stripped him, and wrestled him into the bathtub. He went on to describe how he stripped naked himself and climbed into the tub on top of TheMan. He told the detectives he started with a toe because he wanted to 'see how hard it was going to be', and that he'd worked his way upward.

I knew he'd sawed through bone and tissue. I saw TheMan's remains, or, what was left of his remains, anyway. I'd expected gory, I hadn't expected the utter desecration GinsuBoy described.
He said he was so angry at himself for being gay that by the time he got to TheMan's groin, he was so enraged that he cut TheMan's penis off.

He intended to behead his victim. He described his frustration at not being able to make TheMan's eyes stay closed. Instead of covering them, he chose to stare into TheMan's eyes as he brutally sawed through his neck with a dollar store, wood-handled, serrated, steak knife. He told of his surprise at the 'whoosh' of air he heard, and felt, as knife met windpipe. He said he'd wrapped his left hand in TheMan's hair, so he wouldn't drop the severed head.

He described removing TheMan's internal organs, with this creepy undertone of reverence and pride. He waxed philosophical about how surprised he was at the seemingly healthy appearance of TheMan's heart and lungs, as he was a long-time smoker. He chalked this up to him forcing TheMan to quit smoking a year before. He lovingly described holding TheMan's unbeating heart in his hands. It sent chills down my spine, and made the hair on the back of my neck stand on end.

TheMan had approximately 33 postmortem stab wounds in his buttocks. GinsuBoy said he became frustrated trying to bag the remains and attacked TheMan's ass because he'd died.

TheMan's hands were missing. Pieces of his organs were missing
.
I wasn't aware I was even crying until my tears began to hit the page. In that moment, the full gravity of what, and who, I was really dealing with hit.

It hit like a speeding fucking Mack truck.

"Hey, Bitch! Nice to meet you! I'm Reality!"

These were HIS words I'd just read. His words he dictated to a detective and a prosecutor. His words he reread and initialed his approval on, paragraph by paragraph. His words he chose to scratch out and alter.

All I could do was cry. I cried for everyone, and everything. I cried in despair. I cried in rage. I cried in frustration. I cried in gratitude. I cried in fear. I cried in denial.

I cried until I was empty, numb, dazed, and exhausted.

Somehow, I made it back from there.

Somehow, I made it all the way here.

I still don't know how, or why.