Confessions of a Murder Suspect

CONFESSION

Why does this feel so… familiar?

It’s not the claustrophobia. My whole world is claustrophobic. Always has been. That’s the life of an Angel.

It’s not the grossly bad attitudes of the administrators, or the total foulness everywhere around me, either. I can handle this New York correctional facility dreck. Tandy Angel is not frightened by jerk-off law enforcement trying to get media attention, right? That’s something I was raised to accept—that people will try to exploit us.

But there’s something else that’s ringing a bell, and it’s making me anxious. Jittery. And it’s getting worse and worse. Is it that I’ve not been taking my pills?

It’s the air, I think. Something subtle in the smell, a smell you don’t get anywhere in the day-to-day life of an elite Manhattan family. I can almost feel the olfactory receptors in my nose sending chemical signals to my brain, where the components are being lab-tested.

It’s the smell of an institution. The smell of the unwell, and the smell that you use to cover that stink. And it’s all mixed together with the reek of uncertainty, loneliness, and fear.

I haven’t been in prison before… have I?

I’m getting a flash of memory now. I’ve been to a place like this before. I know it.

I have been institutionalized.

It feels shameful to say, but I have to say it. I have to start confronting it.

I was locked up for treatment. After he… was gone. Taken.

It was a place my own parents sent me to. A place where I was supposed to heal, but never totally did. A broken child is not something Malcolm and Maud knew how to handle.

So I stayed a little bit broken.

Please, Philippe—anyone!—get me out of here.