Contesting Part 8

You, the reader, decide how it ends with a vote.

CONTENT ADVISORY: Mature themes.

The eighth and final part of my original series is here! I hope you enjoy. This is it, and YOU DECIDE how it ends.

Read Part 1 | Read Part 2 | Read Part 3 | Read Part 4 | Read Part 5 | Read Part 6 | Read Part 7

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Contesting Part 8 - The Vote

MAN What?

WOMAN Do you hear me? It was me all along you naive little prick. I  dragged you into it, and I tried to get away with it.

MAN You devil.

WOMAN You fool.

MAN Why?

WOMAN Why? Or how?

As she delivers the next lines it’s as though she’s giving the play-by-play to film footage of her memory.

WOMAN I was at home, alone... with David. And you - I... we were fighting.  We were angry. It got so ugly. You couldn’t be near me anymore. You would disappear. You were so... terrified. Still. So weak. And your weakness, it made me angrier.

MAN Angry enough to kill our little boy?

WOMAN I was being merciful.

MAN Merciful?

WOMAN Yes! To you. To us.

MAN Bullsh -

WOMAN You were right to be terrified. It was so dangerous then. Our  neighbourhoods were locked down. Troops were in the streets.

MAN Because another bomb went off.

WOMAN Yes. In LA.

MAN “No more angels in Angeles.” I remember the headline in the Times.

WOMAN You thanked God that we weren’t in Paris when the first bomb went off.  Well I prayed the next one would hit Manhattan. Take us out. I hated what life had become.

MAN That’s not like you. It’s not the Dr. Alyson I know.

WOMAN You can’t remember that woman.

MAN Can you?

WOMAN Whoever I was, I changed.

MAN Into a murderer?

WOMAN I wasn’t the only one. Gangs. Do you remember the gangs?

He grabs his skull in a sudden burst of pain.

See, you’re starting to.

MAN Ah ah ah!

WOMAN They started to take over the streets. Started plucking kids from schools, from malls. They started to make their own armies in the boroughs, to take over the city. Raced to get their own portable nukes. A terrifying tribalism started to take over the whole city in  a matter of days.

MAN But it stopped.

WOMAN How could I know it would? David was too young to be part of any of  it! I wouldn’t let a gang steal his little life, to corrupt it!

MAN So you killed him?