JACKSON

Jackson was at home.

I looked around the walls that I called home, the poorly laid wallpaper glaring back at me, the digital clock glowing blood red, counting down my hours, days, minutes, seconds on earth.
I thought about what I had done, the terrible, terrible thing. The child I had murdered. I had done that. I had drove a stolen car and crashed into him. For that there was no excuse. I sat on my bed, thinking. Just thinking. Nothing else. I could not figure out how I had done what I had done. But the remorse I felt was tiny compared to the anger I had felt at Mrs Smith. Her son, the lowest of the low. And he took my girl! How dare he! Who did he think he was? I brushed the angered thoughts from my mind, and absorbed my head in the pillow. All I could think about was that kid, his shocked, pleading expression as he saw the car hurtling towards him. His tiny arms shielding his face, as if he could stop the car with his bare hands. His mothers's wretched screams as she seen it happen in front of her. At the time I was so self-absorbed I had been more focused on trying to escape. I drove on. I had thought about what that would do to a person. Now I knew. And it was terrifying. The guilt was ripping me apart, taking my very soul captive, wrapping it up in chains that controlled me, snaking round my neck, suffocating me.

My trial was tomorrow but I no longer cared. I knew what my punishment would be. Life. In. Prison. The steel gates, shutting me away from society, from my family, from my friends, from the world itself. And one day I would be as cold as those steel gates. But until then my guilt would consume me. Forever.

I heard the sound of footsteps, perhaps someone hurling abuse at me or a television crew looking for an update: Teen Killer On Trial. I stayed on the sheets, unmoving. But it wasn't a television crew or anyone I had ever seen. Someone was in the house.

I rounded the door, and gazed down the stairs, craning my neck for the sight of my intruder. My heart had not beat as fast since..... the accident. A figure approached the bottom of the stairs.

He wore a green hoodie, the hood pulled up, concealing his face from view. He calmly began to walk up the stairs.

"Who are you?", I called out to him.

He did not answer. Instead he kept walking, taking his the stairs one at a time, his mud stained trainers squelching on the sculpted wooden steps. He got closer each second, as he climbed step by step.

I ran, back towards my room, hoping that the flimsy wooden door would protect me. He had chimed the stairs by now, the old floorboards creaking under the mysterious figure's weight.