The World is Quite Here

[This story contains gore, mental health and physical violence]

The Mouse - Lucy Mouse that is- Case has always been close to my heart, always held a secret shelf up in my mind for me to pull down on rainy days and evaluate. So when the opportunity to meet Lucy’s killer first hand an interview him I jumped at the chance and flew to Kentucky where he was being kept in a mental institution .

So now here I am sitting in front of a murder in my striped pantsuit while a normal looking man sat in front me waiting me be interviewed. I asked Gabe for permission to record and he said yes. I started my phone and braced myself.

RECORDING FROM ST. PADUA’S MENTAL INSTITUTION WITH GABE STOKES AND DETECTIVE BRADLY.

(Some information in this recording has been previously withheld from the public; viewer discretion is advised.)

DETECTIVE BRADLY: This is Detective Bradly with the Police Department. The date is September fourth twenty-twenty five, and the time: eighteen hundred hours. This is a recording of an interview with Gabe Stokes, taking place at St. Padua’s Mental Institution. Can you confirm that all of this is true?

GABE STOKES: (Slight chuckle) The day, month and year I can only guess. But my name and yours, that’s true. And so is the time and place.

DETECTIVE BRADLY: [sigh] Please state your name.

GABE STOKES: Gabe Stokes

DETECTIVE BRADLY: And why are you here?

GABE STOKES: For the murder of Lucy Mouse.

DETECTIVE BRADLY: Are you here by chose?

GABE STOKES: Yes.

DETECTIVE BRADLY: Alright, then let’s begin. How old were you when you and Lucy met?

GABE STOKES: fifteen and sixteen, she was older than me by a couple months

DETECTIVE BRADLY: How did you know Lucy Mouse?

GABE STOKES: We dated.

DETECTIVE BRADLY: When did you begin dating and how long did it last?

GABE STOKES: We started dating in January of two-thousand and two, so roughly eleven months. We-we never broke up… her death is what ended us.

DETECTIVE BRADLY: How was your relationship?

GABE STOKES: [pause] Uh… good, mostly.

DETECTIVE BRADLY: Mostly?

GABE STOKES: Well I had this… Friend that she didn’t like very much. But she eventually learned to deal with it

DETECTIVE BRADLY: Tell me about her.

GABE STOKES: [Another pause] You could never tell with that one. Her laughter always sounded like a scream, too sharp and high. They say that that’s not true but it was. I hear it now and again as I pass the swollen streets of my hometown or to my room. My shoulders always tighten up to my ears when I hear it. Her laughter shows up in my dreams too, but there are times when I hear it out in the open. I know it’s not Lucy, she’s dead, she’s been dead for 20 years.

DETECTIVE BRADLY: Hm..

GABE STOKES: But that laugh is hers, it echoes in my bedroom when no one else is around and plays in my mind when I sleep, I swear it. Even in death she follows me. That laugh that anyone could write off as someone else’s but it isn’t, I should know, I heard it in the very last moments of her life. I heard it reverberate off the basement walls and then back into her throat. But maybe she wasn’t laughing at all, maybe she was really screaming.

DETECTIVE BRADLY: So you do think that you killed her?

GABE STOKES: Maybe, I don’t know. That’s what everyone keeps telling me is the real truth. That I killed her. But I would never kill her. She was too gentle, too good to be killed. When we first met, her laughter escaped her mouth so much that that was all I could picture her doing. Not crying or screaming, oh but how they both sound so much alike.

DETECTIVE BRADLY: What happened on the night of Lucy’s murder, Gabe.

GABE STOKES: I didn’t do it, you gotta believe me. [Screams] I DIDN’T DO IT I DIDN’T I SWEAR TO GOD.

DETECTIVE BRADLY: Don’t raise your voice at me boy. We all know it was you.

GABE STOKES: [Sobbing] No, you gotta believe me, it wasn’t me, it wasn’t me it was… it was…

DETECTIVE BRADLY: Who?! Who else could it’ve been?

GABE STOKES: Richard…

DETECTIVE BRADLY: Who the hell is Richard?

GABE STOKES: Richard, he-he lives inside of me, he IS me but isn’t me. I was told it is something called D.I.D?

DETECTIVE BRADLY: Dissociative Identity Disorder, yes I’ve heard of it…

GABE STOKES: They say that’s what I have.

DETECTIVE BRADLY: But that’s almost impossible.

GABE STOKES: So is murdering the girl you truly love.

[4.37-8.03 of audio recording is silence]

DETECTIVE BRADLY: How can I speak to Richard?

[Shuffling]

DETECTIVE BRADLY: Please answer verbally.

GABE STOKES: I have no idea.

DETECTIVE BRADLY: But you believe he killed Lucy Mouse?

GABE STOKES: I don’t believe, I know.

DETECTIVE BRADLY: [Snort] How so? Did he tell you?

GABE STOKES: Mock me all you want, but no he didn’t tell me. I stole his memories. I know what he did even if he isn’t willing to come out and say it.

DETECTIVE BRADLY: Then please Mr. Stokes [Creak of a Chair] tells us.

GABE STOKES: [Deep breath] When they went into that basement her eyes got wide, with wonder, not with fear. And she laughed, not screamed. Neither of us told this to the police because they wouldn’t even make eye contact with us, it was probably because of the scar on our face. I- not Richard- told them I had loved her and they laughed.

“You killed her.” They all said but they didn’t get it. They didn’t get either of us. Richard said they would never get it that they didn’t get to see how much she enjoyed it, how much she laughed even as the blood poured down her neck. I didn’t know it was going to kill her. It was a game, all of it, was just a game. A game that ended with her-her screams I guess… She fought Richard then, her voice leaking hysterics but it was too late. I had to continue what he had started, I had to get the bad blood to leave her. That’s what she had asked Richard to do, she’d said ‘Gabey I need a leach to get all this bad blood out of me, then I’d be good. Then I could finally leave.” Richard never asked who she wanted to leave, but I think she wanted to leave him- I mean me, I mean us. Richard told her he’d help her with the bad blood, I was told to keep a look out as he got rid of all the bad blood. So I did. He told her he could get rid of it and before she even knew what Richard or I or whoever was holding that goddamned knife in her eyes, I had slit her throat. Not Richard, me. Richard had left when the knife cut through her flesh. She laughed or maybe she screamed… and then fell to the ground. Richard came back but after that I forget what happened.

Pages 3 and 4 are not open to the public domain.

VOICEMAIL ADDRESSED TO DETECTIVE BRADLY LEFT AT THE POLICE STATION:

NURSE BECKY: Hello I’m looking to speak to Detective Bradly? It involves medical history for Gabe Stokes. I just re-evaluated Gabe just yesterday and made a new report. (I will send you the email tomorrow) Gabe is suffering with multiple levels of psychosis but has no sign of Dissociative Identity Disorder. His so-called ‘second personality’ Richard most definitely doesn’t exist and has never existed. Hope the medical history that I will send can help in anyway possible. Sincerely, Nurse Becky at St. Padua’s Mental Institution. Bye Bye.

[Silence stretches over the recording until it eventually shuts off]

CASE NOTES FROM DETECTIVE BRADLY:

I went to St. Padua’s Mental Institution again today. Not to visit Gabe who I know is a good for nothing criminal, or to talk to Nurse Becky even though I got her voicemail the other day. I went because I didn’t have anywhere else to go to get some silence. The Mouse case is an old one. One that I shouldn’t have poked my nose into. Some case’s are better never really answered. Gabe isn’t going anywhere anytime soon and me? Well sitting on the front lawn of a physic ward is about as far as I’ll ever travel. So I sit there for a long time waiting for something so become of me. But nothing ever happens. All that becomes of the story Gabe told, of the one I thought I could solve… was silence.