Chapter 28
The next morning, Professor Rosenberg had just given a test in his science class. He had just finished grading the test of one of his students, and when he went to the next test, he noticed a message on the top of the document, right above the student’s name.
I’M SICK AND TIRED OF ALL THIS NONSENSE. I JUST WANT TO PUT AN END TO MY LIFE! I SUCK!
Without ignoring the message, he just went ahead and graded it in less than a minute. All of the answers that she’d given were correct. She’d done an excellent job in all her assignments, big projects and examinations this week, quizzes as well as big tests like this one. What was going on? Why did she want to kill herself? What was happening at home that had her so tormented? She was one of his best students. The class was only ten minutes from ending and some students were still working on their tests, although they were almost done. He lifted his face to look at this young woman right in the eyes. She looked back at him and instantly knew that he wanted something with her; that he wanted to talk to her. Yep, he’d read her message on the test. Rosenberg didn’t say a word at this moment because he didn’t want to distract the guys and girls that still weren’t finished. She just got up from her desk and he got up from his chair. They went into his office together, but he didn’t close the door. They were so quiet at the moment that no one noticed them, just like they intended because they didn’t want to divert anyone’s attention from what they were doing. Some of the students were using these last few minutes of class to read their messages on their social networks and their email, in their laptops and in their phones.
“What’s going on? Why do you want to kill yourself?”
“I’m sorry,” she said, saddened, “but it’s personal.” This was eating her so bad that she was about to break down and cry…again.
“Look, I know I’m not a counselor, I’m not a psychologist, psychiatrist, social worker or anything like that. However, I’m your teacher, and I just want to…”
“Professor Rosenberg, I know you care very much about your students.” She was crying bitterly now, but she managed to keep her voice down. She’d just realized that she’d involuntarily warned someone of what she was about to do, when in reality, she was planning to take a whole bottle of sleeping pills as soon as she finished her day and got to her dorm, and she planned to do this quietly, so that by the time that her roommate knew, she would be too late to save her. “However, I don’t want you to intervene. I don’t want anyone to do anything about it. I don’t even know why I wrote that on my test. I obviously didn’t want anyone to find out until after I died.”
“Yes, obviously,” he replied, “but you left that message on your test because you weren’t supposed to die tonight like you wanted to. It just wasn’t meant to be. You can’t kill yourself. You just can’t. It’s not worth it. He’s not worth it.”
“Wait a minute. You know what’s happening, don’t you? You just figured it out.”
“Yes, that’s right, I figured it out.”
“Nobody knows the truth about you. Sure, they know that you’re a wonderful teacher, a wonderful son, brother, and an outstanding friend. They just don’t know that, do they?”
He knew what she meant. “No, they don’t, but now you do. That’s right; I let you know and basically opened myself up to you. If no one else knows it’s because I’ve protected my secret extremely well. However, I repeat, I opened up to you, and guess what? That’s right; you have to do the same for me. You have to tell me what happened between the two of you that was horrible enough for you to want to end your life for him, or I will figure it out myself. I am giving you the chance to tell me.”
“He’s been abusing me, physically and verbally, and I’m just tired of it. I’ve always been strong, but I just can’t stand up to him. He makes me totally helpless. It’s like he’s got me under his control. Ty is the only person in this world who has been able to break me, to turn me into a rag doll, and I know that the only way to stop it is…” She broke down crying, covering her face, her head lowered. Rosenberg didn’t want to give her or anyone else the wrong idea so he just took her hand and held it tight.
“No, that’s not the only way to stop it. You can’t kill yourself, for him or for anybody. You’re only twenty-one years old. You’re only one year away from graduating college. You have a whole life ahead of you. You can go to the police and file a restraining order against him.”
“He’ll never leave me alone.”
“You know what I’ve learned in this life, Victoria? My mother always told me to ever say never.” The bell rang. “Just remember what I’ve said, ok?”
“I will. I am going to take your advice. I have plenty of proof against him. My best friends have seen the black eyes and the bruises. They’re willing to testify against him.” Victoria walked out of Rosenberg’s office and Rosenberg accommodated the pile of tests in his briefcase very neatly and in a few minutes, he walked out of his classroom.
Nevertheless, Victoria didn’t have to put herself through the burden of reporting Ty to the police, risking them not believing her, and risking being threatened and harassed by Ty and his friends. Victoria’s brother, William, who was going to school with her, as a freshman, two years younger than her, and his friends were cornering Ty at this very moment. He and his friends never knew what was happening because Victoria had hidden it very well. Ty had always threatened to kill her if she ever told anyone. Her friends knew because no matter how hard she tried, they would always notice the horrendous injuries, but she’d also begged them not to tell anyone else. They were constantly begging her to leave Ty, but she would always say that she couldn’t do that, and she was right. He had her completely under his control and she couldn’t escape him. Wherever she went, he would find her. However, that was all about to come to an end, and Ty would be the one to end up dead, not Victoria. William and his friends were uncontrollably angry because William’s friends loved Victoria like a sister, and they couldn’t stand the fact that a son of a bitch was abusing her, while pretending to be the perfect guy. They abhorred him for being an abuser, a monster, and on top of that, a hypocrite, for pretending to be someone that he wasn’t.
“So you want to beat on my sister, huh?” William was hyperventilating and his eyes were dark. Ty felt like he was facing a demon, capable of any atrocity imaginable, and not feeling any remorse afterward, but rather, satisfaction.
“Look, man, I don’t know what you’re talking about. I don’t know what Victoria told you, but it’s not true. She’s lying to you because she’s mad at me. I don’t know why. Maybe I didn’t give her something that she wanted. Maybe I refused to do something that she wanted me to do and now she’s doing this. I don’t know why, I swear, man. She’s done a pretty good job at keeping it from me.” He was frightened, like he’d never been in his life. He would always victimize girls, since he had his first girlfriend at fourteen, and he was the one calling all the shots. He’d always been the predator. Now, he was the prey. It was seven against one, and there was no way he could win this one, unless he could convince these guys not to hurt him because he wasn’t carrying weapons with him to defend himself at this very moment, and he never would. He would always use his hands, and his legs to beat Victoria to a pulp. “Don’t do this, please. You know how much I love her. I would never do anything to help her.”
“That’s what you’ve made us believe: Mom, Dad, our older siblings, Victoria’s best friends, my best friends, and even my parents’ best friends, everyone that knows us. You had us all fooled.”
“William, I…”
“I don’t know how it happened, but I visualized a conversation that Victoria just had with her teacher. It was like watching a movie, only I saw it in my mind. The truth is out, man, and you’re going to pay. You hear me?” he said and then screamed. “You’re going to pay!” Without warning, William punched Ty out, knocking him down on the ground. Zack, Xavier, Ricky, Wilson, William, Mitchell and Marlin took this opportunity to start kicking him all over his body, especially in the face, in the upper back and the lower back, breaking his spine, and destroying his kidneys and his lungs, and breaking his ribs. The boys’ restroom quickly became a pool of blood. They kicked Ty without mercy, and with all their strength and everything they had, demolishing him. These guys had never beaten anyone so badly. In fact, they’d never hurt anyone, but right now they were so angry that they couldn’t control themselves. They didn’t intend to kill him, however. They only wanted to teach him a lesson he’d never forget. They wanted him to feel the terror and the vulnerability that he’d made Victoria feel every time he laid his hands and his feet on her. He’d even hit her in the stomach once with his knees, leaving her out of breath, and it took her several hours to recover from that. She even bled from her mouth as he watched her, laughing at her. Now, he was really living the last few minutes of his life. Finally, the guys woke up from the lethargy they were in while they were mauling him, and when they realized what they’d done, they ceased to kick him, but by now, it was too late. He was dying, and there’s nothing they could do to save him. They gasped, breathless. They couldn’t believe their eyes. Ty gave out his last breaths, and then he let go. He died, right before their eyes. They were so horrified that they just ran out of the restroom, without looking back. This happened because it was meant to happen, not because these guys wanted it to. They didn’t know that this was Ty’s fate, to die like the worthless piece of trash that he was, at their hands.
That day, Victoria was in her dorm, in the afternoon, working on her next science report in Rosenberg’s class, like nothing had ever happened, like she’d never even contemplated committing suicide. She had already taken several hours of her school day off to report Ty’s abuse against her to the police, just like Rosenberg had advised, and she’d given them the little proof she had against him. Although there were very few pieces of evidence, it was enough for the police to convict him for abuse, for several incidents of aggravated assault that hadn’t been reported before. Ty would’ve faced at least ten years in prison and six years probation. That wouldn’t be. That day, the police talked to Ty’s parents, who had no idea that their son had been abusing his girlfriend of two years on a daily basis. They were shocked because he hadn’t learned that from them. Ty’s parents had never even yelled at each other, never insulted each other. When they were angry with each other, rather than letting arguments escalate, Ty’s father, Todd, would walk out of his house for a few hours while Ty’s mother, Vivian, calmed down. When he arrived home, they would always apologize to each other, kiss and make up. No one knew where Ty was. It took the police several hours to find Ty, in the boys’ restroom, dead. They couldn’t believe their eyes.
Meanwhile, William and his friends felt so bad about what they’d done that as soon as they found out that the investigation of Ty’s death was in course, they went to the police station and confessed to what they’d done. No one wanted to lose their freedom because it was priceless, obviously, but they had good hearts, they’d committed a horrible crime, and they knew that they had to pay. They were completely willing and ready to face the consequences of their actions. To these boys the only good thing that came out of this was that Ty would never hurt Victoria again, and unbeknown to them, no other man ever would. As soon as the questioning ended, the guys were locked up, facing charges of second-degree murder, and if convicted, they would get life in prison.
Victoria was devastated when she found out what her brother and his and her best friends had done. She was hoping that they were uncontrollably angry at Ty, that they weren’t reasoning, and they didn’t know what they were doing while they attacked Ty. That way, their prison sentence would be reduced and maybe, just maybe, they would be rehabilitated and then be able to get out. She went to visit her brother with Esq. Bass, Dr. Sherman’s attorney, and now, William’s attorney. He’d been appointed to William by the state because William didn’t have money to pay for his defense, and he didn’t want to be defended. He was so remorseful that he was dead set on paying for what he’d done. He couldn’t stop crying in front of Victoria and Esq. Bass, and this broke Victoria’s heart. She’d never seen him like this, and he’d never been so miserable and heartbroken in his life, not even when three of his ex-girlfriends left him for other men.
“Will, I just can’t believe you did this!” said Victoria, crying. “What were you thinking? Ok, this is what I want to know. How did you find out in the first place? I never told you. My girls never told you.”
“No one told me. I saw you talking about it to Mr. Rosenberg.” He was so heartbroken that he couldn’t even talk coherently, even when she understood what he was saying. He couldn’t even breathe as he spoke.
“You saw me talking to Mr. Rosenberg? How? When did you walk into his classroom? Who recorded us talking on their phone and then show the video to you?”
“I didn’t find out any of those ways. I visualized the two of you talking. It was like watching a movie. I saw it in my mind, I can’t explain it. It’s something that has never happened to me before. It was supernatural. I just couldn’t control my anger. I became angry at him,” then he screamed, “and I became angry at you! Why didn’t you tell me?” He rose up. “How could you hide something this terrible from me? Has this been happening during the whole two years that you were together, huh?!” He sat down once again because he didn’t want to get in trouble.
“I never told you precisely because of this, because I knew that something like this was going to happen. Yes, this has been going on during the whole two years of our relationship.”
He cried even harder now. “Damn it, Victoria…”
“William, I know that this is very difficult for you. I can’t imagine what you’re going through right now. I would be heartbroken if I learned that one of my brothers-in-law were abusing one of my sisters, or if my father were abusing my mother, or if anyone were abusing someone I love, believe me. Nevertheless, you have to calm down. Just as I suspected, you were out of your mind and unstable the moment you and your friends killed Ty, and you are still unstable. You are still not thinking straight. You need professional help. You’ve been scarred for life.”
“So now you’re going to allege during this process that I was out of my mind and I’m still out of my mind.”
“You weren’t planning to do this. You loved Ty very much. It would’ve never occurred to you to even touch him.”
“That’s because I didn’t know that he was beating my sister!” Ty screamed.
Esq. Bass gestured William with his hands to try to stay calm. “I know that, that’s exactly right. I understand. You have to calm down, ok? I know it’s hard, believe me, I do. Yes, that’s right, I will try to prove to everyone that you were completely out of control and completely unable to reason the moment that you beat Ty to death, not to get you off the hook, but because it is the truth.”
Victoria nodded. “And you’re still out of it. Mom and Dad called me saying that they’ve gotten at least ten phone calls from the prison in a lapse of twenty-four hours, saying that you’ve beat up other prisoners for no reason.”
“I beat them up because I don’t like them, because they’re assholes.”
“I know you don’t see it this way, William, but that’s not true,” Esq. Bass said. “You need help.”
“No. What I need is to pay for what I’ve done.”
“Do you really want to spend the rest of your life in jail, Will?” said Victoria, crushed.
“It’s what I deserve, isn’t it? I committed an unspeakable crime. I shouldn’t have killed him. Did you know I was the one to kick him for the last time before he died? Maybe, just maybe, if we had stopped beating him in time, we could’ve gotten him help and right now he’d be in the hospital recovering. Or you know what? No, I shouldn’t have beaten him at all. I shouldn’t have touched him. We should’ve listened to him when he begged us not to hurt him.”
“Don’t you think that maybe, just maybe, this was meant to happen?” Esq. Bass said. Something was putting this in his mind and in his lips. Under other circumstances, he would never have said this, but something supernatural was taking place right now. This was a message to William, something that he had to know.
“What are you saying?” said William, shocked.
“I’m saying that perhaps this was the only way to put an end to his abuse against Victoria. If he were alive, if he still had a breath in his body, you know what he would be doing? He would be harassing Victoria. He would be devising a plan to get back at you for what you did to him. He was a very spiteful and rancorous person.”
“How do you know that, Attorney Bass?” asked William.
“Know what?” Esq. Bass didn’t realize what he was saying. At the moment he was saying it, it wasn’t really he talking, and he wasn’t aware of it of course.
“What you just told me, that maybe he was destined to die the way he did.”
“Did I say that?” he asked Victoria.
Victoria heard him say it but she remained silent because she didn’t want to confuse him.
“Anyway, I don’t want you to spend the rest of your life in jail, and neither does Victoria or anyone in your family.”
“I should’ve thought about that before my friends and I killed Ty, and no, nothing you tell me will make me change my mind about that.”
“So, you don’t want me to defend you.”
“No, I don’t. I want to be a man and face the consequences of my actions.”
“Don’t do this, William, please…” said Victoria, crying even harder now.
“As if having a mental illness wasn’t enough…” commented Esq. Bass.
“I don’t have a mental illness!”
“Yes, you do! Ty’s death hit you really hard! Your mind broke down! It is warped now. You need to heal. I insist in defending you, and so do your friends’ attorneys. We are convinced that you guys didn’t know what you were doing. Nothing that you say will change our minds about that. Don’t you realize that? I reiterate I am not doing this just to get you out of here. I am doing it because you are mentally ill and you need help. When you get the treatment you need, all of you, you will get out of a mental hospital and get a chance to get on with your lives, like this had never happened.”
“If you insist, Attorney Bass, then proceed. We’ll see what happens.” He got up and gave his sister a big hug. Then he shook Attorney Bass’ hand. “I’m going back to my cell now. Have a good day and come back soon. I’m sorry that I am walking away a few minutes before this visit is over. I just don’t want to talk about this right now.” He went to the door and knocked it, signaling the guard that he wanted to go back to his cell now. The guard opened the door for him and then took him away.
A few minutes later, Victoria and Attorney Bass were walking in the parking lot back to Attorney Bass’ car. “I’m worried. What if he beats up another prisoner? What if he kills him?”
“That’s not going to happen because I’m going to make arrangements for William to have a thorough psychological evaluation, prove to the judge that his mind is not functioning correctly, and then we’re going to get him the help that he needs.” They got into the car together, closed the doors, fastened their seatbelts simultaneously and shortly after, Attorney Bass pulled out of the visitors’ parking lot. They took the road.
Attorney Bass was taking Victoria back to the university campus. Suddenly, her cell phone rang. Professor Rosenberg wanted to know how William was doing. He was worried about him because he’d also heard that William had beaten up several prisoners for no reason at all. He knew it was weird for him to have such a close and tight relationship with one of his students, but then again, in reality, he had a close relationship with all his students. They weren’t only his students. In a way, they were his friends as well. Victoria saw Professor Rosenberg’s cell number on her cell phone screen, and although he’d never called her before, she knew it was he calling. “Professor Rosenberg, why is he calling me?”
“Wow,” said Attorney Bass, “this teacher cares more about his students than I thought!”
The phone rang ten times, although the maximum times it would ring before the call would be missed would be five times, but Professor Rosenberg didn’t give up. He made the phone ring more than it was supposed to because he didn’t want to leave her a message on her voicemail. He didn’t want to send her a text message either. He wanted to talk to her now. Victoria hesitated to answer the call at first because she couldn’t believe it and because she was afraid of what would happen when everyone found out that they were communicating on the phone. Her classmates and everyone that knew her would get the wrong idea. Finally, she answered the phone. It was the only way that it would stop ringing. She noticed how serious he was. “Hello.”
“How are you doing, Ms. Wilkinson? How is your brother doing? Is he still beating every idiot in prison for the fun of it?”
“Oh, my God, don’t remind me about that, please! I am so worried. My brother doesn’t want to be defended. He wants to spend the rest of his life in prison, but we’ve noticed that his mind is starting to fail. I don’t know what to do; I mean he needs help urgently. He’s getting worse and worse by the minute, I know it.”
“We have to do something. He’s going to lose his mind forever.”
“He doesn’t want anyone to help him. I don’t want anything bad to happen to my brother.” All of a sudden, she started crying on the phone. “I’m scared! Ty’s dead and he’s still destroying my life! God, when is this going to stop?”
Attorney Bass took the liberty to hold her hand to show her support.
“I’m going to help you. Don’t worry. This is going to stop, all right? You don’t deserve this. This is not fair. From the moment you met that man, you were destined to a life of suffering, but you know what? Like you said, he’s dead, and this is going to stop now. It’s going to stop right now.”
Scared, she said, “What are you going to do?”
He just ended the call and got out of his classroom. In less than an hour, he already had a substitute for his class for the rest of the day, and he was ready to run his errands. No one would’ve imagined in a million years what was coming next.
That day, while Victoria returned to her classes, Rosenberg and Bass made the arrangements for William to undergo an invasive psychological evaluation and then a psychiatric evaluation. What everyone thought would take days to do, it only took hours. Pretty soon, Bass had the proof in his hands that he needed that William was unstable, more than that, he was a walking time bomb, and he could have a nervous breakdown any minute now. If he did, he would lose his mind for the rest of his life and only genetic alteration would help him get back to normal. Nobody wanted that for William. Angels realized that they couldn’t just go around altering every human being’s genes. After all, every time that Dr. Monti Bernaola performed the procedure to heal a very sick person forever, he helped them retain their humanity. He was doing it that way now. He’d finally found the way to improve human’s genes so they could enjoy perfect health for the rest of their lives without turning them into different beings. None of the people that had become aliens could be human again. It wasn’t like they wanted to anyway, but there were still billions more humans than there were aliens. Without knowing it, Dr. Bernaola was turning terminally-ill people into genetically-perfect human beings.
Three weeks later
The trial against William Wilkinson had just started. With all the proof that Attorney Bass had in his favor, he was hoping that this trial would be a very short one. Ty’s family members and other supporters were confident that William would spend the rest of his life in prison for Ty’s murder because they thought that Ty had been planning this for a long, long time. However, when the trial started, everybody noticed how strange and erratic William’s behavior was. His eyes looked empty, and the irises of his stunning blue eyes were noticeably darker. He was staring into space. At the moment, William wasn’t even aware of what was happening around him. The first witnesses, witnesses of the prosecution testified. Then, it was time for the doctors that examined William to testify. After their thorough testimony, the proof of William’s mental instability was shown to the jury. Finally, three days later, it was time for William to get on the stand. The defense wanted to show the jury the state that William was in, and they would only see it for themselves if William was given the chance to speak.
The prosecutor started asking him questions. She only had a few questions to ask him. She was hoping that she would be able to prove that William was faking mental illness and fooling everyone just to get out of prison. With every question she would ask, she would see the chances of this diminishing.
“Did you kill Ty Johnson?”
“Yes, I did.”
“Why?”
“Because I found out that he was beating my sister.”
“You allege that you found out about it precisely the day that you and your best friends killed him. Is that right?”
“Yes, I found out the day we killed him.”
“You mean you hadn’t been planning this before the day of the attack.”
“No, I wasn’t planning it. How could I have? I loved Ty. I thought he was a great guy.”
“Couldn’t it be that you found out beforehand that he was supposedly beating your sister Victoria and that you’ve been planning it ever since. I mean after all, you got your best friends together in the bathroom and you were waiting for him there. Is that right?”
“There is no supposedly about it, ma’am.” William looked her in the eyes and he had so much anger in his look that she became afraid of him and looked away while he was making his comment. “He was beating my sister. He would beat her every single day. The police have proof of that. That is irrefutable.” He didn’t care that he was in a courtroom. He couldn’t help it but let his anger show. He hit the podium hard with both hands and then got up. “How dare you question that? What’s wrong with you?”
The prosecutor took a few steps back.
Attorney Kessler, the Johnson’s attorney wanted to object to that, but he suddenly decided not to, so he just kept quiet, with wild eyes, outraged. He didn’t expect this at all. William was out of his mind indeed. There was no doubt about that now. If he were sane, he wouldn’t have disrespected anyone in the courtroom like this because he would’ve used common sense. He didn’t want to be held in contemp