Matt’s hands shook as he grabbed his water bottle. Matt’s eyes bore into Gable, seeing right through him in a deadpan stare that unnerved him. He fidgeted in his seat a little before clasping his hands together, waiting for Matt’s response.
“It… started back in August, right after school began. I had my friends, Dion, Santi, Bennett Casey, Sabrina. We’d known each other in high school but somehow we didn’t know we were going to the same college till we were already there. We hung out more in our first month of college than four years of high school. And then Dwayne showed up.”
Matt took a sip from his water bottle and Gable noticed he gripped it tighter than before.
“Dwayne is… terrible. He’s absolutely awful. I mean, I’m sure he had good intentions but he was the absolute worst person I’ve met in my life. He was a pariah. He had no social cues or skills and he couldn’t take a hint to save his life. He would always insert himself into our group, no anyone’s group and act like he belonged. But he didn’t. Everyone was too nice to tell him to get lost so we were stuck with him until he decided to leave or we found a way to get rid of him.”
“Found a way to get rid of him?” Gable repeated.
“No, no! Not like that. I mean, we shook him off. Nobody liked him. We could be having a normal conversation and boom, there he is, criticizing someone for what they said. He was annoying as hell, even the girls in our group, Casey and Sabrina thought so. After a while, it was Prank Week, so we had an idea for a prank to pull on Dwayne.”
Matt paused and swallowed a lump in his throat. He waited for Officer Gable to react but he didn’t, just a patient stare showing he was listening intently.
“What did you do to him?” Gable asked Matt.
“Technically I didn’t-”
“What did you all do to him?” Gable corrected himself.
Matt began to shake his leg under the table. He rubbed his hands through his rain-soaked hair, and then stopped, revealing blood on his hands as he lowered them.
“What happened?” said Gable, shocked.
“I got what I deserved,” said Matt, wiping his hands off with his pants before continuing.
“Dwayne had fallen asleep in his religious studies class and Sabrina and Casey just so happened to take the class with him. We… no Dion, really, told them to pour bleach on his pants while he was sleeping and record his reaction. Sabrina did it while Casey recorded, but he woke up and pushed her away after she started. Sabrina got mad and threw the cup of bleach into his face. A lot of other people started recording him screaming while Sabrina and Casey ran out of the room.”
“Where was the professor during all this?” Gable asked.
“They waited until the end of class. They took Professor Fulmer, and he rushes out of class before people even start packing their stuff up. We’ve made a lot of jokes about it.”
“So you kids attacked Dwayne simply because you didn’t like him?”
Matt faltered. “Well… no. It was prank week, everybody was getting pranked-”
“But you all targeted Dwayne together, right?”
“Someone put opened cans of dog food in Santi’s backpack-”
“But all six of you together decided to torment that kid, did you or did you not?!” Gable demanded.
Gable stared him down and Matt averted his gaze.
“Yeah. We did.” Matt started crying and wiping his eyes. Gable showed no sympathy.
“What was your role? What did you do?”
“I gave them the bleach. Dion came up with the prank. Santi was going to fight Dwayne if he had snapped on them. Bennett was going to put the video on social media.”
“That’s it? Any of you could have put the video on social media.”
“Bennett doesn’t go to Onfroy University. He just hangs with us on campus a lot. We thought if the video was uploaded by someone from that doesn’t attend school we-”
“Wouldn’t get caught.” Gable finished. “He stood up and turned away from Matt, facing a wall.
Matt wondered if it was an actual wall or one of those mirror things he’d seen in shows and movies.
“You all hated him while he was alive, but why’d you go mess with him after his death?”
Matt finished the water bottle and closed his eyes. He could hear his heartbeat pounding in his skull. A wave of nausea swept over him, and all he could smell was blood. Despite being soaking wet, his body began to heat up.
“It’s…”Matt began to breathe heavily, he gripped the sides of the table. Gable didn’t acknowledge his obvious distress. “Because of what happened before he died. After the video went up, Dwayne stopped coming to school. He was a commuter, so even if someone wanted to check up on him they’d have no way to. The video didn’t even go viral, it only got a couple hundred thousand views. I didn’t see what the problem was until later. They started making jokes about him shooting up the school, they even made fake pages. That’s when everything turned bad.”
Matt’s head dipped, he murmured something about his head hurting but his words slurred to mush. Gable ordered Maurice to bring more water and some medication. He came in and set the water and medicine in front of Matt, who sluggishly opened the bottle and took the pill.
“Th-The school took the threats seriously. Police were alerted. One day, the campus was on lockdown because they were looking for him. When that happened, everyone was scared. You gotta think, ‘Who is gonna tell administration that it’s a hoax? Who’s going to take responsibility for the social media accounts?’ We could lose our scholarships, our jobs, our futures. We could actually get expelled. So no one came forward. And when they realized he wasn’t on campus, they went to his house directly.”
Officer Gable stared at him, open-mouthed. “I knew that name sounded familiar. Dwayne… Dwayne. They went to his house believing there was an active shooter. They broke his door down and found him holding a long black object-”
“It was a cane,” Matt interjected, looking down. “That his brother bought him. He’d been temporarily blinded by the bleach, and he’d always thought canes looked cool in movies. I heard him say that once when he came out of nowhere to talk to us in the library. His brother got him a nice black can with a billiards 8 ball at the top.”
“They gunned him down,” said Gable.
“While his mother was in the kitchen, fixing pancakes for dinner.” Matt finished.
“Casey and Sabrina were the only ones that got caught, because of the other students that saw them with the bleach. They… they didn’t rat the rest of us out. They lied and said he’d sexually assaulted them, and that was their revenge. His mother vehemently denied the allegations, but you know how the world is. The media believed Casey and Sabrina, and painted Dwayne out to be a villain. Anyone that interacted with him knew very well that he probably barely even knew about sex, and he’d never do anything like that.”
The door opened and Officer Bell entered the room, still looking furious.
“See? This bastard’s guilty as hell. Where are the rest of your criminal friends at?”
Gable motioned for Bell to step back a bit but Bell got directly in Matt’s face.
“If you didn’t get them, they’re dead,” Matt replied. He started to tremble again at the thought, and tears welled up in his eyes.
“Whoa, what do you mean by that?” asked Gable.
Matt reached for the water but Bell knocked it on the floor.
“This little shit doesn’t deserve water. Keep going!” Bell slammed his fist against the table.
“We didn’t all get caught, but the poli- your people, were constantly interrogating and harassing us, because we’d been seen with him around us daily. We were fed up. This weekend, we had fun, we got drunk, we partied, and we talked about Dwayne. Dion was blaming Dwayne for the police harassing us, and we were all agreeing, like idiots. Somehow, they, well... we decided to go to his tombstone and pour bleach on his grave.”
“Why? He hadn’t done anything to you evil a
ss kids, he just wanted friends like everybody else!” shouted Bell.
“Because we hated him!” Matt screamed back, tearing up again. “We were sick of him, he always everywhere, always following us, popping up whenever we got out of class-”
“Why bleach?” Gable asked quietly. “Why do the same thing that caused all of it?”
Matt tried to calm down, looking at both the officers' expressions.
“Because...we’re assholes. It was so stupid, so shitty. .. thinking back on it, I don’t know why we took it that far. They buried him in Alice Ann’s cemetery, and it’s so beautiful. It’s like a huge botanical garden for dead people. His tombstone was surrounded by pretty flowers and the cane his brother gave him was strapped to the stone. We were going to pour bleach on the ground around his grave, so grass and flowers would never grow there again.”
The cops stared at him in disgust. “For Christ’s sake,” said Bell. “These kids are pure evil.”
“So you went there tonight, as a group. You all were drunk from earlier and you brought the bleach. You poured it on his grave… and then one of you dug him up.”
Matt shook his head. “He dug himself up. I know how it sounds,” Matt raised his hands to stop them from shouting. “But listen. Obviously, none of us went to his funeral, but we saw pictures on social media, we saw the vigil his family held. The cane his brother gave him was resting on his tombstone. When we got there, it was already gone.”
“Your point is?” said Bell.
“We talked a minute about Dwayne and the police before we poured the bleach on the grave.”
“Who? Casey again?” asked Gable.
“Sabrina was the one that did it the first time, and no, it was me.” Matt gingerly touched his head with his left hand, coating it in blood again. Officer Bell looked actually looked concerned.
“How’d you get a head wound?” Bell inquired.
“As I poured the bleach out, Dion ironically poured out some alcohol, giving a fake farewell while the girls laughed and recorded. Something came out of nowhere and struck me in my head.”
“What was it?” Bell interrupted. Matt didn’t look scared or upset anymore. His eyes were furious. He looked up from the table to the water bottle on the floor, then to Officer Bell. “It was fucking Dwayne.” The police stared at him, at the seriousness in his eyes, the conviction in his voice. He didn’t falter. He didn’t blink. This time, when he said it, they began to believe him.
“I dropped the bottle of bleach and fell. Right after attacking me, He swung at Dion with the cane that was resting by his tombstone, hitting him in the mouth. We all stood back in shock and looked at Dwayne, wearing the same bloody, bullet-riddled hoodie and pajamas he died in.”
“A grey sweatshirt, with Felix the cat pajamas.” Bell whispered.
Gable and Matt stared at Bell.
“You were there,” said Matt. “You killed him.”
“Just because he knew what he was wearing doesn’t mean he killed him,” Gable replied, watching Matt’s glare. “We have to take photos for evidence-”
“Yeah I killed him.” Bell responded, staring blankly at Matt. “I… I was one of the four that shot first. When he fell, and we saw the cane… we felt horrible. Forensics took the body while I dealt with his mother, kicking and screaming, balling her eyes out. She busted my lip, blacked my left eye and left cuts all over my face, but we didn’t take her in. I killed her son. I remember him shouting, afraid, saying don’t shoot over and over.” Bell wiped his eyes and suddenly looked angry again.
“That messed me up a bit. I thought about it for days. I thought I was horrible but no, you kids are. Y'all are sick twisted criminals-”
“We aren’t sanctioned murderers though.” Matt shot back.
“Shut up!” Bell snapped. “Criminal mischief, interfering with a burial ground, conspiracy, I’m going to make SURE you get ten years, max!”
“Bell calm down!” Gable demanded. “We need to find his friends.”
“They’re dead,” Matt said bluntly, staring Bell down. “Like I said before.”
“Oh look, the waterworks are gone! Phony little shit. If they’re dead, who killed them? The boogeyman?”
“I would joke and say you, but y’all aren’t taking me seriously. Dwayne did it, and Dwayne is the one that dug himself up.”
“If you spin that shit one more time-”
“Let him finish, Bell. I’m still trying to go home.” Gable motioned for Matt to continue.
“Where was I? We talked, I poured the bleach, Dion poured the liquor and… oh yeah, I remember. We all stood there, dumbfounded, unsure if our minds were making it up. I thought maybe his brother was playing a prank but no, His brother doesn’t look like him that much, and he’s way taller. We all stayed quiet as he spoke. He asked us why we wouldn’t stop. Why did we bully him, Why did we upload it, and why were we there, adding insult to injury. Nobody had a response. We just stood there, guilty and afraid of what we were witnessing.”
Matt paused and looked at the water bottle on the floor before continuing, swallowing spit.
Sabrina began to apologize before Dwayne cut her off, screaming fix it.
“Fix it?” Gable echoed.
Matt nodded. “Fix it. He pointed to the grass where I poured the bleach. He wanted us to move the grass I had poisoned and replace it with fresh dirt.”
“Did you do it?” asked Gable.
“No. Nobody even moved, we were too scared. Dwayne got mad. Madder than he already was. He ran towards Sabrina and she flinched, screaming. He disappeared on the spot. After a few quiet moments, we started to think we imagined the whole thing, which was dumb, considering we all saw him. Dion was about to continue doing the same dumb thing when Sabrina dropped to the ground.
“She fainted?” asked Bell.
Matt smirked. “Come on Einstein. You already know. Before we could even touch her she sprang back up and ran to Dwayne’s grave. She started digging furiously and wouldn’t stop. Dion touched her shoulder and they both collapsed. Then Dion started furiously digging while Sabrina laid there, unmoving. She was dead.”
“How do you know that?” Bell asked him.
“Did you find her body?” Matt replied.
“No.”
“There’s your answer then. Nobody touched Dion though, not after seeing that. We said his name, yelled at him to stop, but he kept going, digging faster and faster like a dog discovering a bone. Casey started calling 911, and Dion jumped at her. We all backed away, but he tackled her to the ground, she tried to push her off of him, but after a few seconds, they both collapsed. Then she pushed him off of her, got up, and started digging. Dion died. I don’t know if we were worried she would chase and touch us too, or if we were too scared to move. We just stood there, waiting as she completely dug up the grave. I don’t know how long it took, but by the time the y’all showed up, she was done.”
Matt stopped talking and the room was completely quiet until the radio chatter from Bell’s walkie talkie broke the silence.
“When we got there,” Gable began. “We saw no bodies, only a bunch of kids running and a freshly dug grave. Explain that. Why were you the only one that didn’t run?”
Matt began to smile. “Because I wasn’t done digging.”
Bell’s walkie talkie started chattering again. “Officer Bell, we have an update on the cemetery.”
Gable and Bell were both stunned at the change in Matt’s demeanor. Bell lifted his walkie talkie and his murmured, “I, I hear you.”
“Dwayne Hernandez’ grave has been completely filled in. Someone must have gone back to do it, but there’s no other evidence.”
Bell put his hand on his sidearm. “This whole time, you’ve been saying you didn’t dig the grave, that Dwayne did.”
Gable noticed that Matt hadn’t blinked since he started smiling.
“Exactly.” Matt replied, still smiling, still unblinking.
Instead of drawing his weapon Bell ran for the
door and the lights went out, enveloping them in darkness.
“Gable! The door won’t open!” Bell shouted.
“Those bullies are with me now.” said a voice. It wasn’t Matt’s, but Bell recognized it.
“Now I have to get the rest of you.”
Glass Back Page 9
