Read Online Clockwork Dolls - FF by R. W. Whitefield - FF - Free Book Online

record, that one’s getting tired.”
    Dave put his head in his hands.
    “It wasn’t my fault,” he said again, but even as he spoke he knew he sounded like he was trying to convince not only the cop, but himself.
    “OK. We’ll get back to that,” the cop said. “But first, let’s see what you asked the cosmos for.” He opened one of the two remaining envelopes.
    Dear Cosmos, I get the message. Please leave me alone now.
    He looked over at Dave.
    “ Please leave me alone . Not, please leave us alone , not , please stop killing my friends . That tells me all I need to know about you.”
    “I loved her,” Dave said.
    “Who? Jane Barr? No, you didn’t. You blamed her, didn’t you? Blamed them all for everything.” He patted Dave’s file on the table in front of him. “You blamed them, for the crash, for having to quit med school, for the drinking, and for the shitty jobs you’ve been doing ever since. You blamed them all. And it ate away at you so much, year after shitty miserable year, until you finally cracked and you killed them, so that you wouldn’t have to look at them anymore.”
    “That’s not how it was.” Dave said, his voice rising into a shout. “It was the Cosmos.”
    “And tell me, how does the Cosmos manifest itself? But you’ve already told me that. It sounds like a car, an engine howling on a cold windy night.”
    The cop paused and looked Dave in the eye.
    “Tell me about the accident, son.”
    * * *
    Dave wasn’t sure what he was going to say until he opened his mouth. When he started to talk it was little more than a whisper.
    “I didn’t realize how much I’d drank. And everything happened so fast. It was a really shitty night, I was driving too fast, an angry drunk raging at the world. I wound the window down, the wind ruffled my hair and whistled in my ears, joining the roaring of the engine as the only things I could hear.
    “And then suddenly there she was. A young girl. She stepped in front of the car, eyes wide in terror.”
    Dave stopped and looked up at the cop, tears rolling down his cheeks.
    “She was right in front of me. I couldn’t get out of her way.”
    “You killed her,” the cop said boldly. “She was just ten years old. And you blamed everybody but yourself. You still do.”
    Dave shook his head.
    “There’s nobody left to blame. Just me. And the Cosmos.”
    “But you said already. The Cosmos has done its thing. It’s finished. Now there’s only you.”
    “Only me,” Dave whispered.
    A wind whistled through the room in reply.
    “It was only ever me.”
    A car engine revved up.
    “It wasn’t the Cosmos.”
    Headlights with no apparent source swept through the room. The cop had time for three words. “What the fuck?” An invisible force threw him across the room to land in a still, crumpled heap against the wall.
    “No,” Dave shouted. “It was finished.”
    Blood poured from the cop’s head and pooled on the floor. Dave immediately had a flashback to the night it all started, and to the too-red blood pooling on the Barr’s dining room table.
    “It was only ever me,” he whispered.
    He headed for the interview room door, calling Maggie’s name. As he reached it, a young cop opened it from the outside. Before the cop could speak, the wind whistled, an engine revved up and the young officer flew, screaming, down the length of the corridor to smash, headfirst into a wall. Headlights washed the scene.
    “Maggie!” Dave shouted.
    The wind rose to a howl, the engine revving alongside it. Lights washed the corridor, strobe-fast.
    “Maggie!” he shouted again. A door opened and she stood there, eyes wide, wind tossing her hair in a mane around her head. Dave almost fell into the room beside her, pushed in by the force of the wind.
    “It was me all along,” he shouted, struggling to be heard.
    “I don’t understand. We undid it,” Maggie shouted back.
    “No. It wasn’t the Cosmos. It was me. All this time it was me.”
    He lifted a