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Hello hello and welcome to this week’s response to the Girlontheedge’s prompt CONCEQUENCES. There are consequences to our actions and this week’s narrator was willing to face what was coming to them, and got quite the surprise. Follow our non-gender specific narrator, as they explain how they go to where they are today, and why they made the decisions that they did. You may want to check the tags for triggers if last week’s squicked to, as this piece could be a follow-up.

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I stood there, numb, in the wake of the verdict being read, too number to cheer at my good fortune, too numb to flinch from the wailing accusations of a mother saying I took away her baby, and it felt like all I did was blink my eyes and the courtroom was empty save me and my lawyer.

In my wildest dreams I had never expected this ending, when I bought the gun, I knew that there would be consequences to my actions, but I did it anyway, and so I never thought to make a plan for after.

The gun was registered to my name, purchased for only one purpose, I didn’t even learn how to shoot, because I knew that I would do it up close, and even someone who has never held a gun before can hit the target at point blank range.

I didn’t run after I did it, just stood there, waiting for the police, watching him die, knowing it was over, that he couldn’t hurt anyone else the way he had hurt her, and I felt free for the first time since I found her bruised and broken after the attack.

I let my lawyer choose the strategy, not-guilty by reason of temporary insanity, a parade of experts displayed before I sat on the stand telling the story of my sister, how he killed her, how I felt he had killed her, how she wasn’t dead but she wasn’t herself until she ended it after the judge read not guilty, how it wasn’t just her but there wasn’t enough evidence, and that I couldn’t live in a world where he walked free to do it again, because he would do it again, they always did.

My lawyer was smiling, jury nullification, he called it, them knowing that I did it, but in knowing why they understood, choosing not to charge me, and I knew I should have been happy with that, with being free, but I also knew that there was a mother mourning a son as I result of my actions, making the sweet taste of victory turn to ash on my tongue.