Theodore III

"Wake up mother fucker!"

Ice cold water was thrown on to my body, quickly making me sit up but my head was pounding and dried up blood was all over my face and body. What happened last night? I was lying under the toilet in my cell with a pounding head ache but even more questions about how I ended up under the toilet.

The last thing I remember doing is reading the letter Daniel sent me. It was something about him and Kennedy running off and getting married because she's pregnant. The bright lights the CO's were shining in my face was making my head hurt even more, so I squinted my eyes and looked across my room at my bed. Sure enough, the pictures and letter were still laying on my bed. But how did I end up over here?

"I-Is my Grandma still here?" I asked, looking around for her since I remember her being here last night.

Officer Harden sucked his teeth. "This nigga is losing it in here. He's still talking about his Grandma and that bitch has been dead for years."

"I saw her last night!"

"She's dead!" he yelled in my face. "You claim you see her almost every week and we find you in here torturing yourself. Last week, you said she told you to suffocate yourself with your covers. Luckily, we got in here before you killed your dumb ass! That's why you don't have covers on your bed now Reed, because you're too dangerous. You're going crazy and you're making our jobs harder since we have to constantly keep an eye on your crazy ass."

"It won't be for long," Officer Stanley smirked. He was the CO that tried to beat my ass in a hallway with no cameras but I beat his instead. Now, he's walking around with a bandage around his hand and a scar under his left eye. "He's been sitting in here for years on death row. His time is almost up."

"He's gonna kill himself before the state gets a chance to though," Officer Harden shook his head.

I frowned as I listened to them talk about me being put on death row. Yeah, I'm sitting around waiting to be killed off, but by the time they actually get to me I'll either have killed myself or died from the terrible conditions in here. So, in other words, I'll be in here for the rest of my life for everything I've done but there's no way they're going to get through everybody ahead of me for me to get a lethal injection. It won't happen. I'll rot in here before they do, so they can laugh about me all they want but I am the way I am because of them mistreating me and the horrible conditions of this prison.

"He's costing us money every time he tries to take his life," Officer Harden continued. "He tries it every week when he claims he's talking to his Grandma."

I scrunched up my face. I know they're right but I keep having this reoccurring dreams about Grandma coming to kill me almost every night. Some nights are worse than others, like last night. I really thought she killed me last night. I looked down at my chest that didn't have a knife sticking through it and sighed. It had to be a dream then, like always. I know Grandma's dead but I swear she comes to me every night trying to kill me for ruining her family and she has every right to. I ruined the family and now there's none of us left to carry the name on or to make it better since we're all dead or in jail.

"I deserve to be killed," I cried to myself. I lifted my arms up to try to wipe the tears off of my face but I couldn't. The CO's handcuffed me to the toilet, making me frown. "Let me go. Let me go so I can die and repent! Let me die!"

Officer Stanley bent down and smacked me across the face. "Shut the fuck up inmate! You don't deserve to die. For all the shit you've done, you deserve to stay in here for the rest of your life. Just you and these four padded walls. It's nothing wrong with you except the fact that you're losing your mind since you don't have any contact with the outside world. Now, you've resorted to talking to yourself and having imaginary conversations with your dead family members. Everybody in your family is dead!"

"No. NO!" I shook my head, still crying. "They're not."

"They are and none of them care about you either!" he yelled in my face. "You're in here all alone. You're going to die alone but it's what you and your family deserve. The same thing is gonna happen to your crazy ass sister. You know where she's at right now?"

I shook my head, still crying. "No."

"Oh, she's in the female solitary unit as of last week. Her ass went crazy just like you did so being a nut case must run in the family, huh? I wonder how many other nut cases from your family we'll receive...oh, wait! I forgot! The rest of your family is dead," he laughed, just to make me feel guilty about all the shit I put my family through. "How do you feel about that? Huh?"

The guilt of my family is eating me up inside and I think part of it is the reason I'm losing my mind and hearing voices and seeing all of my dead family members. I put them all in danger, including my brother, and let them get killed because of my wrong doings. And because of my wrong doings, I wasn't able to properly bury my family. I wasn't even allowed to go to their funerals because I'm such a flight risk, so I was never able to tell daughter, brother, or grandfather goodbye. It's all my fault they're dead, but it's not like I can take it back now. I just have to live out this sentence knowing I had a helping hand in the death of my family.

I shook my head. He knew I felt bad about what happened to my family because he tormented me and teased me about it every chance he got. I didn't have anything to say to him about how I felt, so I just kept my mouth closed around him.

Officer Stanley continued laughing at me as he dug through his pocket. "You know what mother fucker, since you don't wanna respond, I got something to show you."

I frowned and immediately closed my eyes since I knew what he was going to show me. Every time he and I got into it, he always pulled this picture out of his pocket from the crime scene when they arrested me. Five dead bodies laid on the ground covered in blood right by my front door: My Dad, Mom, Grandpa, Isaiah, and Princess. He always showed me this picture because he knew it would trigger me. I hated seeing that picture of my family dead but it's like he got enjoyment out of seeing me in pain because he always flashed this picture when he wasn't getting a reaction out of me, quite like right now.

"Open up your eyes inmate so you can see what you did. Open them!" He yelled, but I continued shaking my head. I didn't want to see the picture.

"No!"

All of a sudden, I felt Officer Harden grab my head and force my eyes open so I could see the pictures. I was bawling my eyes out and trying to look every where but the picture but I just couldn't. My eyes were burning so badly from being opened for so long, that all I was able to do was look down at the massacre in front of me.

"Kill this bitch!" Isaiah demanded.

I looked down at Mama, who was struggling beneath me to hold on to her life. I was getting enjoyment out of watching her slowly die because I had a smile on my face the harder I pressed the bat into her neck. Her head was rolling around on the ground so I knew she was going in and out of consciousness, and eventually she'd be dead. I just wanted her dead and wanted her to suffer for what she did to me growing up. From forcing me to eat dry oatmeal, kicking me out of the house and ridiculing me for getting Nicole pregnant, even down to her turning her back on me when Princess was born ran through my mind the longer I sat on top of her choking her. I wanted her dead.

"This is the police!" I heard a male's voice yell. "Let her go, now!"

I could feel her body shaking beneath me the longer I held the bat against her neck. I completely disregarded what the police had told me because I kept pressing the bat against her neck. I guess I knew I was going down for life for all the shit I've done, and they see me killing her. They were already investigating me for other people's murders, and after seeing what I've done to my own mother, why shouldn't I just finish this bitch off? Because even though I didn't do it, I know they'll find a way to blame my Dad's murder on me.

"We said let her go!"

It's like I could hear the police yelling for me to let her go off of a distance. What they were saying was going into one ear and out of the other. I wasn't worried about them. The only thing I was worried about was finishing off my mother so she can't come back from the dead.

"Fuck y'all niggas!" I yelled just as I heard a gun shot go off behind me.

I heard the gun shot and it sounded like it was far away, but when I felt the bullet pierce my right shoulder, I fell down on top of Mama and lost my grip on the bat I was holding against her neck. My body was sore and I was bleeding out from being shot. I knew I should've stayed down like the cops told me, but when I saw Mama gasping for air, I knew I had to finish her off. I didn't want her walking around, living a happy life, while I'm locked up for aggravated assault and attempted murder. If I was going to get locked up for anything over her, she needs to be dead.

Using the little bit of strength I had left in my body, I grabbed a hold of the bat again and continued pressing it up against her neck, just smiling as her body soon turned purple and the life looked like it had left her eyes. I lunged forward when I felt myself get hit in the other shoulder but the pain wasn't as bad as last time. I must have only been grazed. Again, I lost my grip on the bat but I didn't care. She was dead and there's no way she's coming back from getting chocked to death.

"FUCK!" I heard Isaiah yell out.

I looked up at him and saw they shot him too. The last bullet they shot me with only grazed my shoulder but got Isaiah right in the knee cap. He dropped down on the ground, holding on to his bleeding knee and I knew I fucked up. If the two of us make it out of here alive, there's no way he's ever going to be able to walk again and that's all my fault.

I knew I had to do something to help him, so I slowly pulled myself off of the ground without using my arms for support since my shoulders were in so much pain and tried to walk over to him.

"Mr. Reed, please stay down!" An officer yelled.

"Stay down!"

"Stay the fuck down!"

I could hear guns cocking behind me but I didn't care. I needed to help him since I'm the reason he got hurt in the first place. I put my leg out to walk towards him but the impact of losing so much blood was finally starting to weight on me. I was seeing black spots and couldn't think clearly. Everything was starting to look fuzzy around me until i finally dropped down on the ground, and that's when the cops started shooting again.

I quickly covered my head to protect myself as the cops unloaded their guns all over the house. Mama was getting shot up, Pops' dead body was getting shot up and so was Grandpa's dead body. Bullets pierced through the pictures hanging on the walls and holes lined my walls. I looked over at Isaiah, who was lying in a pool full of blood, covering in large holes. He too didn't have any life left in his eyes.

"Look what the fuck y'all did to my brother!" I yelled, trying to get up but I physically couldn't pull my body up to do so.

"Get on the fucking ground Mr. Reed!"

"Why!? So y'all niggas can kill me too!?" Theodore yelled before I heard light footsteps running down the steps and I knew it was Princess. I swear, she can never listen to me when I tell her to stay in her room and to not come downstairs until I tell her to. Daniel listened and hasn't come downstairs, so why can't she? "W-Wait! It's my daughter, don't shoot!"

"Daddy! Is everything okay? Dad--" Princess yelled as she ran down the steps but she was cut short by the sound of guns ringing through the house.

My heart rate increased when she stopped talking. I turned to the bottom of the steps and looked at all of the blood that was covering her night gown and the Girl Scouts sash she always wore. Bullet holes lined her sash but the one hole that stood out the most to me was right on her chest. Princess turned to me just as her small body dropped on the ground right in front of me.

"PRINCESS!" I yelled.

Even though I was too weak to pull my body up, I knew I had to save her because it's my fault she's here. If I hadn't have been so stupid and let Grandpa get in my head, I could've saved her life. I would've been able to take her and Daniel over to Jazmine and Aubrey's house so she wouldn't be caught up in this shit.

I crawled over to Princess, even though I was in so much pain. Just seeing her body laying on the bottom of the steps hit me hard, but it was worse seeing all of the blood she was losing. "Princess," I cried as I got up to her. Just as I reached out to touch her dead body, one of the officers mushed me in the head and sent me flying back on the ground.

"Don't touch the crime scene!" he yelled as I felt another officer flip me over so I was on my stomach and handcuff me.

"But that's my daughter!" I cried. "I need to see her!" Two of the officers picked me up and held me underneath my shoulders, making me scream again. "That hurts! Let me go! Let me see my daughter!"

By this point, they were dragging me out of the house even though I was kicking and screaming and doing everything I could to get back in the house so I could see Princess one last time. I wanted to touch her, but more importantly, I just wanted to hold her. I wanted to hold her one last time before they locked me up but I should've known better than to let her stay in the house while this was going on.

Just as the officers were dragging me towards the front door, I used all of the strength I had left to swing my legs out across the door so they wouldn't be able to pull me out of the house. I just wanted to see Princess. "Stop! I need to see my daughter!" I yelled, trying to fight them off of me but it was no use. They weren't going to let me go but I was going to put up a fight until I was able to see my daughter.

So, that's what we did. Me and the officers stood there trying to fight what we were going to do next. I was trying to stay inside of the house to see Princess, while they fought against me to get me out of the house. It was the biggest power struggle I had seen in my life but I needed to get to Princess. I wanted to hold her since they killed her. It's the least they can do since they took her life away at such an early age.

"Grab his legs!" I heard one of the officers behind me yell to another cop outside.

There were about ten police cars outside of my house, and every single cop was standing behind their car with their guns drawn as if I'm some criminal. I haven't done anything wrong in my life. All I've tried to do was make a better living for myself and for my daughter so that we'd be able to live comfortable. I'll admit, I spoiled Princess and probably shouldn't have but isn't every father supposed to spoil their daughter? All I wanted was for Princess to live a good life since she was already in a deficit since the day she was born. I lived my life to make Princess happy. That's all I ever wanted to see happen.

Two cops came up and ripped my legs away from the door and four of the officers carried me out of the house as I bawled my eyes out over Princess' death. Don't get me wrong, it hurt seeing the rest of my family die but I couldn't take it when I saw Princess get shot up. Her death was the worst of them all.

"Watch out! Get him!"

I could see officers running to my house to get somebody else and I knew it had to be Daniel since he was the only other person in the house. Even though the officers were still holding me up, I managed to turn my head to the side to see all of the commotion going on behind me. Luckily, it wasn't Daniel being chased by the police. It was Adonis. I knew he was bound to show up any minute since he was supposed to be over here for this dinner awhile ago.

I tensed up at the sound of more gun shots ringing off in the distance before I heard bodies collapsing. I looked back and saw Adonis limping away from the police while blood dripped out of his leg. It looked like he got shot but it looked like he shot other officers in the process. Him shooting a police officer, was enough for the majority of the officers, who were trying to protect themselves from me, to run towards Adonis and gun him down.

His screams and gun shots were the last thing I heard before I was thrown into the back of a police car.

"Stop! Stop!" I yelled to the officer, who was still shoving the picture in my face.

"No! You look at your dead daughter and see what you did to her! You killed her!"

"I didn't," I cried. "Y'all did! Y'all just started shooting and killed my baby. Y'all killed her!"

My head flew back and hit the toilet seat as he sent a forceful blow to my face. "No! You shut up inmate and you listen to me. You killed your daughter because you were a horrible father and didn't do anything to protect her. If you would've just stopped moving like we told you to, your stupid ass daughter would still be alive!"

Just hearing him talk badly about Princess, got me more heated than ever before. Sure, people always talked about her and how she was sick and how her mother's a whore just to get under my skin and it never effected me. I never let showed any weakness when people would talk about Princess, even though every insult hurt. But for some reason, his stung the most since he was forever talking about Princess and how she was better off without me in her life since I'm the reason her life was cut short.

Even though my head was still banging from hitting it against the toilet, I was able to muster up enough mucus in the back of my throat and spit right in his face. I know I'll get in trouble and I know they'll beat my ass for it but I'm sick of him talking about my daughter and I'm sick of him tormenting me. He's part of the reason I'm losing my mind because he knows just how much that day effected me.

"Fuck you!" I cried. "Don't talk about my fucking daughter."

Within one swift motion, Officer Stanley wiped the spit off of his face and slammed my head into the toilet seat all at once. I was feeling dizzy at this point but he didn't care how I felt. It's like he's been waiting on me to slip up and do something crazy to him so he can beat my ass and claim self defense but I don't care. Maybe today will be the day he finally loses his mind on me and finally puts me out of my misery.

"You fucking prick!" he yelled.

He grabbed the back of my head and slammed my face into the toilet. Again. Again. And again. My face slammed into the toilet and all I could see was blood and the dirty white toilet coming in contact with my face every time he'd slam my head into it. I took a sharp inhale to try to gather myself but I couldn't. All I was able to inhale was the blood dripping down my throat from my nose. Blood covered the toilet seat, my eyes, my nose was bleeding and blood was filling up inside of my mouth so I started spitting it out.

"Oh! So you still haven't learned your lesson, huh?" he asked, slamming my head into the toilet again. "This should teach you not to fuck with me inmate."

He continued slamming my head into the toilet until I wasn't able to hold my head up anymore. That's when he dropped my head down on the ground and let me lay there and just bleed out. I wasn't even able to hold myself up or defend myself but Officer Stanley wasn't done with me. It's like he was getting his revenge on me from when I beat his ass a few weeks ago but I deserve this. This is what I get for hurting Princess.

"Princess," I whispered, trying to hold on to my life but I double over when I felt Officer Stanley kick me in the stomach. Then Officer Harden joined in to help him break me down even more.

"Shut the fuck up! That bitch won't be able to save you where you're going." My body laid out on the floor as he and Officer Harden removed the handcuffs from around my wrists. "We can't make it look like we were here. We need to do something to cover up what happened here."

"Take off his clothes. I have an idea."

I couldn't move my body since I was in so much pain, so I just laid there and let them rip my clothes off of my body. I squinted my eyes and watched how they lifted my bed up so it was on it's side and tied my clothes around one of the poles on my bed to look like a noose. I couldn't hear what they were saying because blood was filling up in my ears but I knew what they were going to do. They were going to fake my suicide since they beat me half to death, but this is perfect. At least now I'll be away from this place and somewhere with Princess.

The two CO's hoisted my body up and placed my head into the large part of the noose and I immediately began gasping for air. It was a reflex, but if my body wasn't gasping for air on it's own, I would've let myself die. I wouldn't have been looking for air since I didn't want to be here anymore. I'm miserable here.

The two CO's exited my cell as if they never came in here and just left me hanging off the side of my bed as if I set this suicide up on my own. My body was shaking, looking for more air to fill my lungs but I knew I wasn't going to get any. These were my last few seconds alive, so I closed my eyes and envisioned a happy place. I didn't want my last images to be of my bloody cell, so I closed my eyes and thought of happier times when life was easy. When life was good.

I closed my eyes and thought back to the days I was staying with Grandma and Grandpa in high school right after Nicole first had Princess. Life was hard back then but it beat everything I had going on in my last days. Princess was always happy and smiling when ever she was around me and I was always ecstatic whenever I was around her. I lived my life for Princess and did everything I could to make her happy, so she'd never know she was different from every other child her age.

Of course, Princess was special. She was special in my eyes because she could always liven up an entire room when ever she'd come in. Princess was my world and now I'm finally able to be with her again. From dealing with Milan and thinking she was going to change and being Princess' mother, to Goldie who completely disappeared on me when I got arrested, I shouldn't have been focused on the wrong things because it all led to my demise and the death of my daughter.

I should've stayed focused on Princess, because regardless of what I had going on, this was all for her. I did everything for her and now I'm finally able to see my baby girl again...

~~~

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How was this chapter? I know you guys were a little confused with the last chapter but it was just a filler chapter, to basically set the scene of how Theodore's life had transgressed over the course of 10 years. Of course I couldn't get out every detail I wanted to get out, which is why I wrote this chapter going further into detail about what happened the night everybody got killed. Y'all already know I wouldn't leave y'all hanging with the details lol But did Theodore deserve to die the way he did? Did he ultimately put Princess in the way to get her killed? Was her death his fault? Should he blame himself for her death? Has the prison made him lose his mind or was it Princess' death that ultimately got to him?