I’m not telling you this to convince you of my innocence.

The verdict has already been reached, the seal of my fate has been affixed. In about twenty-three minutes, I will be forcibly escorted to a certain maximum-security prison, where I will begin my life sentence without parole. Against my will. But in these final moments, an irresistible impulse compels me to present my perspective. To unburden my broken spirit. The account that follows, to the best of my knowledge, is borne of my own volition.

And I can only pray you will listen, reserving all judgment till the end.

• • • •

It started with a call from an unknown number, which I never answered, but this time something told me I should.

“I’m looking for Roger Abbott, the journalist,” the caller said. He sounded desperate, like his breath was a pesky fly he couldn’t catch.

“He’s not here,” I said, which was half-true, considering my life as a journalist had fallen apart faster than wet newspaper. But old habits and such. “Who’s this?”

“Who I am don’t matter,” the caller said, “but tell Roger Abbott I got something for him: a dirty secret about a biotech company.”

It was supposed to be my weekend with the kids. But my ex was throwing a birthday shindig in Catalina for her new wife and she kidnapped them. I was alone in the dreary bottom half of an Oakland duplex I couldn’t afford, lemon kush tasting like sour grapes. No deadlines. No dates. Nothing to do but huff and puff in my court-sanctioned misery.

“Which company?” I asked.

The caller was quiet for so long, I thought he hung up. Then a muffled shuffle came through the phone—like he was hiding in a closet—and he whispered a name. Not any name, but the one belonging to the elusive head of Edenic Dynamics. “Lyra Manning.”

I sat right up in my ripped leather chair. Dr. Lyra Manning had been on my radar forever. But her fortified compound out in Grass Valley fancied itself the Alcatraz of the Sierra Foothills. And her team rejected every one of my interview requests, citing a “strict pest control policy.”

“I can’t say nothing else over the phone,” the caller said. “But tell Roger to meet me tomorrow night at six at the teahouse in Davis. What I have to show him will shake the very foundation of mankind as he knows it, trust me.”

“Trust you?” I laughed. “You gave me a where and when, but I don’t know who you are or what your angle is or why. So what are we talking about? Do you work for Dr. Manning?”

“No,” the caller said. “I’m married to her.”

With that, the call ended. I had a decision on my hands: I could spend my Saturday night treading water in a self-pity pool or head to Davis to dig my hands into this alleged dirty secret. My journalism days, like I said, were officially done, but I still had a nose for news. And trouble.

That next day, I rode about ninety minutes north, arriving at the teahouse just before five. I came early to be safe. To scout. By the window, sipping oolong tea, I looked out, wondering what the lucky husband of the mythical Lyra Manning would look like and if he smelled like dirt. But at half-past five, I got another call from an unknown number. I had a hunch he would cancel, so the call wasn’t too surprising—until I answered:

“Tell me you’re not standing me up,” I said.

But the voice that responded belonged to a woman. “I don’t know who this is, but my husband won’t be meeting you today or any day thereafter, is that clear?”

“Lyra, er, Dr. Manning, hello, this is Roger—”

“Were you sleeping with him?”

“What? No, I didn’t even know your husband. He wanted to meet me.”

“Regarding what?”

“I don’t even know.”

“Well, as I stated, that won’t be happening,” she said with a quiver in her delivery. “Waldo is no longer with us.”

“Are you serious?”

“He had been struggling with thoughts of suicide for some time,” she said. “In any case, I’m going through his contacts to inform people he knew that I didn’t know. Take care, Roger—”

“Hold up, Dr. Manning, can I ask you something?” Call me crass, but since I had her on the line, I couldn’t help but grab the hook. “I’ve actually been wanting to connect with you. I’m a journalist and I know this might not be the ideal time, but I was wondering if we could arrange for me to visit your facility for a story on your startup. Not now, of course, but in the future.”

She said nothing. Her measured breathing was the only reason I knew she was still there. Knowing her position on vermin, I wouldn’t have blamed her one bit if she hung up in my face. But she didn’t.

“Yes,” she said. “You can come now.”

• • • •

The ninety-minute ride to Grass Valley wasn’t long enough for my stunned body to sync up with my spinning mind. The recent chain of events felt seismic. Just yesterday, Waldo Manning—a man I’d never met but was set to meet—was alive and anxious to show me something. Something that would, as he claimed, “shake the very foundation of mankind.” And today, his widow, Lyra Manning—a woman I’d been wanting to meet for ages—invited me to her top-secret base. Now I was the one thoroughly shook.

The car turned off Highway 49, rolling down a gravelly road as we moved deeper into the green maze of Grass Valley. A familiar buzz seized my body: two parts cortisol, one part adrenaline, a dash of salt. Senses heightened. Eyes wide as I looked out the windshield.

“You heading to a yoga farm?” the driver asked.

Shaking my head, I told him: “A biotech startup. The founder has figured out how to use pheromones to disrupt the behavior of pests to stop crop infestations.”

“Huh. Sounds groundbreaking. My grandparents in Shandong could’ve used something like that.” The driver leaned forward, gripping the wheel as the road slithered through oaks and pines and cedar trees. “But why would a company like that hide way out here?”

Before I could respond, my phone rang. The ex-wife calling. I hesitated for a second, then answered, telling her I couldn’t talk. I was busy with an assignment.

“An assignment?” she said. “I thought you got blackballed.”

“I did not get . . . never mind.” I had explained what happened to me multiple times. But evidently, she was too bogged down in upending the marriage to listen. “Why you calling me?”

“You need to talk to your son.” She told me our son, Montgomery, freaked out after a turbulent boat ride. He threw a fit on the dock, refusing to move until he spoke to me.

“I’m not in the best—” I began, but she put him on. “Hey, Monty, you alright, big man?”

“No,” he said. “Waves are stupid.”

He was almost five, but still loose with language. When words failed him, he turned to actions to feel empowered. It wasn’t violence, I had repeatedly assured my ex-wife, it was nature—a little boy still learning how to control himself.

“You had a scary ride, huh?” I asked.

“The boat kept rocking,” he said. “I told it to stop, but it wouldn’t listen.”

Empathizing with his powerlessness, I said: “Yeah, that can be scary. But you can’t act up, alright? Remember, we talked about going to the zoo again, but only if you behave yourself.”

“I just wanna be with you, Dad,” he said, his voice wobbly.

My heart hurt for the boy. I told my ex it was reckless to drag the kids with her on these lavish vacations. But of course, anything I had to say was irrelevant.

“Don’t be afraid, son,” I said. “I’m here—”

Right then, the call dropped. Signal lost.

The driver fiddled with his phone, trying to reposition the GPS. “Looks like we’re operating blind. Which way do you want me to go?”

I pointed for him to keep going ahead. Not a minute later, the trees parted and the glass-domed facility appeared in a clearing like a sleeping giant. The car rolled up to the entrance. I stepped out. The driver waved and sped off. A lady in an emerald green lab coat came out the front door and approached me. I’d never seen Lyra Manning. From my understanding, few people did beyond her team. But something told me this wasn’t her.

“Welcome, Mr. Abbott,” the escort said. “There has been a change of plans.”

“What change?”

“As you know, Dr. Manning has experienced a significant setback, which unfortunately means she won’t be able to personally give you the tour. But I’d be more than happy to show you around in her absence.”

“Hold up . . .” I hesitated. Dr. Manning was grieving. I wanted to be sensitive to that, but I hadn’t come all that way to get blown off either. “Do you think it might be at all possible to speak with her tomorrow? I’m willing to stay here. I can sleep anywhere.”

The escort frowned, clearly caught off guard. She muttered into her earpiece, then turned back to me with a face marked with concern. “Are you sure you want to stay here overnight?”

Looking back, maybe caution would’ve been a good thing to err on the side of. But as a former investigative reporter, I knew that lines were made to be crossed, never uncrossed.

I nodded.

“This way, please,” the escort said and I followed her into the compound.

• • • •

Inside, I couldn’t make sense of the scale. There was glass everywhere, blurring the boundary between the real and artificial. The compound was designed to resemble a spiderweb—each interstitial gap its own minilab, interconnected by threadlike paths that all converged in the center. In every lab, behind the windows was a microfield of crops, nurtured by grow lights and various hydroponic systems.

“Dr. Manning always says, ‘Leave no pest un-pestered,’” the escort said. “So we work with all kinds here: aphids, whiteflies, thrips, spider mites, nematodes . . .”

As she went down the list, I kept looking around, expecting to see somebody in the fields. But there was no one.

“Where is everybody?” I asked.

She motioned ahead. “They’ve already gathered for the ‘Sirens of Icarus.’”

I had no idea what that was, but I’d find out soon enough. Moving deeper into the facility, classical music spilled from hidden speakers, a composition I’d never heard. And as we reached the atrium, the heart of the compound, we hit a wall of onlookers: femme scientists in different color lab coats all standing around. Completely still. Watching.

In the center of everything was a true vision of power and elegance: Lyra Manning. Under a hanging botanical garden, in a black lab coat, she conducted a brilliant ballet of lights, her hands commanding a gnarled network of glowing plants. A living habitat. Vivid hues in harmony—flashing leaves.

After the unknown composition reached its crescendo, the crowd erupted in applause. Tears streamed down Lyra Manning’s face as she opened her arms to welcome hugs. Swept up in the frenzy, I clapped. And I found myself wanting her to notice me. But Lyra Manning was in her own world with its own gravity, which, I didn’t realize at the time, was already pulling me down.

• • • •

“And this is where you’ll be sleeping for the night,” the escort said.

I looked around. “Are you serious?”

We stood at the edge of one of the microfields. This one was a rice paddy about ten acres. The door hissed shut behind me, immersing us in the flooded environment.

The escort handed me a sleeping bag. “There’s a dry strip of land over here.”

As I followed her, mud clung to my boots. “What about the pests?”

“In this lab, we focus on the brown planthopper.” The escort turned around to face me. “It’s a tiny pest, but it’s menacing. With its needle-like mouthparts, it pierces the tender stems of rice plants, injecting insidious saliva, which turns the once healthy and vibrant green stalks into weakened, wilted vessels. As it feeds, it sucks out the vital nutrients and sap, draining the rice plant’s life force. With an insatiable hunger, it multiplies, forming swarms that suffocate the crop like a brownish-white cloud, making it weaker and weaker until the rice dies.”

The escort smiled.

“Sounds like one helluva Saturday night,” I said.

Her smile faded. “But this lab is offline, so you won’t have to worry about them.”

She motioned for me to settle on the dry strip. I crouched down, pressing my palm to the dirt. Seemed dry enough. As I rolled out the sleeping bag, the escort rubbed her hands together and asked if I needed anything else.

“Where can I get something to eat?” I asked.

She stared at me for a long time, then finally said: “Are you hungry?”

I had to think about it. It was going on nine. The only thing in my system was oolong tea. But I didn’t feel hungry. Not in the sense that I felt full, but the urge to eat wasn’t there.

“I guess not,” I said.

She nodded. “Have a good night.” Then she walked out.

I took off my boots and crawled into the bag. The recycled materials felt rougher on my skin than I was used to, but this took me back to a previous life: resting my head in random places, going hours without eating, getting dirty in the name of a good story. I’d slept all around the world, from the cold slopes of the Himalayas to the scorching desert on the Pakistani border to the damp outskirts of the Amazon. Everywhere. But never before had I slept in a place where I couldn’t distinguish the indoors from outdoors. I gazed up at the stars and didn’t know if they really were there. The smell of mud and grass and rice could’ve very well been a simulation. There were no birds chirping, no crickets flirting. The only sound was the gushing of groundwater from a nearby well. But despite the uncanny nature of it all, I truly did miss days like this, just me and Mother Earth holding each other through the night.

At some point, I drifted off. But later, my eyes snapped open. On instinct. There was something out there. I sat right up, squinting into the darkness, trying to decide if what I was seeing was real. The figure, hunched over in the distance, didn’t move. But I did.

I slid out of the sleeping bag, the coolness of the damp ground seeping through my jeans. I put my boots on, laced them up, never taking my eyes off the thing.

Finally, the figure moved. Methodically. Slowly. Sloshing toward me with bare feet.

I felt around for a rock that might be suitable to bash a skull in, but couldn’t find one.

The figure came closer, becoming clearer as it drew nearer.

And then, she spoke.

“I didn’t mean to disturb you,” Lyra said. “I come here before sunrise to check pumps, adjust dams and manipulate . . .” She paused, looking over the field. “With this lab being offline, I have to do it manually to keep the seeds from drying out.”

My pinched throat kept any words from spewing forth. All I could do was nod.

Lyra squatted beside me. A current shot through my whole body, from muddled head to muddy boots. I was acutely aware of her proximity. And my lungs hung me out to dry.

“But since we’re here,” she said with a smirk, “how about that interview?”

• • • •

Before I could enter the main lab, I had to detox.

I stood in a chamber the size of an old telephone booth. UV light pulsed. Above me, vents released a mist: a benign blend of natural compounds derived, I was told, from the principles of chemical ecology. When I stepped out, my boots were dirt-free and my sinuses were so clear, I could smell my thoughts. But those weren’t so clean.

The main lab formed a ring around the atrium. Lyra waved a command. The door opened.

“After you, Mr. Abbott,” she said, motioning for me to proceed.

Following her order, I stepped inside, greeted by sterile air, the faint hum of machinery and halos of dim light shining down on various workstations. There were only a few scientists. The night crew, I figured. It was three in the morning, after all.

“Many pests are nocturnal,” Lyra said, her voice low and mindful, “so we replicate their ideal conditions and study their behavior accordingly.”

Lyra spun around, her gaze tracing the lab’s perimeter, lined with glass enclosures. Each one represented a distinct habitat, from lush forests to model basements and kitchens, complete with detailed, scaled-down furniture. In these customized spaces, little pests were on the prowl—bed bugs lurked, roaches scurried, silverfish darted about—under the prying eyes of researchers.

I was studying too. But my eyes were stuck on Lyra Manning. As she showed me around, I tried to sound intelligent, ask profound questions. But each answer turned me into a kid again, at the jungle gym, calluses on my hands from hanging on to her every word.

“Check out these nematodes here,” she said, directing me to a microscope on a table.

I leaned over the ocular lens, squinting at the petri dish.

“Most of them you can’t see with the naked eye,” Lyra said, “but they’re everywhere.”

They were thin and transparent and long, and the mere thought of these invisible creatures crawling on my skin made my skin crawl.

“Some are parasitic, infecting plants, destroying crops,” Lyra continued. “But others actually attack insect pests. With pheromones, we can control their behavior in a nontoxic way.”

“Nontoxic?” I asked.

“That’s right,” she said. “With an additive, we can confuse ‘bad’ nematodes and direct them away from healthy roots. At the same time, with another kind of pheromone, we can boost the hunting signal in ‘good’ nematodes so they keep searching for and destroying pests.”

Looking through the eyepiece, I wondered if there was a slide with a slice of her brain. What I would’ve given to examine that. To magnify the mechanics of her ingenuity. Right then, as if observing my thoughts from above, she scooted even closer, towering over me.

“That’s a powerful position,” I said.

“What’s that?”

I stood up, expecting her to step back, out of my personal space. But she didn’t budge. Neither did I. We were microns apart.

“Separating the ‘good’ from the ‘bad,’” I said.

“It’s not as hard as you think,” she said. “When you’ve been studying a subject so long, you recognize patterns of behavior. Rendering astute assessments becomes second nature.”

“Is that right?”

“As in accurate? Yes. As in ethical? That depends.”

“On?”

“The subject.”

“What about me?”

“What about you?”

“Let’s say I’m your subject,” I said. “Am I good? Or am I bad?”

Our eyes remained locked, our breathing circular. Machinery vibrated around us, intensifying the buzzing running up and down my spine.

“That would require a more comprehensive study,” she said.

Evidently, we had gotten off the record. And I didn’t know how or when or where to get back on. Or if I wanted to.

“Dr. Manning,” one of the scientists called out.

“Excuse me,” Lyra said and walked away, severing our trance.

Every single skin cell tingled. As if those slender worm-like thingies had wiggled, sneakily, from the petri dish to my fingertips and all over. She had me. She had me in the palm of her hand, where I walked a fine line between my propensity and professionalism. But what was I saying? I wasn’t a real journalist. Not anymore. I resigned five years ago. I came here on my own accord. Voluntarily. A freelancer. The operative word being “free.” There was no conflict about it—I was interested in Lyra Manning.

As she and the scientist engaged in their hushed conversation, blood found its way back to my feet. I was careful not to move too fast as I toured the lab. In my intoxicated state, I could easily picture myself crashing into a glass enclosure and letting the pests out. But I was mindful. I couldn’t let her think I was stupid. That word. I remembered what my son said. About waves. But waves are not stupid. They ebb and flow as tides succumb to the moon’s commands, captivated by forces beyond their control.

Floating around the lab, I approached a bank of monitors, displaying live feeds from various microfields, each labeled with a corresponding pest:

Lab 022: codling moths in an apple orchard

Lab 029: leafminers in a lush spinach garden

Lab 084: armyworms in a sprawling cornfield

Lab 088 was “offline,” which I figured was the rice paddy where I slept.

Lab 095: root-knot nematodes in a cabbage patch

Lab 006 had a live feed, but no pest label. I leaned down to look closer. The microfield was barren, an expansive patch of dirt piles and nothing else. Perhaps a failed lab that had to be abandoned due to pheromones gone bad. A wheatfield ravaged by mutant grasshoppers.

But then, on the screen, I saw something. Something that twisted up my intestines.

The door opened and a vehicle walked in, metallic appendages sticking out from its sides. The driver was none other than the escort I met earlier. The machine scurried across the terrain, coming to an inconspicuous hole. With a quick shift of gears, the upper half of its chassis swiveled and the rear opened up like a mouth. The machine tilted up. A large white bag tumbled down into the depths of the hole. The chassis rotated back around and a pair of prongs extended, then fused to form a claw, which scooped up chunks of earth to bury the bag.

It was only after the vehicle scuttled out that I realized I wasn’t breathing. Once again, Lab 006 showed nothing but dirt piles. Part of me was convinced I hallucinated the whole thing. It was three in the morning, after all.

So transfixed I was by what may or may not have transpired, I jumped when I heard a voice in my ear: “Everything in order, Mr. Abbott?” Lyra asked, leaning down next to me.

All I could do was nod.

She pointed right to the feed of Lab 006. “Our newest lab is slated to come online in Q4, soon as we wrap up our Series A,” she said. “Guess what kind of field we have in the works.”

She nudged me, a mischievous smile tugging at her lips.

All I could do was shrug.

She clapped her hands together. “A vineyard,” she said. “We’ve developed a unique formula that we believe can disrupt the behavior of grapevine moths. Let me tell you: Those insects are insidious. The moth larvae lay their eggs on the leaves and berries, wreaking havoc on vulnerable grape clusters. And, as a connoisseur of sorts, I prefer my wine with sweet notes and delicate florals, free of any fungal infections.”

I couldn’t help but smile. But it was a half-smile. My heart wasn’t in it, not after what I just witnessed—or thought I witnessed. Five minutes ago, if Lyra Manning told me mosquitoes weren’t sucking blood, but were injecting nanobots to repair damaged cells, I would have believed her. But now? Or maybe I was overthinking this. She was running a full operation here. It could’ve been anything in that large white bag: contaminated plant samples, lab waste, rats that didn’t survive the testing phase.

Still, the ominous words of Waldo Manning wouldn’t stop flitting around in my head: “What I have to show him will shake the very foundation of mankind as he knows it, trust me.” The potent mix of infatuation, paranoia, and sleep deprivation created a biochemical cocktail that crept up on me. Which was why when Lyra Manning put her hand on my shoulder and said, “Come with me. I want to show you something,” I was too stupid to resist.

• • • •

Back in the atrium, Lyra waved her hand, parting the hanging botanical garden. A circular platform descended from the ceiling. When it landed, she motioned for me to step on. So I did. And up we went. To where? I had no clue. But I felt woozy and I had nothing to hold onto.

Once it stopped, she stretched her arms wide. “Welcome to my humble habitat.”

Her living quarters looked like a modern treehouse, with vines of greenery climbing the circular walls. Moonlight fell from above. With another wave of her hand, the glass dome slid back like a convertible, exposing us to the cool air of the witching hours. To the right was a massive bathroom, to the left a closet made of bamboo. At the heart of this habitat was a bed shaped like a cocoon, and I just knew anybody who crawled in didn’t come out the same.

“Are you uncomfortable?” Lyra asked.

It seemed pointless to lie at this point. She studied all manner of species for a living and humans were simple—at least, I was. She walked toward me. With intent. And it wasn’t that I didn’t want to move, but I couldn’t. My legs weren’t receiving any messages. Signal lost.

It was a standard freeze response. My body shut down in the face of danger. But what exactly was the threat? Was I truly afraid of ending up in a hole in Lab 006? Or was I intimidated by everything she stood for? Dr. Lyra Manning, the mastermind behind Edenic Dynamics, built her empire from the ground up. In a society set up for her to fail, she set out on a mission to help farmers control pests, so they could grow food to feed a hungry world. Meanwhile, I couldn’t even feed my own family. I wanted her. I really wanted her, but I didn’t want to want her.

“Yesterday,” she said, “when we spoke on the phone, you told me you’d been wanting to connect with me.” She stopped just a few millimeters shy of my mouth. So close I could smell her thoughts. And they were no cleaner than mine. “What. Are. You. Waiting. For?”

When I shook my head, was I saying: “No?” Or was I answering: “Nothing?” I don’t remember. But I remember everything after that: the eye contact, entangled limbs, slippery skin. It was as if, in her bed, we found ourselves transformed into a gigantic insect. Four eyes, eight appendages intertwined, flailing, wailing as a singular specimen in a petri dish—the moon, a prying eye peering down at us through a microscope.

With lips pressed to oozing flesh, the thought of transference consumed me. To become one through a fluid exchange. Yet, even if by chance, I could absorb a lick of her poise through her pores, what would I have to offer in this symbiotic fusion? The question made me feel parasitic. And I sensed she felt the shift in the way she dug her claws into me, as if itching to peel back this protective exoskeleton. Or trying to rip my head off.

“What’s wrong?” she asked when I pulled away, severing our trance.

I could barely breathe. “Can I ask you something?” I said. “Off the record?”

“Right now?” she asked.

“Why did your husband commit suicide?”

With a guttural groan, she flopped down on the bed, but said nothing.

“Did you . . .?” I hesitated. I didn’t know how to say what I wanted to say, so I just said it: “Your husband, Waldo, called me two days ago. He sounded desperate. Said he wanted to show me something that could ‘shake the foundation of mankind.’ It sounded absurd, to be honest, but now I can’t shake the feeling that . . .” I took a deep breath for nerves to settle. The words were all there, on the tip of my tongue, but my tongue still tasted like her. “You want to know what my theory is?”

“Not particularly,” she said.

“My theory is, you discovered a way to use pheromones to control people, real people,” I said. “The biggest pests in the world are human beings. And I believe you developed a formula to manipulate human pests in the name of making the world a safer place. Your husband was against it, so you turned him into your subject and used your potion to make him kill himself.”

There it was. Everything was out in the open now. I was naked under the heavens with nothing left to hide. Lyra Manning just kept lying there, her breath steady, gazing up at the stars. I wished she would say something.

“You tangled with the wrong people,” she said, her voice slicing through the silence. “And they tore you apart.” She sat up to face me. “I know who you are, Roger Abbott. I know all about your ‘grand pursuits of truth,’ your exposés on EmotiCure and its manipulated clinical data. But Big Pharma came back to sting you good, huh? Plagiarism scandal, credibility shot, unemployment, marriage destroyed. And now you’re here looking for, what, redemption?”

“I saw what I saw.”

“You saw nothing.”

“The body bag in Lab 006.”

She laughed. “Mr. Abbott, I appreciate your interest, but it seems we’ve reached the end of this interview. Unfortunately, there is no conspiracy to uncover. Even if there were, you see, you lack one critical element that both journalists and scientists count on.” She leaned forward, invading my personal space. “Proof.”

As she started dressing, it startled me how fast lust boiled over into wrath. But I had no control of the settings—this was her domain. I felt small. Not only small, but weak, coated in sweat, soaking in the stench of my insignificance. But I refused to be treated as a mere nuisance. I wasn’t some body to be shooed away or swatted at. Lyra Manning was smart, no question. Smarter than I could ever be. But just because I was beneath her didn’t mean I deserved to be stomped on. Where was the respect? The kindness? I, too, had intrinsic value.

“I’ll show you,” I said. “When I dig up your husband’s body and the autopsy reveals the poison you used to drive him to suicide, I’ll have all the proof I need.”

She paused and cocked her head. “What makes you think he committed suicide?”

I had to think about it. But no, I remembered clearly. “You told me he—”

“—had been struggling with suicidal thoughts.” Lyra opened the closet made of bamboo, revealing an ailing man, alive and tied up with manila rope. “Which wasn’t entirely untrue.”

I sat there, stunned, like I had some of that rope tying my tongue.

“This man tried to take over my company,” she said. “Everything I worked for, everything I established, he tried to claim as his own. I put up with too much and worked too hard for that. So I invited you here because I needed you, Roger. I needed someone who was vulnerable, with a history of getting their hands dirty, for this particular extermination job.”

“What?”

Lyra Manning waved a hand at me, then pointed at her husband.

And, at that moment, my motor functions were no longer my own. I was compelled to rise from the bed. Then, as if strung along by some unseen puppeteer, I was directed to the closet, my outstretched hands finding their mark around Waldo Manning’s neck. The rope wedged beneath his teeth stifled his desperate pleas. And I swear, with every fiber in my being, I tried to stop what was happening. But I was powerless, out of control, overwhelmed by this irresistible impulse. A bystander to myself. Tears welled up in my eyes, but I couldn’t even look away as this grown man morphed into a squirming blur. The vice-like grip around his throat tightened, snuffing out his dwindling breath until, finally, his body collapsed, then I collapsed and everything went dark and there was no sound.

• • • •

That’s the end. As I said in the beginning, I have no pretense that these words will influence your opinion of me or what they say I’ve done—“they” being the jury of my peers, who, mind you, were no peers of mine. But if, by chance, you do believe me and you feel that I have been wrongfully convicted, then help me. Reach out to my family. Tell them I love them and I never meant to hurt anybody. Help me, please, because I can’t help myself.