Double-Click Flash Fic by Maya Sokolovski Read Free Book Online

and a small forehead. He wears Coke-bottle glasses, and his eyes are set deep in his face. She is slim to the point of nonexistence, with a pinched look on her otherwise pretty face.
    After more talking, Honda goes back to her car and retrieves a notebook and a pen. She goes back over, then stands there, shivering in the cold while he watches her jot down her information. Her writing arm trembles. The snow continues to fall. She hands the notebook and pen over to him, and he takes his time writing down his information. She continues to stand. Continues to shiver. He tries to suppress a smirk, but she doesn’t notice the suppression nor the beginnings of his self-satisfied grin.
    It’s unbearable to look at this, to tolerate this. It doesn’t take a genius to realize the ramifications; any driver can tell you that if you’ve been in an accident, you stay put. Moving the vehicles away from the original scene and not flagging down witnesses means that anything could have happened. He said, she said. At best, both of them will be found guilty for the accident. At worst, she may be found to be at fault for something she did not do, was only subjected to by forces beyond her control. The damage could have been inflicted by either car, judging by the state of the car doors. And judging by the crafty look on the man’s face, he knows how things stand. She, on the other hand, looks shell-shocked. She’s never been in a car accident before. She must be no older than 20. He must be in his late 40s.
    I walk over as they’re talking and gently tap her on the shoulder. “Bad scrape you got into.” She turns around, astonished. BMW’s face deflates.

Defence and Expert Testimony on the Murder of an Arab
    I would be indebted to you, gentlemen of the jury, if you excused my client’s absence from these proceedings; he has been struck with a brain fever, an affliction which visits him occasionally, and which speaks to a deeply rooted infirmity that has plagued him for the larger part of his life. Oblige, if you would be so kind, to hear my testimony, for I speak not only as an advocate, but as a medical practitioner who had the responsibility and privilege to serve as caretaker of and confidant to M. Meursault in his most trying moment. I intend to prove that his crime was committed from a position of deep disease, and that he cannot be held accountable for his actions, gruesome though they may be.
    My client stands accused of murdering by gunshot a man of Arabic descent whose name, by request of the slain victim’s family, shall be omitted from my testimony. Meursault and the murdered individual had no prior relationship before the alleged murder; in fact, the date of the murder was the first – and last – time either had seen the other. They were perfect strangers. The gun was fired once, then four more times, and according to a witness, the accused appeared neither angry nor glad before, during, or after the event; he appeared, in fact, emotionless and, as this witness put it earlier, “eerily detached from his actions, as if some unholy spirit were guiding his hand.”
    Meursault has always been an outsider, a stranger to the society he lives in. And as my clinical report states – please turn to page 14 of the document in front of you – Meursault “suffers from the pathological inability to feel or express empathy … Grief and happiness alike are foreign to him, and he lives isolated from and out of touch with the real world.” It is my professional opinion that Meursault suffers from a heretofore undiagnosed case of psychopathy, and that far from being a calculating killer with evil motives, he is the victim of a mental illness which, though incurable, can be treated and controlled within the safe confines of an asylum.
    I put it to you, who are most astute judges of human frailty, that Meursault’s crime was not premeditated; for when a person is incapable of acting rationally and is victim to a perilously weak