Syren vs. Kimberly Williams

[The Matt]

1 of 2.
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October 25th, 2021
Norfolk, Massachusetts
Off Camera
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Knowledge is power. And as a great comic book hero once said a time or two, with great power comes great responsibility. When it comes to Kimberly Williams she isn’t exactly concerned with power or responsibility but she certainly wants some knowledge; specifically she wants the knowledge that has been eluding her all of her life. She wants to know about her background, her past, where she came from.

Having been stolen from her mother’s arms at birth and raised off the grid by a sociopath, Kimberly was robbed of learning about her past and her background the normal way. She did get to grow up around her sisters and parents. In fact, by the time she was an adult her father, Sean Williams, was already dead and gone, murdered by her own mother, Angelica Jones. Life hasn’t exactly been fair to The Woman Scorned but she doesn’t make excuses. She doesn’t expect fairness. But the one thing she does want is the knowledge of her past, the knowledge of where she comes from. And she will get those answers even if it kills her…or if it ends up killing someone else who gets in her way.

In her quest she has already met with her identical twin sister, Marie Jones. She met with their mother, Angelica Jones. Neither gave Kimberly much information to work with. She took a violent turn and kidnapped Sorinah Floreschu, the sister of the woman who raised Kimberly from birth. From Sorinah she learned about the siblings of Sean Williams. Kim traveled to Alaska to meet with her aunt Cynthia Johnson. While Cynthia did provide a little more information, Kimberly could still sense that she was hiding something. That leaves one more person left for Kimberly to interrogate. She has one last person available to glean information from…

..her uncle, Douglas Williams.

We open inside the gatehouse of the Bay State Correctional Center. Further research from The Woman Scorned helped her find out that her uncle was being held here for the many crimes he committed. Apparently he was a low level serial killer, infamous in the Massachusetts area where the family was from. He was caught, put on trial, convicted, and has been serving his time on death row ever since, exhausting as many appeals as he can, trying to delay the inevitable. Today Kim is here to meet with the infamous murderer who happens to be her uncle. Maybe by meeting with him she will learn the truth about her past?

Kimberly is dressed in denim jeans, black boots, and a black t-shirt. This wasn’t her first choice of attire but she found out that there were certain expectations for entering a prison, including dress codes. Part of the expectations also include a brief “pat down” to make sure Kimberly isn’t trying to smuggle any contraband into the prison. The reigning SCW Underground Champion stands there patiently, waiting her turn. The officer pats down a woman ahead of her in line and then waves her on through. The officer motions for Kimberly to step forward. The Woman Scorned grins from ear to ear and steps forward.

“Turn for me please.” The officer asks. Kim nods and in typical Kim fashion does pirouette as if she were a ballerina. The officer, needless to say, is not amused. “Knock it off, miss, otherwise you don’t get in.”

“Party pooper.” Kim says, sticking her tongue out at him. The officer asks her to hold out her arms. She does so and then the officer begins to pat her down. Once he is satisfied the officer motions for her to step through.

“You can enter.”

“Yay!” Kim gives the officer a brief hug. He sighs out of frustration. The Woman Scorned then steps through the now unlocked doors and onto the prison grounds. She can see the massive sight, the intimidating sight of this structure. It reminds her of the time she was locked up in a mental institution. It felt more like a prison than a mental hospital. In a strange way, this feels almost normal for The Woman Scorned.

Kimberly follows the rest of the group, all of whom are here for visitation, in through the main entrance. There the group is met by an officer who directs them to follow him the rest of the way towards the visitation area. The officer leads the group through another door, down a long, dingy hallway, and finally into a door. The group enters the door and into a room. There are several inmates there already waiting for their visitors. Most of these people already know who they are seeing, for they have done this many times before. They have visited their loved ones many times previously in this place. But Kimberly has never before seen her Uncle Douglas. And yet it doesn’t take The Woman Scorned long at all to find her incarcerated family member.

Williams takes out a picture in her pocket and looks at it. It is a picture of her father, Sean Williams. On the far left is an inmate whose face is damn near identical to Sean’s. Williams chuckles. She walks over to the inmate. She is blocked by an officer who stands in their way.

“Excuse me, miss, but are you here to say inmate Douglas Williams?”

“If you mean my UNCLE Doug then yes, I am.”

“Huh…” the officer sounds skeptical “...I never knew he had a niece.”

“I’m the black sheep of the family.” Kimberly says with a wry grin and a wink. The officer sighs and relents. He steps aside, allowing Kimberly access to her uncle Douglas. Williams sits down at the table with her uncle, a man she has never before met until now. The inmate, dressed in all orange, stares at her with a cold, hard, and skeptical glare. He shakes his head.

“Not that I’m complaining, because it gets dull as fuck without any visitors when you sit on death row waiting for the government to kill you, but I gotta agree with the cop. I never knew I had a niece. In fact, I never saw you before in my life. Who the hell are you?!”

“You really are slow, aren’t you Uncle Doug?” Kim says playfully. “I mean, I thought that part was already established when I spoke to officer dudley do-right over there. I am your niece. Duh!”

Douglas sneers. “You got a smart ass mouth, bitch. You know damn well what I meant. Now why don’t ya answer my question before ya get into trouble?”

“I think I got the coppers pretty much convinced Uncle Doug.”

“Not with them! You’ll be in trouble with me, bitch!”

“Oh…” Kim smirks “...well, you are surrounded by tons of security. I’m not sure there’s much you can do.”

“There’s plenty I COULD do. And I’m on death row with very few appeals remaining. I have nothing to lose. So please, I’m begging you, give me an excuse!”

Williams pauses momentarily to consider her options. She decides that she has had enough fun messing around and teasing her dangerous uncle. She nods her head. “Alright, well, I AM your niece, that much is true, but there is a lot more to it than that. My name Is Kimberly Williams. I am Sean’s daughter.”

Douglas lets out a grunt as he gazes at his niece skeptically. “Sean never told me he had a kid.”

“Daddy was a busy boy.”

“Wait a sec…” Douglas stares at Kimberly for a moment “...that red hair. Is your mom that nun he was porking?”

“Uh-huh!” Kim says nodding happily. “He banged her like a drum!”

“Damn right he did!” Douglas says chuckling loudly. “Hot damn, I gotta say, I am proud of my bro. And your name is Kim?”

“Yup.”

“Well damn.” Douglas seems genuinely happy. “Y’know, I may be a bit rough around the edges, but I gotta admit, this right here legit makes me feel good. It feels good knowing that the family line is continuing. Y’know? I’m glad you came by to see me, Kim.”

“Well see that’s the thing, you didn’t know I existed. Hell, I didn’t know you existed. I didn’t know Aunt Cynthia existed. I had to track her happy ass to Alaska.”

“Alaska?!” Douglas rolls his eyes. “Figures.”

“Look, I’ll get right to the point. The reason I’m here, the reason I have taken this time to track you down, is because I want to know about my past. I never got to meet my dad.”

“Why not? Did he run off like Cynthia or…” Douglas frowns “...wait, he’s dead isn’t he?”

“No one ever told you?”

He sighs and shakes his head. “Nah…no one tells me anything.”

Well this meeting just took a depressing turn. It isn’t every day that you find out your brother died. Douglas just found that out the hard way. Kimberly shows a rare sign of emotion. She frowns weakly. “I’m sorry…”

“It’s ok, kiddo. I’m good. You woulda liked him. He was a halfway decent dude.”

“Yeah, and that’s the thing…everyone tells me that.” Kimberly says as she feels renewed, her purpose for being here reignited. “I asked my mom about Sean and she just said he was a good person. I asked Aunt Cynthia and she said he was a good person. All I ever get is that he was a good person.” she points a finger at Douglas. “Then there’s you. You’re locked up in here, you obviously don’t hear from any family members because you didn’t even know he was dead.”

Douglas furrows his brow out of curiosity. “What are ya getting at?”

“I’m not dumb. In fact, I’m very intelligent. There is something, some big secret that everyone I have talked to thus far has kept from me. Why the secrecy? Why would the family ignore you? Why would Cynthia run off to Alaska to avoid everyone?”

“Why do ya wanna know?”

“I think I deserve the right to know where I came from.” Kimberly says, glaring with cold eyes back at her uncle. “And maybe in the process find out why I am the way that I am. Have you heard about nature versus nurture? Its a debate, partially scientific, partially philosophical.”

“Simplify it for me.” Douglas grunts.

“Well let’s put it like this. “Let’s say Adolf Hitler had a kid. One of the biggest mass murderers in human history, one of the most evil men in history, and lets say hypothetically he had a kid. Would that kid grow up to be a bully, a monster, an out and out evil human being just because his daddy was, and it is in his nature to be bad? Or if Hitler’s kid was adopted, and raised by good, decent parents, would that kid grow up to potentially be one of the nicest and most upstanding human beings the world has ever seen?”

“I get ya…” Douglas says, nodding his head in agreement.

“I won’t lie; I am a fucked up human being. But I’d like to know why I am so damn fucked up. I have had the time to get to know my mom’s family. I would like to get to know my dad’s family. Funny thing is, my mom didn’t raise me, my dad didn’t raise me. I only got to know my mom after I was eighteen. So I wanna know, do I blame genetics for being as fucked up as I am or do I blame the idiots who raised me for being who I am today. So I need to know about my dad and I need the truth. All of it. No secrets.”

“Are you sure you want the truth?” Douglas quietly.

“What the hell is this, A Few Good Man? Are you Jack Nicholson?” Kim is growing frustrated. “Of course I can handle the truth!”

“I just wanna prepare you because it isn’t a nice truth, it isn’t pleasant, and Sean…your dad…yeah, he was a good man, but he wasn’t the saint everyone has made him out to be.” He sighs deeply. He looks around the room and shakes his head. “I suppose it doesn’t matter now.”

“What doesn’t matter?!”

“There’s a reason Sean never bothered to contact me. There’s a reason Cynthia moved to Alaska. They’re ashamed of the family heritage.”

Kim smirks. “Well people aren’t exactly waving the flag proudly in honor of being related to mass murderers, y’know? And dad, well, he even tried to redeem the family name. He tried to become an officer to fight crime, the kinds of crime you committed.”

“Don’t believe in half-truths, Kim.” Douglas says with a low grunt.

“Huh?”

“Look, your old man did become a cop. That much is true. But it wasn’t to redeem the family name because of any shit I did. He did to help his own conscience.” He smirks knowingly. “You come here to confront me and yet you don’t even know the whole story yourself.”

“I know that you’re in here for a string of murders.”

He nods his head, acknowledging his crimes. “Yeah, you’re right. That’s exactly what I’m in here for. I’m here because I gave in to those voices in my head that told me to kill those women. But you know the one good thing about prison? I did get help in here. I got psychological treatment that silenced those voices. Hopefully some judge or the governor will see the progress I’ve made and change my sentence to life instead of death. And maybe if further evidence were to get out that not all of those crimes were committed by yours truly, then that might help my case too.”

“What do you mean?” Kim asks curiously.

“Haven’t you figured it out yet?” Douglas chuckles. “You said you were smart. You figure it out. Or maybe I should spell it out for ya? Some of those murders I got convicted for were actually committed by your dad.” He sees the look of shock on Kim’s face. He nods his head. “That’s right. Sean heard those same voices I did. Those same voices that told me to kill also told Sean to kill. I took the fall for the whole crime spree to save Sean’s ass.”

Kim is wide-eyed with shock. “But now that I answered your question, I want you to answer mine. Capiche?”

“Sure…” Kim’s voice trails off.

“Do you hear the voices?”

Williams is stoic and emotionless. She gives this man, her uncle who she never met until today, the benefit of an answer. Instead Kimberly just thinks. Her quest for knowledge is over. She knows, at least to some degree, what kind of troubled man her father was. She knows about the turmoil her family, the Williams family, endured. She knows how her father at the end of his life tried to fight for good, whether it be for redemption or for his own conscience. She has that knowledge and if knowledge truly is power, the question now is what will she do with this knowledge?