“I’ve got to get back to my wife,” he whispered into the air not sure who the audience was supposed to be. “She’ll begin to wonder where I am.” He paused and a chuckle struggled to find its way from the depths of his chest.
The blood was a sticky brown mess; a thin, brown amoebas spread out over the back of his hands and up his arms. It caked into a burgundy paste in the creases of his palms, which he rubbed together creating a pile of dried blood flakes on the carpet. Just an hour prior and it was a thick, hot, black mess spewing from the wounds of the victim whose once handsome visage is now unrecognizable. The victim’s hair was black and looked like onyx with the congealed blood hardening it into a sickening shine.
“What do I do with the body, now?” the living one asked. He paused, hoping there would be an answer. Instead he ran to the kitchen and opened the cabinet beneath the sink and pulled out all the cleaning products. He fumbled his arms about in the darkness and found a box of black, plastic garbage bags. With short grunts he hopped over to the body, black bags in hand.
He lifted the legs and carefully inserted them into the bags and repeated with the other half of the corpse. Searching through the house, he found some duct tape and managed to wrap the body in an airtight seal. Odd, he thought, this is easier than I thought it would be. He shoved the bag of lifeless flesh to one side of the room and began to douse the walls and carpet with the cleaning products.
It must have been a good hour or two before he had scrubbed all the blood from the premises. The living one dedicated another 45 minutes to the act for the sake of thoroughness. His body nearly buckled at the weight of the body he was carrying to the field. How fortunate for him that this back yard was not fenced in but allowed the wilderness to creep in.
There was a shovel in his car that was used for an earlier, forgotten job and had not found its way back into the garage. He held it in his hand and used it as support as he trudged several yards into the woods before stopping from mere exhaustion. This is the spot, he exclaimed to the corpse, this is where it ends. He speared the earth with the shovel and worked as quickly as his aching body would allow.
His strength was surprisingly plentiful given the ordeal of the murder, which one might guess would be a physically draining task not to mention the cleaning of the scene of the crime. He had dug a large hole in the cold, moist ground waist deep. It would surely fit the corpse. He climbed out of the grave and threw in the airtight wrapped corpse. The mound of dirt beside the hole was shoved back into it and compacted with the backside of the shovel.
“So far, so good.” He was so pleased with the outcome so far, he was tempted to smile. The murderer stumbled into his car and heated the engine as he took off his blood soaked shirt. He threw it carelessly at the back seat. The car was put into gear and he drove off to the main road. There was a four-way stop sign coming up, another car braked at the stop adjacent to him.
The killer flashed his lights, wanting the other guy to go. As the high beams pierced the darkness, some of the light bounced back from the car in an image that read “To Serve and Protect.” Perhaps his luck was being tested today as the officer waved the living one to go on ahead. The heavy foot lifted from the brake and gently pressed against the accelerator. Trying not to bring attention to himself, his eye wandered to the rear view mirror. His heart raced as the car rolled along, but froze when he saw that the squad car had yet to move. Icicles of sweat began to form on his forehead. Wanting not to draw suspicion, he maintained his speed hoping not to hit any wandering animals in the night. With a quick jerk, the squad car pulled ahead and paid no attention to the murderer that just got away.
The man pulled into the driveway and allowed himself to breathe at his normal pace again. He could not believe how fortunate he had been. An act of irrational passion had set the entire evening in motion and he had dodged every baited trap that fate had set out for him. The thick jacket that kept his shirtless body warm in the truck slid off and was hung on the rack by the front door. He could feel his body aching now.
Bang! He did not see his wife standing in the hall until the flash escaped the muzzle of the gun in her hand. The last thing he saw was the marbling wisps of smoke dancing from the pistol perfuming the room with the smell of gunpowder. She saw that there was blood on the jacket he took off before she shot him. That was all she would need to confirm where he was and what he did earlier that night. With a violent gasp for air, the man’s fortune had ended as abruptly as his life.
“I’m not sorry for doing this to you,” the words escaped coldly from her lips, “What use do I have for a husband, especially one that rids me of a lover?”
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