Postmortem

Eight Days After

    Nicki would be alone in her room tonight. Her family was going out for her mothers business dinner, and Nicki was so paranoid nowadays that she hardly left the house. That was alright, I would come to her. I took a coil of rope and a knife before I left for her house.

    I didn't knock this time. I slipped between shadows into her house without making a sound. She should have gone out tonight.
    I crept up the stairs, avoiding the steps that I knew made noise. Nicki had invited us over countless times through the years, I knew everything about this house. Especially where her room was. I sneaked slowly to her open door, shifted to peer through the crack. She was sitting at her desk with headphones covering both ears, back facing the door.
    Easy.
    I walked into the room behind her, positioning the noose in my hands. By the time she saw my reflection in her computer and shot up from her desk, she darted straight into it. I pulled it as soon as it was nestled against her neck. She gasped and scratched at the rope. Her eyes bulged as she desperately thrashed in my grip. I secured an arm over her torso, pinning her arms to her sides.
    "Please..." she wheezed, kicking out. It only took a couple of minutes for her to stop moving, or breathing, at all. I attached the rope to her ceiling fan and lifted her lifeless body up into the air. She hung still as I set the room up. I knew Nicki for quite a while, and I knew the soul gnawing secret she kept. An apt motive for suicide.
    A couple of months ago she had been at a gas station. It was a cheap place, without a security system of any kind. She stole a couple of candy bars and the cashier noticed. She ran to her car and sped away, but the man chased after her. That was when she hit him. He landed hard, crashed his head on the pavement. She didn't see him get up before she quickly drove away.
    The man died on the way to the hospital, that's what the town papers said the next week. It was a hit and run on the poor old man, and no one was ever charged. She never confessed and the guilt was eating at her. The only way out she could see was the rope. That's what I wrote in her note, anyway. I folded it and set it on her desk once it was finished. I spared one more glance to the dead girl before I left.
    Two down, two to go.