Mother, Dearest

4

I bang my fists on Kyle's door. It's four in the morning, and I can't sleep. I can't stop thinking about what's going to happen if anyone ever finds out about what happened to Jack. I need reassurance, and a plan. I can't just keep his rotting corpse in my basement.

"Can I help you? You're going to wake up your child." Kyle said as he rubbed his eyes.

I shove past Kyle into his house and begin to pace.

"It's four in the morning, Twy. What's wrong?" Kyle sits down on the couch, watching me pace back and forth in his Livingroom.

I stop pacing to face him. How do I even tell him what I did? Would he be disappointed in me? Would he turn me in? What would happen if I did tell him? I have so many questions, and the only way for me to find the answer, is by telling him what I did. This is the only consequence that I'm scared to face.

"Did Jack leave you? Did you leave Jack? Don't tell me. You both finally broke down and got a puppy? Twyla, you just standing there and staring at me is literally killing me. Please just spill it. Whatever it is, we can figure this out together. I got your back no matter what." I know Kyle. I know.

I take a deep breath. I've already come this far. Too far to turn back. I can't just leave now.

"I killed Jack." I took a sharp breath and stared at Kyle, who sat there with his mouth open, staring at my like I was a bear in a circus.

"No... fucking.... way dude!" Kyle laughed, and I exhaled the breath I had been holding in.

"I was wondering when you were going to get rid of that guy. He was such a tool." Kyle sat back on the couch, and passed a hand through his hair.

"What? I thought you liked Jack?" I sat down next to Kyle on his couch.

"I mean, no. Not really. He was such an asshole. We've only met twice, but I didn't like the feeling he gave off. He seemed like a sketchy person." Kyle stood up and put his jacket on.

"I'm going to go smoke, we can finish this conversation in the screen room." He says to me. I follow behind him into the screen room. I look around at the walls, and they're stained yellow, with brown streaks that look like maple syrup running down the paint. The green carpet looks like salt and pepper from all of the cigarette ash covering the floor.

"Kyle, you need to clean this room. It's disgusting." I cross my arms and look at him.

"It's outside. It's fine. We need to discuss where we're going to go from here. In all seriousness, you killed a man. Not just any man, your husband. You haven't killed anybody in almost five years. So I'm assuming your head isn't in the game, and you're panicking." Yeah that about sums it up.

"I have absolutely no idea how I'm going to actually get away with this one. Something inside of me just snapped. I wasn't thinking about the consequences. We got off lucky last time. There's no getting away with it this time, I don't have my parents to turn to. I'm fucked." I take Kyle's cigarette out of his hand and take a long drag off of it. I close my eyes as I exhale the smoke.

"What in the hell are you doing? You quit." Kyle laughed as he snatched the cigarette back from me.

"Give me one, please. I'm so stressed out. I need something." I pleaded with him.

"Fine." Kyle handed me a cigarette from his pack, and I lit it.

"What about the old den?" Kyle said.

"What about it?" I asked him before taking a drag off of my cigarette.

"Why don't you just take his body there? I mean, he doesn't have a family does he? His mom and dad both passed away when he was a teenager right?" I take another drag off of the cigarette while listening to Kyle talk.

"I mean, yeah. There's no one significant in his life that would notice him if he was missing. The only place that would really notice if he was missing, is his work." His work and probably his daughter. Satanica should be fine without him, he wasn't worthy enough to be her father anyway.

"Okay, well, what about his job? Won't they call looking for him?" Kyle asks me.

"Yeah, they will. I mean, we could just have you call them from his cellphone, and you could pretend to be him and quit the job." I smile to myself. It's all starting to come back to me. I start to become more comfortable and confident with the thought of being able to get away with the murder of my husband.

"That works, now what about everything else? You guys are married. You're going to have to come up with something. I can help you move his body, but as far as the big brain stuff goes, that's always been you. Even back in the day." He made a good point.

"I could call and report him missing in the morning. I can say that he never came home from work last night. They will never find him if we hide him in the den. We just have to get your mom to watch Satanica for a few hours while we do this. The den is three hours away." I flick my cigarette into the bucket Kyle had in the screen room for cigarette butts.

"Actually, my mom is here right now. I could just write her a note, and tell her that I went over to Dahlia's house to help her with some stuff. What time is it now? Like five? We should be back close to noon." Kyle put out his cigarette, and we went back inside.

"Okay, we should get going before more people start accumulating on the roads. We have a very small window to get this done safely." I say to him as I'm putting my shoes on.

**********

"Why couldn't you have chosen to kill someone lighter?" Kyle strains his words as we lift Jack's body into my trunk.

"Would you stop crying? I'm doing most of the lifting. Put your back into it!" I laugh and wipe my hands on my pants after I slam the trunk shut.

"What, was he a body builder? For such a small guy, he sure was packing all of his weight somewhere. He was not light." Kyle says to me as we get into the car.

"Yeah, he used to work out pretty heavily whenever he would get off of work. He would always tell me that he didn't have time to come home and help me with Satanica, because he was working late. How late could you possibly be working? When did you start working at the gym?" I start the car and pull out of my drive way.

"Yeah, no kidding." Kyle pulled a cigarette out of his pack. "You want one?"

"Yeah, might as well. We have a pretty long drive ahead of us." I say to him.

"Oh man. We never thought about what we're going to tell my mom." Kyle says as he passes me the cigarette.

I totally forgot about aunt Thalia. If she found out that I was killing again, I would be in a world of trouble. She would probably send me to prison, or worse. She would probably get me locked up in an institute. I can't go back to one of those. The food is bland, and the texture of the scrubs against my skin makes me want to light myself aflame.

"I could just tell her that he left me. When I get back to the house, I can just call her and tell her that he left a note or something. I don't know, we have a whole six to seven hours to get our stories straight." It should be fine. There should be no hiccups. Kyle and I might have been out of the game for a while, but we're still professionals. We can cover this up with no trace of any evidence left behind.