Hero-Like

An Unexpected Wake Up Call

Your best friend calls you in the middle of the night asking you to help her move a body, it's hardly unreasonable to assume she's joking, or at the very least exaggerating. The body is a metaphor, meant to invoke the bonds of best friendship into immediate action. That's what I thought at fifteen when I made a promise to my best friend Carly Chan that should she ever need me to, I would help her move a body no questions asked.

It was a benign promise, one I'm sure many other people have made, so when Carly called me at 2am on a Tuesday morning saying: "I need you to help me move a body", I did not take it literally. In fact there was very little emotional reaction beyond annoyance. Being pulled from my bed on a work night was less than ideal not to mention super inconsiderate on Carly's part, although not entirely out of character.

The body was NOT a metaphor. The body was a man. A very real man. The man was not dead, thank goodness for small mercies, but he was bound, gagged, and blindfolded with an arrow sticking out of his thigh.

Standing over this bound and beaten man was my best friend Carly Chan, her black hair tied back into a tight ponytail, her face covered by a blue mask. She was holding one of her many excessively expensive compound bows, a blue one to match her mask of course.

"It's not what it looks like," she said like there was an obvious explication for this completely absurd situation.

"It looks like you dressed up like some kind of superhero shot this guy with an arrow, beat him unconscious, then called me because you realised you couldn't carry him on your own," I said with more composure than I thought I was capable of at that point in time. But then you really don't know how you will react to a situation like this until it actually happens, which is very unlikely. Apparently I am capable of ignoring the blood stained man lying at my feet so I can sass my best friend.

"Okay well then yeah it's exactly what it looks like," said Carly any pretence of innocence had disappeared from her tone. "But he totally deserved it I promise."

"At the risk of indulging your insanity, what reason did you have for shooting this man with an arrow?" I asked with a defeated sigh.

"This," began Carly proudly gesturing to the bloody body at her feet, "is Craig Parker."

I looked at the man lying at Carly's feet again, it was difficult to make out any distinguishing features in the dark but he did seem a similar shape to the man known as Craig Parker.

"That's Craig Parker," I repeated dumbfounded.

"Yup," replied Carly smiling through the word. She was clearly proud of herself.

"The Craig Parker that raped Rosie?" I asked for confirmation.

"Yup," repeated Carly with emphasis on the final letter of the word.

I looked at the man on the ground with a fresh set of eyes and suddenly his injuries didn't seem as severe. But they were still there, and it was still Carly that had inflicted them. Whether or not he deserved it Carly had gotten herself into quite the pickle.

"The Craig Parker that convinced the police, the media, and the general public that he was a victim of slander despite the overwhelming evidence against him?" I continued.

"I'm awesome right?" replied Carly clearly not judging my tone correctly.

"What the hell were you thinking?" I said to Carly in my loudest, angriest whisper. This was not a situation I wanted to draw attention to but I still needed to express my frustration. "That man is Teflon NOTHING sticks to him. He managed to turn himself into the victim and Rosie looked worse than he does right now after he was done with her."