Part I
“You love me, right?” That’s what Daniel said to Aurora as he stood in a pool of blood, but not that of his own, of his victims’. The white tiles of the bathroom floor shone with bright red fluids seeping through the cracks. And those fluids lead to a boy, no older than Aurora’s 16, with chestnut hair that was damp and dark where his head wounds lie. She didn’t know him, not at all. His face was foreign to her. But what a beautiful face it was, if you could manage to look past the blood and the odd angle at which his body fell, he looked innocent like a child, like someone everyone loved, everyone protected.
“Rori, babe. Are you there,” Daniel said intruding on her examination.
She looked up at him, with his spring green eyes glistening; there was no way he could have done this. Murder? Daniel, a murderer, her brain wouldn’t accept it. Daniel was her rock, the only thing that would always remain in her life. He wouldn’t — no, couldn’t kill someone. The room spun as she tried to figure out how this could possibly have happened. Then nothing, just blackness.
“Babe! Babe,” she heard Daniel’s panicked voice as she came to. Her eyes opened to the ceiling of the plain white bathroom. Daniel embraced her planting kisses all over her face, “Don’t scare me like that?” He lifted her off the bathroom floor and carefully placed her on his unmade bed. He knew he shouldn’t have dragged her into this. She was such a loving person, but he wasn’t thinking.
“Daniel,” she exclaimed shooting up off his bed. “Tell me,” she gasped for breath, “Tell me right now that there isn’t a corpse in your bathroom.” He grabbed her hoping she wouldn’t flinch away from his touch. He did a stupid thing, a really stupid thing and if it cost him her he would go into his parents’ room and empty his father’s .45 into his skull. He wasn’t crazy she just meant that much. She took his silence as evidence that no she wasn’t dreaming. There was a body not ten feet away from where she stood.
She tried desperately to keep even breaths. “What happened?” The steadiness of her voice scared him. He seriously fucked up. She was going to turn him in, or worst, leave him. But still he couldn’t stay silent forever. “I did something stupid, and I’m sorry. I’m so sorry,” he said sinking to his knees, holding her tightly around her waist. “I love you,” he whispered almost so low she couldn’t hear him.
In and out, she thought. He killed someone. She detangled herself from his grip and left the room. He cried silent tears in her absence. In his mind there was no way she was coming back and he couldn’t blame her. She’d finally forced him into vegetarianism, and he went out and hurt a person. In her mind there would never be a good enough reason for taking a human life.
He stood and opened his bedroom door, but before he reached his parents’ chambers, he bumped into her. “Where the fuck do you think you’re going,” Aurora said, obviously pissed. She never cursed, but he was too happy to notice. She chose to ignore his tear-stained expression, and threw the box of trash bags at him. “Get rid of it.”
Aurora wasn’t sure where the sweet, kind, caring part of her went, but she knew it was gone, and she wasn’t sure if it would ever return. Would she be forever scarred? Guess we’ll just have to find out, she thought to herself.
Grabbing Daniel’s keys, she went to his car and parked it in the garage, trunk first. Then she went to check on his progress. Daniel stood dragging the body towards the door when she arrived. “Stop,” she yelled. He did so. “You can’t drag that out here. There’s carpet. Are you trying to go to jail?” She watched him struggle to hold the 5’7 frame of the boy over his shoulders. She didn’t kill him, why should she help?
After he successfully lifted the corpse, Aurora led him to the garage. Once the body was securely in the trunk, she handed him a shovel and a gun. “Somewhere deep in the woods, no less than six feet under. Have fun,” she knew she wouldn’t have to say what the gun was for. This late in October she knew there wouldn’t be any campers. The woods would be empty until the Halloween bonfires in a week. It was for the animals; she wasn’t a wildlife expert, but it’s better safe than sorry. “Don’t get caught. We can’t afford anymore of your stupidity,” and with that she returned to his bathroom with a mop. They’d have to replace a lot of his mom’s cleaning supplies once she was done.
She wasn’t sure how long it took to subdue the boy, but looking at the bathroom it must have took a lot. There were blood splatters on the shower curtains, and the mirror. Bloody hand prints decorated the walls in several places. Daniel did this, she thought, her resolve slipping. Daniel did this.
***
She lay in bed, Daniel’s bed, waiting for him to return. She already finished cleaning and burned all the evidence she could find: her clothes, towels, mops, and the bathroom rugs. Then she came back and took a shower. Now she was under his covers wondering where the hell he was. It has been four hours; it was almost five am, and she still hadn’t received so much as a text message.
She turned onto her back looking straight forward at the ceiling she could barely see in the darkness of his room. Aurora was seriously concerned. It wasn’t like Daniel to ignore her. He put her above all else and before tonight she thought they would be together forever.
The front door burst open, she couldn’t see it yet, but she heard it. “L.A.P.D,” a man’s voice yelled from the other room. Shooting up from her spot on the bed, she wondered if she could escape. But before she even slid off the bed, she knew she couldn’t. The only exit from Daniel’s room was the window, which her 5’2 figure couldn’t slide out of on such short notice.
