Story of A Lonely Guy

Chapter 29: Mishaps

Angela; December 24th

It's the voices in my head and I can't hold them back any longer. The wind rushes by and I feel my ears sting like razor blades and I feel my tongue thick like black ice. The snow keeps coming and I feel what's coming next as the truck abruptly stops. Something in the pit of my stomach yells, "Don't touch and don't speak and don't go against what your closest acquaintances believe." I listen every time. First her eyes close like the stars fading into nothing as the sun comes up and I know I should scream, "Stop! Let her go, let her go. It was me!" But I cannot so I sit and I listen to the crunching of the snow under their heavy boots and the deep breaths they take as they lift her up out of the truck's bed and trudge through the snow. It looks like a wonderland, but the blood looks like a nightmare, falling to the earth in a trail of magenta droplets, slowly being absorbed.

"Ang!" Reese yells through the whirls of the wind to me. "We need help. Grab my hammer from the back seat," he says almost politely. He's finishing the job and I'm a part of it. I will my eyes to look the other way, opening the door to rummage through empty beer bottles and things thrown unnoticed to the floorboard. I grasp the hammer in my hands, my fingertips freezing from the bite of the ice that runs through my bloodstream. I take slow steps to them, watching the trail lead to a non-virtuous doing. I know my grandmother would be ashamed of what her darling has become. I push the thought as far away as it will go. This is my job; it's my duty.

Her body goes slack as the hammer comes down in seconds, blood sputtering up from her fractured skull. It's wrong, it's wrong, it's wrong, I tell myself. Her chest quits rising, her nerves stop quivering; she's gone. Her hair whips by the pressure of the wind. Her lips run blue and I feel dread wash over me like tidal waves. But this is not me and I do not feel remorse. Reese places the hammer in her hand, just so. He moves her, making it look like a fall to the ground and purposeful crash to the head.

Reese, with his hair dark as night and eyes beady as beacons, turns his back to me. Saul, with an olive complexion and a voice husky, lacking any emotion, pulls a lighter and pack from his coat pocket, gloves dangling from his fingers. I stand to the side watching them, fuming at the killing of a girl too young to be found lifeless in the woods. My thoughts scream like psychiatric patients, furious at being caged.

Although I was an accomplice in the first of many deaths to come to a town so discreet, I was more than willing to do it. If it only had been to kill a living, breathing human being I would've never obliged. But I mean business. And in saying that I say I don't joke when I'm played off as a fool, putting in more coins only to have them stolen and just barely missing the jackpot as sirens blare around me. Saul takes a drag from his cigarette and I watch the smoke swirl in the air, soon fading into nothing. Snow dots their coats and I notice blood on the collar of Reese's coat, but I seal my lips like a lock and I remain silent. He's done his 'job' dutifully, willingly. And so he'll pay the consequences. But I'll pay the condolences.

The girl's body lay on the ground, snow continuing to fall as if knowing their part in the plan must be done as well. The sun is setting soon, the trees revealing straight leg shadows casted to the ground omnisciently. Even trees can see the lies and the trickery playing into the words sparsely heard by the wind.

My fault, my fault, my fault, I scream at myself. Only in my head can I speak outright. I think of Joel, heedless of my outings with groups unbeknownst in town apart from the bars. Pauvre l'homme. He'll haplessly never see the kind of person I am and I think it may be for the best.