“No!” Melanie screamed and fought against me, stronger than I’d given her credit for. She almost broke free, but I tightened my grip and put a hand on her mouth. She cried, her face a mask of horror. Poor Mel. I felt for her. She’d probably expected this night to go down differently, but how could it? While I felt sorry for her, I hated her too. She was the one who’d put me in this position. She had to go and get pregnant and ruin everything.
Me. A father. In what world did that work? What stupid fantasies had she’d played out in her mind of us like a family? Did she really believe I could straighten up?
I looked down at her with contempt while my dad rambled on. “Nah. What if it doesn’t work? They’ll take you away, put you in prison, and then this bitch can go ahead and bring your child into this world, and we both know the outcome of that story.” He put his can down. “Sorry, Son. I only see one way out of this mess. You’ll have to do it yourself.”
“Do it myself?” The words sounded strange, as if I hadn’t spoken English, but some language I couldn’t understand.
Dad nodded. “Kill her, Son. Strangle her. Easiest way. You could shoot her too, or use a knife. If you slice up her belly, you might just kill the baby, not her.” He paused and tilted his head to the right, lost in thought. “But, then she’d go on whining to the cops and rat you out. We can’t have that. Leave no witnesses, remember what I told you.”
I stared from dad to Melanie and back. Where had he learned all this crap? Did he really want me to kill her?
“Don’t worry, it ain’t that bad.” Dad got up and walked over to me. “I killed a man before, you know. A woman too. Several of them. Would’ve killed your mom too, sooner or later, if I hadn’t dropped dead first. I know how it goes. You remember when you saw me that night, right?”
I knew right away what night he was talking about. The night I’d witnessed him and Leslie shoving a soon-to-be corpse into the car. Then Dad had spoken to me, uttered a sentence or two, and left. I’d crawled into bed, feeling as guilty as if I’d committed the murder myself. I didn’t bother calling the police or anything like that. Thought didn’t even cross my mind. My dad was scum of the Earth, but you don’t rat out family. Not even if they’re monsters.
“Well, then you know it ain’t that bad. Just snap her neck, get it over with. Problem gone. Worries gone.”
I looked down at Melanie. Tried to see her as the girl I loved, or at least, liked. When she laughed, the missing tooth in the back of her mouth showed, which looked cute. Her eyes were the color of the ocean, blue and endless. If I was a poet, I’d be able to describe them better, but I was no poet, so the ocean is what you get. She listened to me whine and complain, she provided me with booze and cigs when I asked, she was a lousy cook but gave it her best shot. I didn’t want to kill her.
“Liking someone has nothing to do with it,” Dad said, crossing his arms. “I killed plenty of people I liked, but you have to wonder what’s best for her in the end. And for you. And for the kid. You want it to grow up and become like you? Like me? Or you want it to die right now while it’s still pure and innocent and doesn’t know anything about pain?”
I didn’t respond. Couldn’t. My mind was blocked, torn between the impossible choices my dad left me. Kill Melanie. Kill my kid. Or let them live. Let my kid live with the knowledge he’d turn out just like me. A monster in disguise, a hidden predator, a low-life, a scumbag, trailer trash.
“Come on, Jake. Be a man and fix your problem. And fix it now, so we can get this over with tonight. Then tomorrow, you can go on like nothing happened. Have a few drinks with the guys.” Dad patted me on the back, something he’d only done once or twice in his entire life. “Find a new girl to keep you entertained. You think you like this one? Pfft.” He waved his hand. “They’re all the same. Useless. Only good for cooking and cleaning, and some sex now and then.”
I bit my lip. The bar was filled with girls like Melanie. Fresh out of high school, looking for an older guy who wanted to show them what "real love" felt like because they all had daddies who never loved them, daddies who were out of the picture, or daddies who just didn’t care. I could pick up a new girl whenever I wanted. I’d stayed with Melanie because it was convenient and I felt some loyalty toward her, but I’d cheated quite a few times, wasn’t ashamed of it, and I'd do it again.
“Do it,” Dad said. “Man up. Save yourself, save her, save your kid the misery of this sorry existence.”
And then, I did it. I let go of Melanie’s mouth, pressed my hands around her neck, and squeezed the life out of her. It happened so fast she didn’t even have time to scream. Her mouth opened up, but no sound came out. Her eyes bulged out of their sockets, large and white. Her pupils dilated. They seemed to beg me for her life, beg me to let her live, and I wished I could, I wished to God that I could just let her go. But that baby, that creature, the kid I never wanted and certainly could never raise, made it impossible.
I saw the moment the life left her eyes. Her pupils shrank, the light fading away, and she grew limp in my arms, collapsing like a ragdoll. I looked at her, my heart racing as fast as a freight train. I’d killed someone.
No, not just someone. Melanie. Sure, she had her flaws, but she’d always been good to me. One of the few people who didn’t judge me, who stood by me, who loved me. And I’d murdered her.
“Good job, Son.” Dad put a hand on my shoulder. Despite him being a ghost, a hallucination, or whatever the fuck he was, his hand felt real and warm. “Now, we’ve got to get rid of her.”
Shocked, I let go of Melanie. Her body slumped to the floor with a sickening thud. I stared at my hands. I’d hugged her with those hands. Held her at night. Granted, I didn’t do it often, but still. Hands I’d just used to put around her neck and choke the life out of her. They seemed treacherous, traitors, murderers. As if it wasn’t me who’d done it, but my hands.
“Now don’t turn into a sobbing fag,” Dad said. “Our job ain’t done yet. We gotta roll her in a blanket or something. You got a buddy who can help you? Someone reliable? Like I had Leslie, remember? You can’t carry a corpse on your own.”
“I killed her.” The words slipped out of my mouth. They sounded too loud, and strangely hollow in the apartment, as if, along with Melanie, life itself had faded from the room.
“Yes, that you did. I’m real proud of you.” Dad nodded at me, like one would at a child who was slow to grasp something. “But now we’ve gotta think this through.”
I dragged myself to the couch and slumped down on it. I brought my hands to my head and started shaking all over. “I killed her. I killed Mel,” I repeated, like some sickening mantra. The words nested in my mind and crawled through my skull like a parasite.
Dad sighed, obviously impatient. He walked toward me, bent until he was at eye-level, grabbed my face, and forced me to look at him.
“Now, you listen to me, Jake. You did what you had to do. You did what every man has to do. You think killing people is bad?” He waved his hand. “It ain’t worse than swatting a fly. You gotta think about yourself first. That’s the way life goes. She was just going to be a hindrance. Remember the baby? Your kid? You couldn’t let that happen, could you?”
I shook my head. I guess I couldn’t, but it still felt wrong, bad. I hated myself for it.
“So listen to what we gonna do now. Call a friend, and pick a reliable one. Don’t pick a sissy. They’ll see what happened and run away crying for their mommy. You tell him something bad happened and ask him to come over. Don’t tell him over the phone.” He pressed my cell into my hands.
“But…”
“If you tell him over the phone, he’ll feel less obligated to come over, or he’ll run screaming to the cops. A lot harder to do that when he's looking you in the face. Besides, if he does turn out to be a sissy, you can get rid of him once you have him inside the house.”
Dad rambled on so fast his words barely had time to sink in before I’d pressed the dial button. A reliable friend,
he’d said. I had a friend or three, but only one I thought was reliable enough to help me cover up murder, and fuck, that seemed like asking a lot. I dialed Bobby.
“Yeah?” he asked in a drunken slur. “What’s up?”
“Hey, Bobby.” I licked my lips; they felt dry as paper. “I’ve got a problem, friend A serious one.”
This seemed to wake him up from whatever pleasant drowsiness he was in. “What do you mean?”
“I need your help. Could you come over to my apartment?” I ruffled a hand through my hair trying to calm down. My heart beat so loud I was sure he could hear it through the phone.
A slight pause. I feared that he might not come, find some stupid excuse, and make me fix this mess on my own. I feared it, and hoped for it at the same time. Because I’d done something horrible, and for God’s sake, I deserved to be punished. I deserved for the cops to bust in and find Melanie’s corpse and drag me to jail. But if they didn’t, if Bobby helped me, if I hid the corpse, then fuck me, they might never find her, and I’d get away unscathed. A murderer, but nobody would ever know. The thought chilled me to the bone.
“Yeah,” Bobby said eventually. “I’ll be right there, mate. You hold on, all right?” I heard him bumping into things.
“Yeah. See you.” I hung up the phone and leaned back in the seat. Dad handed me a beer. I pulled it open and downed half, then lit a cigarette.
“You did good. If your friend’s coming, he’s a real friend. Those are useful.” Dad looked around. “We need to find a shovel.”
“A shovel?”
“Yes, Son, you daft? What do you think we’re going to do, throw her in a dumpster somewhere? No, we’re going to head to the woods, and bury her there.”
“Why the woods? Why not just dump her in the lake?” I asked.
Dad turned toward me so fast I barely registered his movement. He put his hands on both arm rests and glared at me. “Because I said we’re going to dump her in the woods,” he snarled. His face twisted like a dog’s, mouth pulled back and revealing his fangs.
He scared me then, frightened me as much as he had when I was a little kid and he got in my face. Dead or not, the old bugger was still as nasty as ever.
I nodded. “Yes. All right. The woods it is.”
“It’s dark out anyway.” Dad stepped back, his malice vanishing. “Better to do it when it’s dark out. No one will see us. That’s the way I used to do it, son. And you know my way is the best way.”
I nodded again, like a dumb toy that could only move its head in one direction. “We have a shovel in the garage.”
“Okay, sounds good. We’ll grab it on our way down. Now we’re gonna sit back and wait for Bobby.” He sounded calm, like he had himself back under control. “You want a cig? I could use one.”
“Yeah, sure.” He handed me a cigarette, and we sat on the couch, a father and his son, smoking cigarettes like everything was right in the world, and a young woman wasn’t lying dead three feet away from us.
***
To his credit, Bobby only stared at Melanie’s corpse for about ten minutes before he said something. He’d arrived, rung the bell like a mad man, about twenty times before I could open up. Then he’d rushed past me, like he’d expected the freaking cops to be in my house, and then he’d stopped dead in his tracks when his gaze fell on Melanie.
In those ten minutes, I wanted him to say he’d call the cops on me, that I was a no-good son of a bitch who deserved life in prison. But he seemed to process everything slowly, as if he couldn’t quite grasp the situation, or he needed to calm himself before he said anything.
Eventually, he tore his gaze away from Melanie’s corpse, and looked at me. “Why’d ya do it?”
I shrugged. I didn’t want to tell him about the baby, yet I didn’t want to come up with some half-assed story about how she cheated on me or something. It would make it more justifiable to Bobby, sure, but on the other hand, I didn’t want to tarnish Melanie’s memory, even though that sounded perverted. I mean, I’d killed her, how much more damage could I do?
“Okay.” He ran a hand across his face, and took a deep breath. “All right, what’s done is done. She’s dead. What do you want me to do?”
“We need to get rid of her.”
He nodded. “How do you plan on doing that?”
I explained to him the plan about wrapping her up in a carpet, dumping her in the trunk of my car, driving to the woods, and then burying her there. While he stared at me, something in his eyes shifted. I couldn’t place it. Was it fear? Contempt? He had every right to despise me, but why would he fear me? Wasn’t like I was going to kill him too.
“All right,” he said when I finished explaining. “I’ll help you. Your plan sounds good.” He still seemed nervous: all the color had drained from his face and pearls of sweat clung to his forehead. Maybe it was the idea of having to transport a corpse that made him nervous. If that was it, well, it made me nervous too.
We wrapped Melanie in a blanket and carried her down the stairs. For such a plump girl, she was surprisingly light. We bumped into the walls a few times along the way, but none of the neighbors came out to complain. We lived in a nasty neighborhood, so people minded their own business most of the time, but if some old hag poked her nose out and whined about the noise, it could mean the end of us.
Downstairs, we grabbed a spade from the garage and dumped Melanie in the trunk. Then we drove in silence to the woods. Bobby usually babbled, especially when he’d drank a little too much, but today he was so quiet you could hear a pin drop.
“He’s afraid,” Dad said from the backseat. “I don’t think he helped out of loyalty, like good friends do, but because he’s scared he’ll be next.”
I glanced at Dad for a second, and then focused back on the road. Dad was overreacting, of course. I mean, Bobby was shocked, which was only natural. But he’d agreed to help, and he’d come all the way to do so, dammit. And if he sweated like he’d just been walking in the Sahara, and his lip twitched, and he kept glancing at me with narrowed eyes as if he wanted to guess what was going through my mind, that was because he was worried about me for fuck’s sake, not afraid of me.
“We should go deep into the woods,” Bobby said after a while. “Where there are barely any hikers. And we need to dig deep enough so they don’t find her.”
Dad whistled through his teeth. “Look at him. Guy’s seen too many crime shows on TV. Anyway, don’t worry. I know the perfect spot.”
“I know a spot,” I told Bobby.
“So, what did she do? You haven’t told me yet.” Bobby glanced out the window while he asked, distracted, maybe trying to figure out the best way we could get rid of Melanie unnoticed.
I shrugged.
“She cheat on you?”
“No. She wouldn’t do that.”
“What then?”
“I don’t want to talk about it.” Something in my words must’ve scared him off, because he didn’t say a word for the rest of the ride.
Traffic in the evening was scarce in a town as small as ours, and we barely saw any other cars on the road. I turned left on the trail leading to the woods. Even though we’d been silent for a while, the silence seemed to grow more oppressive as I found a parking spot, as if both of us realized what we’d come here to do, and the burden of that guilt weighed us down.
We grabbed Melanie from the trunk and carried her. Our footsteps sounded too loud in the silent environment, too invasive. We didn’t talk, as we trudged along. Two pilgrims sworn by an oath of silence.
Dad led the way. He’d looked like a specter when he first appeared, but now he appeared solid, like a real flesh-and-blood man. He walked with the stride of a commander, leading his troops to war.
“Over here,” he said every now and then, but he didn’t once glance over his shoulder, confident we’d follow him, no matter what.
He brought us to a tree, and pointed at the soil. “Dig there.”
I frowned. The tree resembled a doz
en different trees. We weren’t even that far into the woods yet. They’d expanded the forest by about half its size four years ago to make more room for “nature,” and “the environment,” and all that shit.
“We could go further,” I said, more to Dad than Bobby, but he was the one who reacted.
“I don’t know. Who will go this far in anyway? And if we bury her deep enough…” He paused mid-sentence, a red blush creeping up his cheeks. “I can’t believe we’re doing this.”
“We’re in the middle of the goddamn woods,” Dad said. “Here is far enough. I always buried them here.”
Them? My frown deepened, but I didn’t want to argue with Dad. At least not while we were only halfway through the job, and after he’d gone all freaky on me earlier.
“All right, here it is.” Bobby and I dropped Melanie on the ground, and started digging. Since we only had one shovel, we had to take turns.
We’d dug for about half an hour. The soil was wet because it had been raining like piss all day. “I got to pee,” Bobby said suddenly. “I’ll be right back.”
Like a proper gentleman, he vanished between the trees. If I hadn’t been standing next to a corpse, I would’ve laughed at his strange manners.
I shoveled on, removing layer after layer of dirt until I hit something. The shovel smacked into an object far more solid than dirt. I looked up at Dad, who was staring off in the distance at the row of trees Bobby had disappeared behind.
I lifted the shovel along with another pile of dirt. A face appeared beneath the soil, maggot-infested, half-eaten by worms and half-rotted away, bloated and smelling like rotten fish.
“What the fuck?” I shouted, dropping the shovel. Then I remembered what I was doing, and lowered my voice. “There’s a body here,” I told Dad.
Dad didn’t look surprised. He strolled toward me and glanced into the grave. “Yep. That’s Leslie. What’s left of the old champ anyway.”
Leslie? I always thought Leslie stopped coming around because Dad died, not because Dad had murdered him. Then again, if I thought about it, Leslie had stopped visiting weeks before Dad decided to go to the afterlife. But that wasn’t anything new for Leslie. Sometimes he’d disappear for months to avoid taxes, or an ex-wife, or whatever else bothered him.
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