Life Taken

Warning: Graphic Nature and Language - PG 13 at best, probably R.

I am subtly aware that I am lying on the floor and the sun is fully up, but I just want to lie here. There’s a chill dampness gnawing at me, I try to ignore it. There’s an ache in my shoulder and pounding in my head, they compel me to roll onto my back. There’s a window with old, worn out blinds letting in light, it makes me clench my eyes. I take a deep breath and end up swallowing hard to keep from vomiting. I let out the breath slowly, so slowly, afraid what my stomach might let out with it. I don’t want to open my eyes, so I pull the blanket up over my head. At least I have a blanket.

Where am I? What happened last night? I seem to be okay, outside of feeling like garbage left in the summer sun for a week. Though, I think I might actually smell worse than that would.

Why am I wet? I don’t have any pants on, only damp underwear. Where the hell are my pants? Did I piss myself?

Despite my aches and desire to just lay here till I feel better, I start to sit up. My right shoulder is sore and stiff, but I use my right hand to shield my eyes; I need the left to hold myself up. I peek through my hand to see it’s a small room with wood paneling all around, completely empty, save my wretched soul lying on its floor. The carpet I’m sleeping on must be 50 years old, some worn out green color.

Damn it, I have no idea where I am!

I try to recall the previous night, but there is nothing there. I remember going out to the bar to celebrate my buddy’s promotion in the evening, but nothing after that.

He must be here somewhere; after all, someone covered me up and took off my pants. God, I hope it was him.

I lurch forward until I’m on all fours and crawl to the door. Standing seems like it could be complicated right now. It’s only five feet away, but I have to pause before I get there and try not to puke. Determining where the bathroom is, seems like a great idea at this point.

I reach for an old brass knob and pull the wood panel door open.

“Rick, you here?” I call to the hallway that I find. There is no answer, no sound.

Fortunately, I do see the bathroom down the hall to the right, the sink just visible in the doorway. There’s a brown sectional out of the hallway and maybe a bedroom down at the other end of it, things at least look a little cleaner out here.

I use the doorknob to get to my feet and stagger down to the bathroom. This extra moving makes me even more nauseous, but I manage to hold my puke back a few seconds till I reach the toilet. Thankfully, the seat is up. Once I’m done, mainly dry heaving, I sit on the edge of the tub.

Before I can decide if it is safe to leave the close proximity of the toilet, I hear tires rolling over dirt, coming closer. At this point, I am not too concerned about anything. I assume it’s Rick or someone who has been taking care of me. They could have done anything they wanted to me by now.

I hear one car door open and shut. Despite being unafraid, I am nervously alert, my brain working overtime to figure out what it missed and what the current situation is. It isn’t the first time I’ve woken up with a hangover and a brief lapse in memory, but never somewhere I didn’t recognize before.

A door opens and shuts to this... place. I think it must be a trailer. I hear things being set down on what I assume is the counter.

“Rick, is that you?” I call out.

“Yeah. You’re awake, finally?” Rick’s familiar voice calls down the hall.

I manage to get up and walk down the hall to the couch.

“Hey, buddy! You doin’ alright?” Rick says when he sees me. The kitchen was open to the living area, separated only by a counter. “I ran to get us some food. It got to be after noon, and I was starving. Sorry I wasn’t here when you woke up.”

“That’s alright,” I said as I sat down. “Yeah, I kinda feel like shit, but… What the hell happened last night, anyhow? I don’t remember anything.”

“Yeah... You were in rough shape last night. Sorry about throwing you on the floor in there, but you were puking all over yourself. You don’t remember anything at all?” Rick asks, he swallows hard.

“No, nothing after we got to the bar, basically. I kinda remember ordering our first round, but that’s it.”

“Shit…” He mumbles, shaking his head.

“What? What happened? And where are we?” I can feel my nausea returning.

“I know this is going to be hard to hear, but you have to stay calm.”

“Stay calm? Shit, I’m always calm. What the hell happened?” I half yelled at him, not having the energy for the full effort.

“You got super drunk last night. We started doing shots, and you just wanted to keep going, another one and another one.”

“No shit, I gather that from the hangover. Get to the point. What happened?” I asked.

“Alright,” Rick said, pausing to rub his face. “You remember we were going out to celebrate my promotion?”

“Yeah,” I said, nodding and feeling frustrated.

“I didn’t tell you right away, but I didn’t get promoted. I got fired. That’s when you decided we should get drunk. Then, of all things, my boss shows up. I should never have pointed her out. When you saw her, you got pissed off. We were already wasted, and you went to confront her. I tried to stop you, but you talked to her, and she said some things that made you furious. I apologized and got you away, back to the bar.”

“Okay, so your boss is a bitch. What the hell did you get fired for?”

Rick acted like he had something stuck in his throat. He stuttered and stammered before finally saying, “I thought I was doin’ good, but I had missed some work. I guess she was tired of it.”

“What? Christ, Rick! I thought you were getting your shit together. So, what else happened? And, where are we? And, why are we someplace random?” My head was still pounding and the fact that Rick wouldn’t just get to the point was making it worse.

“Alright, relax. You seemed to calm down after we went back to the bar, I thought you were going to the restroom. I look over toward the restrooms a few seconds later, and you’ve got her pinned up against the wall with both hands around her neck.”

“No, I wouldn’t do that. I don’t remember any of that. Why would I grab her?”

“I don’t know what you were thinking. I ran over, it was like no one else saw you, by the time I got there and got you to let go, she was limp. Someone noticed finally when she went to the ground. I wasn’t sure if she was going to be okay, but I knew we needed to get out of there. I grabbed you under the arms and started pulling you out. A woman screamed about stopping us, but, in the confusion, I got you to run with me until we were clear.”

I couldn’t believe what I was hearing. This couldn’t be happening. I wouldn’t do that. I sat down on the couch and stared at the wall across from me.

Rick continued, “I took you back to my place. You were starting to black out. I checked the police radio on the computer to see what happened to her. I couldn’t believe it, but you killed her.”

I sat up and glared at him. “No! Stop it, Rick. Stop fucking with me. This is bullshit. Where are we?”

“This is no joke, I’m telling you the truth. Just listen for a second.”

I put my face in my hands and tried to think. I started to dry heave a few times, but there was nothing in there anyhow. I sat there motionless, listening.

“I knew you were in trouble, and I was going to be in trouble for helping you. I decided, if we wanted any chance to continue our lives, we had to get out of the country. I packed what I could, got you in the car, and took off. I don’t think anyone else at the bar really knew who we were. The bartender knew our first names, but all the police seemed to have on us was our description. There was an APB out, so I avoided highways till we got to the border. You were completely blacked out, so I had to slip the guard a hundred not to wake you up, prick wouldn’t take a twenty. He knew there was no waking you up.”

“So we’re outlaws,” I said mockingly. “Just two escaped murderers on the run. No big deal. And, we’re somewhere in Mexico?”

“Don’t be a dick,” Rick said. “I risked everything to get you down here. I could face life in prison for something like this.”

We went back and forth like this for at least another hour, sorting out the details of the night. It ended with us in a hunting shack in the shadow of some mountains in Mexico. A friend of Rick’s Dad owned it apparently.

I was in shock. This was entirely unbelievable to me. I had never really hurt anyone, let alone a woman. It disturbed me that I couldn’t remember any of it, even what she looked like. Could I have killed someone? I didn’t even remember getting drunk. How could this be?

Rick went about getting something to eat. Despite my stomach’s emptiness, I had no appetite.

I lied on the couch, wishing I would just die. Rick sat on the other side. There was satellite TV, so he was flipping between channels looking for any news he could find about us.

Eventually, my head started to clear a little and thoughts of my normal life returned. “I need to call my girlfriend and let her know I’m okay. I was supposed to meet her for brunch today.”

“I had to ditch our phones so they couldn’t track us,” Rick said.

“I could still call her, there has to be a phone here.”

“No, there’s not. And if you try to contact anyone close to us, they’re going to find us. I put my ass on the line for you here, don’t ruin it already. We were lucky to get out of the country at all.”

We sat around the rest of the day. I ate and drank eventually, trying to get my body to recover. Rick tried to talk to me a few times, but I didn’t want to hear him. I fell asleep before dark.

I woke in the middle of the night with thoughts swirling, I was panicked. I couldn’t have killed someone, I didn’t want to hurt anyone. I had bits and pieces of memory now, I could kind of remember being in the car and feeling like crap. I fought with my memories for a while but eventually fell back asleep.

The next day, I started realizing I didn’t feel like I had a regular hangover. I felt like my mind was hazy still. My thoughts should be clear by now, even if my body felt like crap. What the hell had really happened?

Rick went to the store again, he said the closest place was about a half hour away. We were literally in the middle of nowhere.

I still felt like I was in a haze, but things were starting to come together. The thing about Rick was, he had always been a little unstable. He had bouts of severe depression and lost job after job for not showing up. I had thought he was getting better with some new meds, but if he had missed work and gotten fired again, maybe he was struggling. Perhaps this was something he had done to get away. He had always wanted to just run away and forget his responsibilities. Maybe nothing happened, maybe Rick killed someone. Either way, I was feeling pretty sure this was Rick’s fault. He had pulled me in, not saved me.

I decided I was going to have to confront Rick. If he couldn’t show me some piece of news or evidence, then I was headed back to civilization. We had been friends since childhood, but I wasn’t giving up my life for him.

I looked around the kitchen while he was gone and found what I was looking for, the cutlery. I figured if this was a hunting shack, there had to be some decent knives around; I was right. A pointed ten-inch blade should be sufficient to show him I mean business.

I paced the kitchen for a while, handling the knife, thinking about how this could go. I didn’t want to hurt Rick, I just wanted to get out of here. I decided to sit on the couch and stuff the knife between the cushions; hidden but handy if I needed it.

Shortly, I heard Rick’s SUV pulling in. This was it, I was going to try to be subtle and get him to admit to dragging me into this. But, if things go wrong. I reached down and felt the handle of the knife. My hair was standing on end, I had to calm down.

Rick came in and gave me a thin smile. “Feeling better?” he asked.

“Yeah... Yeah, I actually think my head is starting to clear,” I say.

“Good. I’m glad. We need to get some things figured out,” he said with his back to me, putting a bag of chips in the cupboard.

“Rick?”

“Yeah,” he stopped and focused on me from across the counter.

“You lied to me about getting fired and got me to come with you to the bar.”

“Uhh, yeah. Sorry about that. I just wanted to get out and relax.”

“But we didn’t relax. We apparently got shitface drunk. So drunk that I blacked out and have been hungover for like two days?”

“Yeah, you were tossing those shots back one after another.”

“You were drinking with me, though?”

“Sure, we were both drinking. I was doing some shots.”

“Rick, there is no way I would be doing shots without making you go shot for shot with me. Come on, man, this doesn’t even feel like a hangover. What aren’t you telling me?”

Rick’s face went blank, he hesitated and stammered. “I… I didn’t know what to do. You were so belligerent. You were going to get us arrested before we got out of town, let alone the country.”

“So you drugged me, didn’t you? What the hell did you give me?”

“Damn it. This isn’t the way it seems, I swear. I did give you a shot of my anxiety medication, but I didn’t think it was going to have such an effect on you. It was supposed to make you more pliant not blackout, but you’re not supposed to take it with alcohol.”

I knew it. He drugged me and brought me down here with him to run away from his shitty life. “No one got killed, did they?” I ask.

He responded quickly this time. “I swear, I may have left out some details, but you killed her. I did this to protect us, to protect you.”

“So, you kidnapped me?”

“No, I was just trying to help you.”

“Right, I’m a murderer, and you’re a kidnapper, slash accessory to murder. You’ve got to be kidding me. That’s not even believable. I’m going back.” I stood up from the couch.

It isn’t possible, there is no way I killed anyone. He must have drugged me while we were at the bar, that’s why I can’t remember being there hardly.

“You can’t,” he implored. “Dammit, you’re acting just like last night.”

“Rick, I’m taking your car and going home.”

“You’re going to get caught and put in jail for the rest of your life. They’ll know I’m down here and I’ll never make it. I can’t let you do this.”

“No, I’m leaving. You’ve lied to me more than once already. I’m sorry, buddy, but I can’t trust you at this point. You can either come with me or stay here, but I’m going.”

“I’m sorry I lied to you, but we can’t go back. You killed her.”

“I’m not a killer, stop telling me that. I didn’t do that. I wouldn’t do that. I’m leaving, I’m going home to find out the truth.”

“I can’t let you do that,” he said through gritted teeth.

“How are you going to stop me?” I asked, knowing the knife was still hidden within reach.

“The same way I got you here,” he said as he pulled out a needle and syringe from his pants pocket.

“I knew it,” I bent down, reaching into the couch cushions.

Rick lunged at me with the syringe as I was turned, “You killed her,” he spewed as he closed.

I felt a sharp pain in my right shoulder.

Rick didn’t see the knife coming. I plunged the blade deep in his stomach. It went in smoothly, as if I had stabbed a ripe watermelon.

Just as the shock of stabbing my best friend was hitting me, I felt the burn in my shoulder.

Rick fell back and down to the floor, he was moaning, screaming, yelling something at me, but I was oblivious.

I looked at my shoulder. Rick had pushed the plunger on the needle before falling down. I stared at it, still stuck in my shoulder. I pulled the needle out.

I looked at Rick on the floor, flat on his back and holding his stomach.

Rage began to roll through me. How could he do this to me? How could he try to steal my life? For a moment, I hated my best friend.

I jumped on him, knife still in hand. “I’m not a killer! I’m not a killer! Not a killer!” I scream at him as I stab him, over, and over, and over again.

Rick was motionless, blood pouring from his chest and stomach.

As my rage subsided, I lie back, and grief filled the void that it left. I dropped the knife and stared at the ceiling. What have I done? Tears well in my eyes. I feel light-headed. Then, numbness, as darkness overwhelms me.

I am subtly aware that I am lying on the floor and the sun is fully up, but I just want to lie here. There’s a chill dampness gnawing at me, I try to ignore it. There’s an ache in my shoulder and pounding in my head, they compel me to roll onto my back. There’s a window with old, worn out blinds letting in light, it makes me clench my eyes. I take a deep breath and end up swallowing hard to keep from vomiting. I let out the breath slowly, so slowly, afraid what my stomach might let out with it. I don’t want to open my eyes, but I can hear sirens in the distance, coming closer. Sirens? How could there be sirens?