Crime Time

         The rain slammed onto the windshield like bullets as my mother drove me home. Thunder ruptured the eerie silence. The oncoming car swerved back and forth trying to get itself under control. A shrieking sound filled the air and seemed to be coming closer with every passing second. Effort was made to try to get the car under control, but everything attempted was useless. The road to destruction had already been paved...
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         Willow brushed her thick black gangly hair and couldn't stop thinking about the traumatic event. She never let the memory progress to the worst part. She knew what she had to do. She slipped on her oversized sweatshirt and clunky military boots. She was determined and no one, no thing, nothing was going to get in the way of what needed to be done. She watched herself transform as she applied black make-up to her eyes and lids, making it the darkest shade she could. 
         She walked out to her black, low-riding car that sat in the otherwise desolate driveway. She stepped in and turned the key in the ignition with angry force. She was infuriated. Yet still, she knew what she had to do. The radio blared Pain by Three Days Grace and she began to sing along, her voice gravelly and rough. “Pain, without love, pain. I can’t get enough, pain...” She pressed her foot to the gas and began to drive the short way to his house. The soft hum of the motor seemed to calm her nerves but not her anger. Then she saw it. The house. His house. Her singing stopped abruptly as she grew angrier still. She heard the screech, the pain, the rain smashing against the car, everything streamed back in vivid color.
         She got out of the car. It was dark but the lights and sounds of big city of Nashville were never ending in the dreary night. She knew he lived alone. She  stalked up the stairs that led up to his front door and knocked.  She could hear his sluggish walk down the stairway and she prepared herself. She knew what she had to do.
         The screeching of the brakes, the goliath rain pounding against the road, the car, the bone-breaking sound of the thunder raced through her head more vividly, clearer than ever before.
         The door handle was slowly turning. He was coming. Willow wasn’t scared. She knew what she had to do. The door creaked open and Willow leaped forward and slapped a hand over the fighting victims mouth. She struggled to pin the man against the wall few feet behind him.  With her other hand, she reached into her back pocket to pull out a small but sturdy handgun. Willow jammed the gun to the the side of the victim’s head.
         “Damien, my dear, we meet again.”
         She could hear the screeching as if it were again that night. She could hear the pounding thunder and feel the frigid rain on her pale skin. Damien kicked Willow in the shin forcing her to come back into the reality of the moment.
         “Don’t worry, this will be quick Damien. It’s really a shame you’re so young and handsome. Such a waste of a good man.”
         “Who are you? Why are you trying to kill me? What did I do?!” Damien managed to croak out through the cracks in the hand covering his mouth.
         Willow placed her finger on the trigger of the small, loaded gun. Damien tensed and struggled in the arms of Willow but escaping was impossible. He thrust his free arm into Willow’s stomach. She lapsed slightly and her hand slipped from his mouth to tend to her hurting stomach. She kept his body pressed to him so he couldn’t escape and when her stomach recovered she placed her hand against his mouth once again.
         The screech, the rain, thunder, lighting striking the soaked ground. Willow saw the car whip towards her mother’s side and smash into it with a crunch and crash. She saw her mother fly through the cracked windshield and land on the wet gravel. “Oh my god,” Willow thought. Her mother lay lifeless as Willow rushed out of the car to help her. She ignored the cuts in her side where crushed metal had sliced her skin. “Why didn’t I take the wheel and veer us away?” Willow thought, feeling blame for the whole situation. She saw the lights, the flashing lights of the ambulance cab. Then, she saw Damien trying to apologize to her which just filled her with  anger. That was all she needed to see, to know, to know exactly what she had to do.
         “You killed my mother!” Willow shouted at Damien’s silent, terrified face, “Killed her!” Sobbing tears began rushing down Willow’s blank but angry face. The man in front of her had unintentionally murdered her best friend, her companion. It didn’t matter to Willow that the incident was unintentional, he had still committed it. She wanted Damien to have the same fate as her mother had. She placed her frail pointer finger on the seemingly large trigger and began to apply pressure hesitantly. “I don’t want to see you anymore. Never. Forever you will be gone.”
         “Please, don’t kill me! I’ll do anything!” Damien screamed at Willow.
         Ignoring his comment, Willow pressed firmly and heard the bullet rush through the barrel of the gun. She moved the barrel of the gun to his burly chest and once again felt the recoil of the bullet that rushed into the body of the young man.
         He fell lifeless to the ground. She knew she wasn’t done with Damien. Not yet. He was still very much intact, while her mother had been
forcefully broken, shattered, cut-up and dead.
         Willow swung open the front door of his house and exited with the tall, heavy man dragging behind her as she pulled him by his arms. Willow threw the tall man into her back seat and drove off towards her house. When she reached the house, she took Damien’s limp arms and began to once again drag him towards the house. She entered her house and used every muscle in her body to haul the man up the stairs and to her bedroom. Stopping periodically to catch her breath and rest her tired arms.
         The blood colored walls and tiny window near the ceiling of the her room protected her neighbors eyes from what she was about to do. She grabbed the large butcher knife off of her bed stand and raised it above Damien’s body. She lined the knife up above his neck and swung it downward, squirting a red liquid across the room. It oozed out from the slice in the neck of the horrid man. She once again swung downward on the exact spot she had before, hearing a sharp snap and the bone broke and the head rolled to the side. She moved the knife over his legs and flung it into his fleshy thighs. She grabbed a serrated knife from the bed stand and began to saw at the thick bone, putting all the pressure she could to get through it. She sawed back and forth listening to the crunching and grinding sounds of the bone as she worked. Finally, it broke through and she sawed through the fleshy part of the leg, once again squirting the liquid everywhere. Then the arms.
         The red flew and colored the white ceiling and oatmeal colored rug. She could see the blood being absorbed by the comforter on her bed. Pressure onto the bed spread provided pools of the thick crimson liquid. The liquid gathered together and dripped onto the floor gathering in a puddle. Willow rushed downstairs to get two large garbage bags. She made sure they were black, to hide any staining the blood would make. She threw the legs into one bag and the arms and head into the second. She tied the tops of the bags as tightly as she could, making sure there was no opening. Willow knew what she had to do now next.
          She threw the bag of parts into the trunk of her car and drove off into the night. It would only be an hour drive to get to Mammoth Cave. There she could quickly dispose of the body and forget the incident, and her dirty deed. She thought she could hear the dead man’s beating heart pounding out of his cold body, but she knew she must be hallucinating. He was dead. He could not possibly have a beating heart. She heard a hesitant breathing and thought it was his, but realized it was her own. Only ten more minutes and this awful person would be disposed of and she would never have to worry about his haunting incident that killed her mother.
         Finally, she saw the entrance. Mammoth Cave National Park. Perfect. She pulled into the dirt driveway and veered off the road into a shady patch of forest to park the car. She yanked each bag of parts out of her trunk and dragged them one by one to the entrance of the cave. On her way back from the car with her shovel, she saw a park ranger standing over the bags and examining them. She tiptoed closer to the ranger, lifted the shovel over her head and swung it at the man hitting him in the head. The man fell to the ground but he wasn’t dead. Not yet anyways. Willow began beating him again and again with the shovel until she was sure that he was not alive. She hadn’t intended to kill him, but after the first hit, she couldn’t stop herself. It was as if she enjoyed the act of killing, of murdering innocents. She dragged the dead man to the side of the cave and left him in the cold for someone else to find. She had work she needed to do.
          She traveled on into the cave until she reached a place hidden by the entrance light, a mysterious place. It was perfect for him. She began to hollow out the floor of the cave. Inch by inch, foot by foot, she kept on shoveling. The hole in the cave floor was about five feet deep now. “Good enough,” thought Willow and she stuffed the bags into the dug out. Willow shoveled the moist dirt back into the empty space of the hole and slammed it with the back of the shovel to pack it down.
         The deed was done. Willow slowly walked out of the cave, the shovel slung over her shoulder. She knew her time as a free woman was limited. She knew the police would come soon. Truth was, hated herself for becoming a murderer but the sweet act of doing it felt good to her. In the moment she was brought a feeling she had never experienced before, and she loved it.  Her job was done, she had gotten revenge. Damien would face the future that her mother faced and that was what she wanted. She knew her mother would have been satisfied with her work.  So, with a smile on her dirt-covered face, she drove off into the midnight skylight.