Just before her heart stops, I take my thumb and smudge the red plasma on her lips. Like it is L’Oréal’s best. Because she’s worth it.
And what do you know, I really am her mortician.
Then she is dead.
I am let down at this point, especially as I wave my free hand over her open, sightless eyes.
This has been fun, I think.
And now, I have a problem.
Dismounting her, I back up to consider the scene, comparing it with things I’ve seen in the movies or murders that have been covered by my mom’s magazines. I imagine a grainy black-and-white reproduction of what I’m looking at on the front page of the Greensboro Gazette. I hope they get the scoop. The killing happened in their town, after all, so if there’s going to be a jump on this gruesome mess, they should have it over the national news outlets.
While I’m marshaling my plausible deniability options, I kneel down, put the knife aside on the dirt, and rinse my hands in the rushing water. I check out my black clothes and am relieved that they’re not that badly marked up with blood. With any luck, I can get upstairs without running into anybody—
Shit. My face. I’ll bet I have some blood on it. I got really close out of necessity, and also because I wanted to feel the pain I was inflicting. This is personal, this killing. It is about Greta.
Strots was right about that.
I fish around in the pockets of my coat and take out a washcloth that I suddenly remember putting in there. I planned this really well. I get the small square of terry cloth wet and I scrub my face and neck. Then I rinse and repeat until there is no more pink on the towel. I wring it out and I put the thing back in my pocket though it is damp.
I keep the knife. I put it in my other pocket.
It is my trophy. It is my blue ribbon prize. I’ve never had an earned award before so you can bet your ass I’m not leaving it out here. Besides, it has my fingerprints all over the handle.
I look a little ways upstream, to a bottleneck in the river flow that has been formed by an impaction of branches, muck, and leaves. I make my way over there and brace myself on a knobby rock above the tangle. Kicking at Mother Nature’s dam, I do not care that I am splashed. Kick. Kick. Kick—
The tangle breaks apart and water courses through, a relative tsunami that swamps my boots.
The surge is strong enough to ride up and over the surface of the big rock Greta is lying on, the rush washing under her body. I scramble out of the way, but make sure I’m still in the river itself so my treads leave no trace. I watch over the cleansing, my hands on my hips, ready to scold the water if it doesn’t work hard enough to get rid of pesky evidence like any foot-or handprints I may have left.
The stream performs its duty well. The big boulder is washed free of blood and dirt, and yet the body doesn’t move. The hair does, though. It’s as if Greta is standing in a breeze, her long blond locks flowing for the last time.
It is upon this image that my awareness gradually retracts from the past and grounds me in the present.
I am still in the boiler room, behind the furnace, pills in my hand, soda at the ready, tears rolling down my face.
Even if my illness was in charge, my hand gripped that knife. My arm did the stabbing. I am guilty, complicit in a way a court is going to need Dr. Warten to explain to a jury.
“I’m sorry, Greta,” I choked out. “Oh, God… Mom, I’m sorry.”
There is a temptation to fall into hysteria, but I must resist while I have autonomy. If my illness has become self-aware, the singularity has to be intercepted. Suicide has never been more of an imperative, and I curl my hand around the pills, ready to bring them to my mouth—
A vision of me appears before me.
She is sitting against the closed door in the exact same position I’m in, her legs splayed out, her torso at a right angle, her black clothes like she is wrapped in the shadows she came out of. She has no aspirin in her palm and no orange soda with her, and that is how I know she is other than me. This is not a mirror image.
This is my illness.
She meets my eyes steadily, but why wouldn’t she. She is in control.
“You shouldn’t have done that,” I tell her. “I know why you did, but it was wrong.”
She shakes her head at me.
“You know I have to end this, right.” As I hold up the aspirin, I’m aware that this is a new low for me, a new high for my disease. I’ve never actually talked to what ails me before. “You crossed a line.”
She shakes her head again. And I interpret it to mean that she’s going to stop me from committing suicide.
This gives me desperate strength.
“I’ll do it right now,” I say. “Goddamn it, right fucking now.”
I mean to put the whole handful of aspirin in my mouth, but I fumble with the pills, dropping most of them onto the front of my shirt. Cursing, I pour more out into my hand as the bitter taste slices into my tongue.
When I look back up, she’s gone from the dim interior, and I’m suddenly terrified. Dropping the bottle, I scramble to my feet and look all around the boiler room. I can’t see well enough. On shaky legs, I fumble over to where my illness was sitting and slap a hand around the wall by the door, searching for the light switch. When I find it, I turn on the ceiling fixture and rear back from the source of illumination like a vampire, shielding my eyes with the crook of my elbow.
As things adjust, I drop my arm. There’s nothing in the utility space but a floor mop in a dry orange bucket, a pop-up caution flag, a stack of metal chairs, and the old boiler.
I walk around the room, aspirin dropping off my shirt and bouncing on the floor, happy little pills, skipping over the grungy concrete like it’s someone’s birthday party.
Boy, did they not get the memo.
I pace for a while in the small, nothing-revealed space. Then I stop in the center of it and look at the bottle of aspirin that is back where I started, lying knocked over on the floor by the soda that rolled off my lap. There are still plenty in there to do the job. But there are also the ones I’ve dropped, and if I’m imminently going to die, why do I care if I put dirt in my mouth?
I think of Strots and tell myself she will understand. When it all comes out, she’ll get why I killed myself and be okay with it. I picture her, clear as day, saying that she isn’t afraid of anyone and she’ll make sure I am safe.
We did not know at the time that I am perfectly safe because I am the threat.
It’s everyone else who needs to worry. My monster has found a way out of its cage, and all I have to do is think of how I stared down at Greta’s body in satisfaction and how I had to keep the knife as a trophy, to know that I have to take care of this.
My illness has a new game, and it makes Greta’s version of dominoes look like child’s play.
I go back over to the aspirin bottle and pick it up. I find it funny that I chose the generic, not the Bayer, to save money. As if being frugal matters after you’re dead?
I lick my lips and grimace at the taste that’s already in my mouth. It’s going to get worse. Thank God for the Orange Crush.
Tilting the aspirin bottle over my palm, I…
Change my mind.
“No!” I shout as I fling the stuff away.
As the CVS-branded container ricochets off the wall, pills spool out like it’s the evacuation of a burning building. The bottle lands inside the mop’s bucket, the hollow ringing sound almost as loud as my voice, the hole in one the kind of score I couldn’t have made if I’d aimed for the thing.