Chapter 14: Guilt

The side effects of murder are not easy to get rid of.

Tyler.

 

 

That moment when you truly,

 

experience death.

                          Not even in the literal sense.

Witnessing death,

causing death,

each as scarring as

the other.

No one is born a murderer,

It’s normally the anger

built up for so long that it

causes mental damage

to the once calm soul.

I was sure I wasn’t born

a murderer.

Not even a haphazard

murderer.

But as I dragged the

now lifeless

body from the

abandoned building,

I truly felt like a

murderer.

We stashed it behind

a crowd of old

dumpsters, the body

broken and bent.

Stuffed in an old used

garbage bag.

I felt like more than a

murderer.

 I felt like a soulless

monster.

 

 


 

I wasn’t surprised to find that all our friends had fled,

 

I was never angry about it.

Not even after the fact.
Emily, Jeremy and Jacob
helped me partly recuperate

 

before we decided what to do.

Abigail sat by the base of a tree,
no doubt crying. Even though I had
to play the role of big brother, deep

 

down inside I violently hoped and prayed

that she was crying because she knew it
was her fault. None of our other friends
knew I had killed this stranger, but it wasn’t

 

hard to put two and two together once the

newscasts started. Emily returned with
some old cleaning supplies and Jacob
had turned on the main water line for

 

the old place. Jeremy watched from nearby

as we cleaned the blood stain, (or what we
could of it), off the bottom of the cement pool.
His eyes held shock and terror. Reality didn’t

 

hit the rest of us like it did for him until days

later. We all went home, put on our pajamas,
washed the shame off our hands and went to
bed. I slept fine, that’s when I knew I was a

 

murderer.

 


 

But I wasn’t so fine the next morning

 

We had come in so late that mum and dad were already sleeping soundly in bed. The next day the wave of questions hit and threatened to knock us both over. I did most of the talking. "Were you guys together last night?" My dad took a sip of his coffee, looking uninterested in my mother’s words. "Well, not at the beginning. But Jeremy and I picked Abigail up from her friends and he dropped us both here." My mother looked at us as though world hunger had been cured. "Aw! You did something for your sister, how sweet!" This earned a shaky, nervous laugh from Abigail and I. She didn’t ask me for anything for a while, didn’t even really talk to me. We exchanged weary looks when we passed each other in the house, or across from the dinner table. I was haunted by the mans face. It followed me everywhere, literally. His face was plastered to TV’s, newspapers, flyers, everywhere. I couldn’t look at the faces though, the faces of his children, wife and disturbed family members. I’d only heard their voices, troubled and panicked. All they wanted was their loved one home and safe. I learned his name was Jonathon Miller, husband and father of 2 teenage daughters along with a 15 year old son. None of his children attended my or my sisters' school, they lived towards the outskirts of town. Their kids were enrolled in private schools. He would go back to the old community center to clean up every night, the place was formally owned by his grandfather. Andrew Miller, the creator of the place. Great. So I had killed ‘Saint Andrews’ finest, his grandson. Not to make matters worse or anything. They hadn’t found the body and I was sure they weren’t jumping to the conclusion of a group of teenagers murdering him. Accidentally, I might add. "It’s so tragic. People don’t go missing in a town like this unless they were killed." My dad’s words sent a shiver down my spine as we sat at the table, eating an anything but peaceful breakfast. Everything was unmerciful for me lately. I was on edge, as uneasy as I’d ever been. Every accusation about anything, 'Tyler! Look at this please,’ ‘Tyler how could you’ I’d instantly makeup an apology in my mind, knowing anything I had to say would be unacceptable. But as always, they were the little things, grades slipping, laundry not done. I was slowly but surely undergoing serious demolition inside my head.