~1~
Days fly by like rain falls down. It seemed like a long time ago when the sun shone but after the sun sets the nightmares begin and it all happens again only a few hours ago, a few minutes ago, a few seconds ago. The smell of her, the scent of her, her laughing smile, then her eyes filled with terror, her pleadings muffled by the tape across her mouth, then the fury of jealousy and revenge, until all that was left was the smell of her rotting corpse.
The smells come alive at night and taunt him, laugh at him- stupid boy, rapist, killer. Smell this! The images arrive next, as real as her standing here or sitting there, or lying tied to his bed and then her eyes dead open and following him everywhere. Some nights long after the moon would rise her murdered body rises up from beneath him on the bed and she flies around the room shrieking "Dead, Deader, Deadest, Dead, Deader, Deadest" until he screams at her to stop and shoots bullets into empty walls. The room returns to normal in silent witness to his guilt, he believes.
"Am I awake? Am I asleep? " he asks himself over and over. Reality sets with the sun and there is nothing he can do but witness this cruel hallucination over again. He squeezes his eyes shut hard. The vision behind them runs like a horror movie marathon on a million projectors. It is dark and the movie lights flicker again...
His shirt is worn thin, with small holes fraying around the bottom seam and soaked in sweat and blood. It is glued to his thin frame like the duct tape that binds her ankles and wrists. She is much heavier dead than alive. When she was alive, he bounced her up and down on his lap like a little doll. Now he could barely get her tarp-wrapped, lifeless body on the back of his ATV. He drives slow, keeping the 4-wheeler geared down in second, until he reaches the far side of Fletcher's pond. Again he removes her body from the vehicle and carries it, half drags her to an old rowboat he sometimes uses for fishing.
He carefully places his dead lover in the boat and begins row to the center of the pond. She is talking to him through the duct taped mouth, through the tarp, through her death and beyond, she is taunting him. "I will come back for you, take you with me. You killed me. You murderer. See you in hell, bastard."
He dumps her body overboard and as she sinks to the bottom she is singing, "Babe, I got you babe."
