This short story was inspired by a dream I had. It was a very morbid dream, so I left in many gruesome details. It takes place in an alternate (really fucked-up) reality.

Trust

I was at the fishing pier with my girlfriend Erin. We were talking about the interesting things going on in each other’s lives… the usual stuff. She was leaning against me as I sat there. I had my fishing pole in the relatively still water. I’ve had no luck the whole day. It was starting to get dark. Erin always likes to tell me how beautiful the sunset is. However, this particular sunset looked eerily ominous to me. I started to reel in my line so we could head for home. Erin glanced over to the right. She suddenly jumped off me and screamed.

“Jared, it’s him! It’s Joe!” she screamed. She was right. There he was, fishing to the right of us, down on the beach, drunk as a pig. He didn’t know we were there. I hurriedly grabbed my pole and fishing equipment so we could both get away safely. Erin clung to me as I rushed to get out. All our commotion caused him to spot us. He didn’t know who we were at first, in his drunken stupor. But then it hit him. He smashed his beer bottle on the side of the pier as he prepared to give chase. As we tried to dash, he somehow managed to catch up at full speed and stop us before we got to the end of the pier. He didn’t say anything. His eyes were full of rage.

Joe was Erin’s ex-boyfriend. They’d always been great together, until recently. They were both very normal people with a very normal relationship. That is, until Erin called it off. You see, Joe was one of those obsessive types. He was the kind of guy who absolutely needed a girlfriend in order to stay sane. Unfortunately, for whatever reason, Erin decided it was best to end what they had. Joe didn’t take it very well. After numerous threatening calls and even sending her a box of condoms and a dildo, his own sickening way of telling her to go fuck herself, Joe continued let her know he was there, watching. He was sort of muscular, so I never really had a sure-fire way of defending myself if something were to happen. I didn’t really give it a second thought, though, since he tended to never show up in person. I just had to protect her as best I could.

“Is he your new fuck toy?” Joe burped, unsuccessfully attempting to point at me. His breath was horrendous. I wondered if he had eaten his fishing bait. Erin trembled, unable to let go of my shirt.

“Answer me, woman!”

“She doesn’t want to have anything to do with you anymore, Joe,” I said. I figured talking to him in a calm manner would help render him incapable of doing anything crazy, even if I was being a tad blunt.

“You don’t know what you’re talking about, asshole. She wants my cock and you can’t do anything to stop it. She’s just scared ‘cause of a few mishaps we’ve had. That’s all over. I know she wants to take me back. She can’t resist me, can you baby?”

Erin told me she wanted to leave. She couldn’t even look at this monster. Not when he was like this, anyway.

Joe stood there, gently swaying. The shattered beer bottle shaved a part of his shirt and skin off while we were talking. A stream of blood was trickling down his side. He was too drunk to notice. Then he slowly raised the bottle over his head. Erin and I tried to dart again. He wouldn’t let us.

“Where do you think you’re going?” he laughed. “Hey Erin, what’s this guy’s name anyway?” Erin was way too frightened to respond. He became much more serious. “Answer me or I’ll fucking end him right now.”

“Jared,” she screamed. She could barely control her shivering at this point. I was scared at what this guy might do, and there was no way to calm him down now.

“Jerry, huh? Well, Jerry, I hope you had fun with my Erin because I’m taking her back.” I did the only thing I could do. I fought back.

The first thing I did was knock the beer bottle out of his hand. That was an easy enough task. Without that, all he could rely on is his overpowered, if liquored up, muscles. He punched me incredibly hard in the gut. I saw black for several seconds. “Wow,” I thought, squirming on the wet sand. “He’s even stronger when he’s drunk.”

I had no choice. I had to get the bottle or this fight would be over. I dashed to get it, still low to the ground. He tackled me, but not before I could get my hands on it. Before he could grab it back, I impaled him in the neck, severing his jugular artery. He writhed on the ground in agony before ultimately collapsing.

Erin was incredulous. It took a few seconds to soak into me, as well. I just killed a person, a human being. After my initial shock, I realized it was night time. I prayed no one saw me. Joe was the only other person on the beach besides Erin and me.

“Erin, I’m so sorry. I had no choi…” I was cut off.

“I… I know. It’s… okay, Jared. He would’ve killed both of us. I know that, y-you know that. Just… please… we have to call the cops.” Erin was right. But she was my only witness. How will the police know that I had to defend myself? How would they know that he attacked me? He didn’t have a prior criminal conviction. All of his crimes against Erin had would have been misdemeanors, but she never reported any of them.

In the act of a panic-induced whim, I forced myself to believe I had to hide the body. Erin kept telling me I had to tell the police what had happened and be straightforward and that she would vouch for me, but I didn’t listen. I couldn’t listen. I was so terrified about the whole ordeal that my mind was tuning her out. I shoved the body into the back of my rusty old Toyota pickup and threw a tarp over it.

You know how I mentioned that Joe had no criminal record? Well the same can’t be said for me. I have an extensive one, and had done my fair share in the slammer. I knew the police wouldn’t look at our story the same way we did, and that I would end up back there for good. Prison killed me inside. When I got out on parole the most recent time over a heroin conviction, I had no intention of going back. Then I met Erin, the guiding force in my life. My spiritually connected guardian angel, who had made it her duty to keep me out of trouble.

As we cruised down the road, I couldn’t control my thoughts. Erin was still complaining to me to stop this and to call the police. In a fit of anger, I told her to get out and walk home. She refused and kept nagging, so I shoved her out of the truck, slammed the door and took off. I immediately felt sick to my stomach, not so much for the fact that I just threw my girlfriend who I loved dearly out of a moving vehicle, but the fact that I had a dead person’s body in the back of my vehicle. My mind was a nuclear meltdown.

When I got home, I peered around to see if anyone was out taking their trash to the curb or anything. When I saw that the cost was clear, I completely wrapped the body with the tarp. I couldn’t carry him, stiff as he was. He was way too heavy. I had to quickly drag him somewhere… but where? Without thinking (which I hadn’t been doing much of that night anyway), I quickly took him and shoved him into my closet.

I had to relax. I had to clear my mind. I had to take a brief interval between these perpetual bits of madness. Luckily, my clothes weren’t covered in blood. I showered and changed them anyway. I also reminded myself that the brawl took place on the beach, so whatever blood was on the ground an hour ago would be long gone by the time morning rolls around. Finally, I was able to think. The sickening sensation in my stomach came back. I threw Erin out of a moving vehicle. I had a hard time swallowing what I had done. The strange thing is, my mind was no longer focused on what I was going to do with Joe’s body, but the horrible thing I had done to Erin. A shiver went down my spine.

I called up Erin immediately. No answer. I tried a few more times - still, nothing. She’s going to ignore me, I thought. I couldn’t blame her. I couldn’t even trust myself after that. Of course she wouldn’t be able to, either.

The doorbell rang. I was ready to embrace my sweet Erin and cry my eyes out when it was just my friend Korey. I was about to say something when Korey started sniffing and I felt my heart plummet.

“Dude, what’s that smell? You just lay a massive dookie or what?” Korey laughed. His lighthearted attitude temporarily took my mind off Erin and allowed my psyche to temporarily rest itself. I shrugged the smell off as a “massive dookie” and told him he needed to leave. He refused, of course, and ran past me to jump onto my couch. I realized I couldn’t get him to leave so I let him stay for a while and watch TV.

The doorbell rang again. “Hey I invited some other people over too; I hope that’s all right.” Before I could say anything, a stampede of men rushed through my door. Almost in unison, they clutched their noses and fanned the air. I guess Korey was used to it by then, since he hadn’t mentioned anything since he came in initially.

“Whoa, dude, what died in here?” one guy joked. My sickness wouldn’t go away. I was on the verge of vomiting, and I didn’t even notice the smell. The only thing I could do was to scream at everyone to leave. I did. After some bickering, everyone was out the door.

An hour later I was finally about to fall asleep in front of the TV when I heard the toilet flush. I jumped right up and ran to the bathroom. One of Korey’s drunk friends had decided to use my bathroom and apparently didn’t hear (or refused to hear) when I ordered them all out. He stumbled into my hall closet, where the body was. It was too late to stop him from looking at it. All I could do was pray that he was drunk enough to shrug it off as a pile of clothes or something.

“The exit is that way,” I told him. Seemingly calmly, he waddled to the front door.

He screamed, “You have a dead body in your closet! You have a dead body! Boy, you’re in trouble now!” he screamed, before fleeing. The sickness was overwhelming. I couldn’t hold it in any longer; I rushed to the sink and vomited. I immediately fell asleep in the kitchen floor in a pool of my own puke.

I was awakened the next morning by the doorbell. This time it was the cops. My mind was racing, but I appeared calm. It was the only thing I could do. Of course, the corpse was still heavily stinking, so without so much as telling me why they were there, I was cuffed and sent down to the police station. After a long and exhausting interrogation, I was thrown behind bars without bail. I’m an idiot, I told myself. What was I thinking?

After only one trial, I was sentenced to death. This story is being written 14 years later, the day before my execution. I found out that it wasn’t Korey’s friend that told the cops I was harboring a dead body. It was Erin. She was so disgusted by how I handled the situation that she decided I was no better than him. She was right. I was an idiot that night, and I’m going to pay for it with my life.

During my stay in prison, I figured out that there was enough potential evidence to let me off the hook. During court I found out that Joe had a blood alcohol level about sixteen times the legal limit. The fact that I had no significant weapons on me and that Joe had cut himself with the shattered glass bottle in his drunkenness weren’t even considered during my crazed panic, or acknowledged by the jury.

Erin was right. Erin was always right. I should’ve listened to her. And because I refused to hear what she had to say that one time, I lost her, I lost my friends and family (who are now convinced that I’m an insane murderer) and now I’m about to lose my life. I’m writing this in the hopes that whoever reads it will never take for granted their girl or boyfriend; because one little suggestion they might give you could very well save their life.