Charles
Note: This was written in a very sleep-deprived state and as more of an exercise of just writing without self-editing or really thinking much about what I was writing. It just flowed out.
She stared at her blood-soaked hands, bewildered. She felt nothing. Why? It didn’t matter. Her third time, the first two had left her equally nonplussed at her incongruent emotions. What was she going to do with the body this time? She was worried that the place where she stashed the last two corpses was too exposed, too likely to be found out. She would have to think about this.
In the meantime, she had a more immediate problem: cleaning the scene. She had learned from the previous two incidents and had used plastic film to line the space this time, but she knew that wasn’t enough. She had to be thorough. Nobody, especially not her husband, could find out about this. These were simply successive rehearsals after all, the real show was yet to come. She began taking down the plastic film, wrapping it around the still-warm body.
After she had finished her first cleanup sweep, she took a good look around the space. She liked it here, she would return here. Maybe even use it as the stage for the final show. She dragged the plastic body bundle to her van, where with great effort she managed to get into the back. Just after she finished her phone rang. It was her son. He wanted to know where the milk was and when she’d be home as daddy wasn’t home either and he missed them both. Huh, Charles wasn’t home yet huh? Typical. Probably spending the night with one of the blondes at his work. Of course she couldn’t tell her son this so she simply told him the milk was behind the eggs in the fridge and that she’d be home in two hours, and that he should go to bed.
She couldn’t wait to get rid of Charles. Oh the world will be so much better without him. The colors and the music will come back. The birds will sing again. No one would miss Charles, not even his own children. She’d make sure of that. She would see to it that his memory was erased from collective consciousness. That was true death and that was the death she was striving for. Anything less would be too good for him.
She took out her industrial cleaning equipment and began scrubbing the scene. Crime shows would leave one to believe that it is nearly impossible to leave a space evidence-free, but this was simply propaganda. Anyone could leave a scene squeaky clean with some basic chemicals and elbow grease. Not much different from cleaning the bathroom at home really. An hour later, she was done. The odd teenager or passing vagrant would find nothing in this room but the trash that was there before. She closed the door behind her, got in her van, and drove off.
She arrived at her new disposal area 30 minutes later, a forgotten and lonely patch of woods that nobody ever wandered into. Not pretty enough for the nature enthusiasts, and too far away for the teenagers and troublemakers looking to get high but with only their feet to carry them. It took her another 2 hours to dig the grave, throw the body in, cover it up, and make the area appear as undisturbed as possible. She had no idea who the man was in the grave. Unlucky, that's for sure. He had had no ID on him and she had lured him from the streets with the promise of a warm meal and clean heroine.
She glanced at her watch: 2:30am. Shit. She had told her son she would be home two hours ago, but he was asleep and probably didn’t care all that much anyway. He was used to both her and Charles being gone when he went to bed. He believed they were both working long hours at their respective jobs, and in a way, they both were. The job descriptions were just a little different than advertised. Charles job was simply fucking any woman who paid him the slightest bit of attention, and her job was rehearsing the perfect crime with unsuspecting homeless men. Nobody missed them. She could probably keep practicing indefinitely and the only news would be wow the streets are so clean and there are less beggars, what’s the mayor’s secret?
As she arrived home she quietly opened the door, showered off, and got into their big empty bed. On her way she peeked into her son’s room, he was fast asleep clutching his favorite stuffed animal. She couldn't wait for the day when her son would never see Charles’s face again. It was coming, and coming soon, she’d make sure of that.