The duality of desires and morals

Dear me! Poor me! Why would I do such a thing?

On October 14th popular business owner Daniel Smith died a sudden death. He was celebrating a successful business contract with his company when his body was found at the end of a staircase, bent and twisted in all the wrong places.

Alina Gilbert an intern, had happened to be at the top of those stairs.

Ah, what do I do? If someone saw me- a scream was heard bringing the girl’s action back to the body. A helper was over the body shaking violently. Alina wasn’t sure whether to run or not, so she stayed in place, she only found herself moving when others started coming in and looking around obviously trying to find the culprit, her.

Several days passed and the guilt intensified with each one. She couldn’t remember what had happened, one minute she was having a drink with her boss and the next minute she found him at the bottom of the stairway, dead. They were drinking alcoholic drinks, so it wasn’t hard to see why her brain resembled a fog.

Still, she felt nothing but gratitude for the man and now she ended his life, accident or not she committed a crime.

A crime. She wept at the thought. She had been crying for days now, her eyes were red, and her jaw ached, but she couldn’t find it in herself to stop.

She startled at the ding of her phone. She hadn’t touched it in days, her sorrow kept her rigid. She hadn’t gotten up from her bed either, as she took it up, she was surprised it still had charge.

The company had sent an email, well of course they did.

Her finger hovered over the notification. The company had sent an email. She paled. Could it be that they figured it out? Was it on camera? Had they seen her sin, her crime, and shame? Bile rose out of her chest, violent in its wake.

It took her another day to open the message. Ah, because of the founder’s sudden death, no one was required to go to work for the rest of the week. She almost thought herself covered until she saw that the text was sent out from the week of the murder, a week had passed since then. And it was a Wednesday, she had already missed three days of work.

She logged into her employee account to take some days off and got bam boarded by texts from colleagues, the absence was noticed. Her eyes began to water once again, it would’ve been better if no one noticed, what would they think when she had to permanently be absent from work, for murder at that?

Luckily, she had vacation days left so she filed an excuse of being sick beyond movement and took the remaining days off.

Alina used the weekend to think about what she should do; it didn’t look like the company was doing anything about Mr. Simth’s death so maybe it would become a cold case, and she wouldn’t have to face the consequences but then again, she did take another’s life so in good conscious she should turn herself in.

It was a fierce and frightening battle between her morals and desires.

A friend from the office visited and seeing so much concern, caused her to weep again, strong and barely suppressed.

She lied and said she had been sick since the day of the party; said she went home early where the sickness fully took her over.

Her friend, Nathaniel took care of her and tended to her needs, he made her soup that brought back nostalgia from her childhood and even cleaned her house. She knew how Nathaniel felt about her and always tried to keep their conversations friendly but not too informal, however now as a murderer, someone who would be treated like an outcast if it were discovered, she took advantage of his kindness and submerged herself in it.

She went back to work and instantly became sick; the others took it as a sign that she wasn’t over her pretense sickness but still chose to work. They treated her kindly and made sure her load was light, she wept in a bathroom stall the whole lunch period.

Of course, the guilt would not leave even after a month passed. His presence was everywhere, face plastered on the big walls towering over her, and after his death, the number of them seemed to double. Mr. Smith cutting the ribbon for the opening ceremony, Mr. Smith signing his first deal all the way up to him smiling widely for the camera on the day of the party and his death.

It was then that she made up her mind she was going to the top… or second highest in the company now that her boss was dead. His secretary would handle it, while it would make more sense to just go straight to the police, but there were talks of Mr. Smith planning to propose and everyone knew he was smitten with his secretary. So, she felt obligated to tell her first.

By the time she reached the floor, her head was spinning, her feet were starting to fail her, and her eyes were already starting their melodramatics.

She pushed the door to the secretary’s office open and cried, “It was me, I killed Mr. Smith.”

In the room with the secretary were two officers and the medical examiner who had performed the autopsy.

The secretary looked as if she couldn’t phantom what she had just said, and she couldn’t blame her she had no reason to harm Mr. Smith, yet she did more than that.

“It was me; I was near the rail, and he was… below.” She was trembling now, waiting for the consequences to finally place her where she belonged.

“That’s impossible.” Her head snapped up, “what?”

“No, that can’t be. The wine- when they did the autopsy, they saw that the wine caused him to lose consciousness.” She paused, “Do you have a weak heart?” Alina blinked, “Yes.”

“Then the same must have happened to you. The properties in the wine caused him to lose consciousness because of the weakness of his heart.”

As was her newfound custom, Alina wept.