Loose Screws

Revenge is a sweet, beautiful thing. People will tell you it’s not, that you should be the bigger person and move on and not offering forgiveness weighs you down, blah, blah, blah. Real people suffer every day and eventually you realize taking the high road only gets you great calves. My plan wasn’t super thought out, I paid no attention to detail but I had a rough draft and sometimes the rough draft is really what you should submit.

It was October, the leaves were starting to turn brown now instead of their nice red and orange hue, the air nipped at my skin every time I left my apartment. It was becoming late fall; life was becoming bleak. The one solace I had was my job. My parents had bought the most adorable little café/gift shop that made me feel very Meg Ryan in You’ve Got Mail. It always smelled like coffee and cookies, and I could just sit and read my whole shift. I’d play folk music or chat with some of the older customers. It was a little slice of heaven. The best part? No coworkers. I was practically my own boss.

Then, a deep, dark storm came over the slice of heaven and reigned down her poorly styled terror. Her name was Reece Patchtee and she had bad hair. Reece was a health inspector of sorts. I never bothered to learn what her official title was. She came waltzing in, questions ready, in an impromptu inspection. Why? Because she saw a sign about hot coffee and wanted to investigate. It’s just coffee, lady! Needless to say, Reece was not easy to work with. She had lots of rules, she loved rules, she had new policies she wanted to enforce, taxes she wanted paid. It was completely ridiculous. My parents, being my parents, wanted no part in that. Who was this lady to try and control us? They told her no, that they’d rather stop serving refreshments altogether if it was really that big of a deal. The problem is that most of our sales were from froo-froo coffee drinks and pastries. My parents decided that they were going to close up shop. We live in one of those small towns where everyone knows you. Imagine the upset it caused when my dad had to make a notice about no longer selling goodies. People were in an uproar, me included, but what else were we supposed to do?

Halloween was approaching. I was technically a college student, although classes didn’t start until spring, and I kept getting emails about upcoming events on campus: scary movie night, a pumpkin carving contest, a haunted house. The idea came to me almost instantly; I would kill the health inspector. Listen, she was about to take away my happy place, my income, my home, my education. I absolutely was not going to let that happen. I would kill the health inspector and leave her body in the haunted house. No one would notice a real dead body in a sea of fake dead bodies, it’s not like the smell would bother anyone, and I hadn’t started school yet so there was no reason for me to be a suspect. I swear to you, I thought it all up in the span of two minutes. The best part of all of this was that the pumpkin carving contest was just a building away from the haunted house. I didn’t even have to come up with a murder weapon!

I decided the best way to get Reece to me was by simply asking to meet. I mean, why would she suspect I was going to kill her? I left her a cutesy voicemail about talking out the store options and telling her not to contact my parents because I was doing this on my own. It was all very brave sounding, I’m sure.

Friday, October 29th, was D-Day. In total, it took me a week to get ready. I packed gloves and a mask and those weird window blockers for cars. I had also stolen some of my dad’s sleeping pills. The haunted house wouldn’t be open until 6 and the pumpkin carving didn’t start until 5 which meant I had to drug her, drive her car to the school, make myself seen by someone, steal a knife, kill her, and then dump the body in the span of like an hour. In theory this sounds like a lot, but the hardest part would be finding a person to latch onto during the carving. I hadn’t spoken to any other students ever.

 At 4 o’clock, she pulled into the parking lot at the back of the store. I told her I’d let her in through the kitchen door since the store was no longer open anyway. Really, I wanted to drag her body out of the place without anyone seeing. I swung the back door open and gave her a bright smile.

“Hi! Come on in.”

Her hair was as rigid as ever and her face looked windblown.

“Can I get you some water?”

“Oh, sure.”

I led her into the seating area at the back of the store and then U-turned to the kitchen for the water. I crushed up six sleeping pills and stirred them into her to-go cup along with her drink, making sure to grab myself something too in order to not look suspicious. In short, she lasted about ten minutes before her speech got a little slurred and her guard was down.

“So, how does the whole license system work? Like do you just have an app that says places are licensed or what?”

“Weeellll,” she dragged the word out. “Somewhat. Most people wouldn’t care about a place like this, but I pride myself on following the letter of the law.”

“Right.”

She hadn’t even answered my question.

“So really, other than you, no one else cares about what we do?”

She snorted like a pig.

“No, I just have a lot of free time.”

She sniffled a bit and went to take another drink out of her straw.

Aw, I thought, what a poor, little loser.

“Could you get me another water?”

I smiled, nodded, and went to get another. When I returned to our table her head was down and she was softly snoring. It was too easy.

What wasn’t easy was lugging her to the car. I accidentally dropped her when I was trying to lift her from her chair and her black jeans collected all the dust I neglected to sweep. I had to dig through her pockets for her keys and adjust her driver seat and I smacked her face on the trunk trying to shuffle her into the backseat.

“Sorry.”

Her car was nice, although there was a big Department of Health sticker on the side that would be sure to attract people. We arrived at the college around 4:50, which meant I had a little over an hour to get to the pumpkin building, watch the stupid carving, steal the knife, kill her, and then return it before anyone knew it was missing. Murder is more about lists and less about killing, just letting you know. I parked behind a building with a number 11 on it, the teacher section of the lot, making good use of the deserted area. Then I put up the sun blockers on the windows and made sure to lock the car doors. I doubted she would keel over from a heat stroke stuck in a warmish car on a sunny day but even if she did, I wasn’t too worried; she was gonna die either way. I had to go through the main office to get to the activities hall where the knives would be. Once in there, I had a sinking realization. For the contest they had bought a few small little carving sets. Little, orange, plastic sets that looked like they would fall apart in a pumpkin, let alone a human body. And then I surveyed the pumpkins that were to be used. They were the small ones you find at the grocery store. The contest was a joke and now my job was going to be twice as hard.

Despite the lack of severity, it was a pretty entertaining show. Only one of the people participating was an actual art major, the rest were random volunteers. She was a shoo-in, no question, but standing there waiting for the contest to be over was agony. I looked around the miniscule crowd, filled mostly with teachers and office people. I got lucky; my adviser was there. I slipped in between the sea of educators and planted myself at his side.

“Laura! Good to see you here.”

We chatted until the competition was over, the art chick was declared winner, and the gym cleared out. I slipped on a pair of plastic gloves before taking the largest of the carving knives, hiding it under my shirt. The sun was setting when I stepped back outside, the sky a dusky shade of blue. I peered to my left where the haunted house would be, no one was there but the tent was set up perfectly. No one was outside yet; if I was going to go through with it, now would be my chance.

The car was about a hundred feet away from the haunted house. I would have to drag her again. It was really shaping up to be a long day. Stealing away the knife in my pocket along with my mask, I grabbed her arms and yanked her off the seat, beginning our trek. I didn’t take my eyes off the school windows for a second. Every time a shadow passed by, I went rigid and dropped Reece flat onto the ground. Finally, we made it to the house. There weren’t any doors since it was basically a few awnings with curtains for room dividers. I found a spot for her, right next to a pile of rotting zombies and propped her up on one of the tombstone decorations. To my surprise, her eyes were open, and she looked groggy. 

“Oh.,” I said, putting on my mask quickly. I was Michael Meyers.

 “Well Reece, this is gonna violate a few health codes.”