Not The Killer

Sensitive Content Warning *Death of a Loved One*

I can’t feel my fingers. I guess that’s normal after what I went though, so for now, there’s no reason to panic. Pretending to be fine is one of my greatest strengths. Learned as a little kid and fostered until adulthood. It’s landed me a good, steady job and some quality friends who think I’m Mr. Emotionless. We laugh about it over too much beer and not enough water on the nights we get together to relive our senseless, careless college days. But, even with laughter and jokes ringing in my ears, I know my calm demeanor is unsettling to most people I meet. Like I said, my childhood created the beast. I’m just unwillingly living in its skin. 

I spot a car up ahead, barreling down the lonely mountain road. I grip the handle of my motorcycle tightly and raise my left hand, hoping they understand the signal to stop. The car slows down, coming to a screech beside me and my smiling face. “Excuse me. Is this the road to Eagle’s Point on Tallyway Mountain?” 

A man, decorated with facial hair and stern features, nods once. He points backwards with a jerk of his thumb. “Ain’t nothing that way, son. Just the wild mountain once the road stops.”

“That’s fine. Sounds perfect,” I say with a fake smile. 

“You some killer?” His eyes narrow in suspicion. The guy beside him leans forward to get a good look at me, eyeballing me up and down like a piece of meat he wants to cook to medium or eat raw. I promise, I wouldn’t taste good at all. 

“No. Just trying to go on a quiet hike.”

“Alright. Good luck to ya.” 

I watch their car drive off through the tree-lined road, happy my excuse worked so well. There’s no reason to involve anyone else in this mess I’ve created. An image of her face filled with terror as I walked into the room suddenly flashes across my mind. I swat it away. Thinking about it won’t help me right now. What’s done is done and there’s more to do. 

Once I’m sure those men didn’t circle around to follow me, I speed off down the road. My goal is to get to the end of the road and hike up to Eagle’s Point before the sun goes down. I need a vantage point so I can find my hiding spot. A map won’t lead me to it, so I have to get creative. Think outside of my narrow-minded box and try to escape on my own terms. And, if there’s a map leading to somewhere, that means, eventually, that somewhere will be found. 

As I continue onwards, wind whipping my face and coaxing tears out of my unprotected eyes, my phone rings from somewhere in my bag. There’s no time. If it’s her, I won’t be able to keep going, broken by the desperation in her voice as she pleads with me to come home and set things right. For once, I want to say I’m not fine. Show my atrophied vulnerableness without fear of the consequences. To scream at the world for being so cruel as it rips away everything you love without caring for your feelings. 

It takes another half hour before I finally see the end of the long mountain road. The edge is flanked by a thick row of bushes, with a sign that reads, “End of Road” in scrawling black paint. I hop off my bike to find a path. Fortunately and unfortunately, I don’t see any leading into the forest, so I have to create my own. Grabbing the handle of my bike, I walk it through the bushes, tearing through the shrubbery with one hand and balancing metal with the other. 

The trees are dense, packed tighter than a can of sardines with their large trunks only a couple feet apart. Hoping I won’t have to leave my bike behind, I pull it closer to my side and start the grueling trek up to Eagle’s Point. If I remember the app’s directions correctly, I need to walk in a straight line for half a mile before I hit a river. That’s where I should turn left and walk another mile to the Point. So, off I go, into the wilderness to hide away from the wrongs I’ve done. I won’t tell you I murdered someone because I didn’t and never would do such a thing. I am reminded of that man’s words, asking if I’m a killer. 

I scoff to myself, the sound vibrating through the quiet woods in an eerily peaceful echo. I may have said yes, but I wasn’t the killer. 

My phone rings again. With no hands to answer, I easily shrug the guilt off. I’m worrying her. She’s probably frantically calling everybody we know to figure out where I ran off to. 

***

I reached Eagle’s Point three hours ago, right as the sun kissed the treetops. Now, I’m sitting at the dusty wooden table in the dining room of my hiding spot. After reaching the rocky peak, I climbed onto the highest point on the tallest rock to scour the woods below. A blanket of dark green greeted me, sending a warmth through my limbs that spread to my fingers, giving them life again. Using them to block out the remaining sunlight from my eyes, I scanned the tree line until I found it. 

It took another hour to reach the abandoned cabin. It looks exactly as it did all those years ago when young, drunk me stumbled on it during a spontaneous hike with my equally drunk friends. I had gotten lost looking for a place to relieve myself and came across the cabin by accident. I remember exploring a bit before realizing I didn’t want to be stuck there when the sun dropped below the trees. So, I did my best to remember the route by marking a map the second I sobered up later that night. A quick internet search told me the cabin used to be a historical site until a major landslide wiped out most of the mountain road and the little town below decades ago. Since then, no one’s checked up on the little cabin, and the state never rebuilt the town nor the rest of the ruined road. 

Lucky for me, this cabin will be my refugee before I’m sent to the fiery pits of the afterlife for what I’ve done. 

The phone rings. This time, safe behind wooden walls and glass-less windows, I answer.

“Where are you? Why’d you leave like that?” Her voice is shrill, on the verge of what I imagine will be a mental breakdown. 

“I couldn’t face what I had done.”

“What the hell are you talking about? What did you do? You were pale as a ghost and holding a bunch of papers when I got home. Please,” she starts to beg through the tears. “Tell me what’s going on!”

“I thought it would help. Her breathing has gotten so bad. She could barely bark. She wouldn’t eat.”

“I was gone for a week! How could her condition get so bad?”

I take a deep breath. This won’t be easy for either of us. “I said yes to the surgery. It would have made a world’s difference and improved her quality of life immensely.”

“You said yes to a surgery without my permission?” she asks, voice now a low growl. “I told you no. I said no and I meant it. It had only a five percent success rate and the vet had never performed it before. What have you done?”

“It didn’t work. It was too long under anesthetic and her heart didn’t pull through. The surgeon did everything he could to resuscitate her but she was so old–”

I’m not prepared for her scream. Insults and petty remarks, yes. But not this heart-wrenching, ear-splitting horrendous scream. A scream filled to the brim with anger and pain, followed by curses aimed at me and my stupidity.

There’s nothing left to say. As I click the ‘End Call’ button, turning the phone off completely to avoid any follow up calls, I stare out the glass-less window into the inky darkness.

I am not a killer. But I did say yes to a risky surgery that killed our beloved pet because my wife couldn’t bare the consequences. Couldn’t just stop and think past the emotions bubbling up inside her as the veterinarian went over the positives and negatives of the surgery. I thought it sounded fine. Even when holding those papers that explained the surgery and all that went wrong sucked all the feeling out of my fingers, I was fine. Everything would be fine.

But, as you can probably tell, everything is not fine.