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Murder Transformations

Kelsey Hebert

    The rain slammed onto the windshield like bullets as my mother drove me home. Thunder ruptured the eerie silence. The oncoming car swerved back and forth across the road. A shrieking sound filled the air and seemed to be coming closer with every passing second. My mother tried to get the car under control, but it was useless. The road to destruction had already been paved...

~~~~~~~~~~~~~

    Willow brushed her black gangly hair in the bathroom of her boxy apartment and couldn’t stop thinking about the event. She never let the memory progress to the worst part. She knew what she had to do.
    She slipped on her oversized sweatshirt and clunky military boots. She was determined and no one or no thing, was going to get in the way of what needed to be done. She watched herself transform as she applied black eyeshadow, making her eyes the darkest shade she could.
    She walked out to her black, low-riding car that sat in the desolate driveway. She stepped in and turned the key in the ignition with angry force. She was infuriated. Yet still, she knew what she had to do. The radio blared Pain by Three Days Grace and she began to sing along, her voice gravelly and rough. “Pain, without love, pain. I can’t get enough, pain...” She pressed her foot to the gas and began to drive the short way to his house. The soft hum of the motor seemed to calm her nerves. Then she saw it. The house. His house. Her singing stopped abruptly as she grew angrier still. She heard the screech, the pain, the rain smashing against the car, everything streamed back in vivid color.
    She got out of the car. It was dark but the lights and sounds of big city Nashville were distant to the suburban house he lived in. She knew he lived alone. She stalked up the stairs that led up to his front door and knocked. She could hear his sluggish walk down the stairway and she prepared herself. She knew what she had to do.
    Clearer than it had ever been, the imagery from the accident flowed into her head- the screeching of the brakes, the goliath rain pounding against the road, the car, the bone-breaking sound of the thunder.
    The door handle turned. He was coming. Willow wasn’t scared. She knew what she had to do. The door creaked open and Willow leaped forward and slapped a hand over the fighting victim’s mouth. She struggled to pin the man against the wall. Somehow, she managed to pull out a small handgun from her back pocket while pressing all her weight against the fighting man. Willow jammed the gun to the the side of the victim’s head.
    “Damien, my dear, we meet again.”
    She could hear the screeching as if it were again that night. She could hear the pounding thunder and feel the frigid rain on her pale skin. Damien kicked Willow in the shin forcing her to come back into the reality of the moment.
    “Don’t worry. This will be quick Damien. It’s really a shame you’re so young and handsome. Such a waste of a good man.”
    “Who are you? What do you want? What did I do?!” Damien croaked out through the cracks in the hand covering his mouth.
    Willow placed her finger on the trigger of the small, loaded gun. Damien tensed and struggled in the arms of Willow but his escape was impossible. He thrust his free arm into Willow’s stomach. She lapsed and her hand slipped from his mouth but she kept his body pressed to him so he couldn’t escape.
    The screech, the rain, thunder, lightning striking the soaked ground. Willow saw the car whip towards her mother’s side and smash into it with a crunch and crash. She saw her mother fly through the cracked windshield and land on the wet gravel. “Oh my god,” Willow thought. Her mother lay lifeless as Willow rushed out of the car to help her. She ignored the cuts in her side where crushed metal had sliced her skin. “Why didn’t I take the wheel and veer us away?” Willow thought, feeling blame for the whole situation. She saw the flashing lights of the ambulance cab. Then she heard Damien, talking to her. “Oh gosh,” he said, “I’m so sorry. I couldn’t get under control. I didn’t mean to hit you. Are you okay? I’m really sorry...” Willow’s rage became so overwhelming at that time she stopped listening. That was all she needed to hear, to know exactly what she had to do.
    “You killed my mother!” Willow shouted at Damien’s silent, terrified face, “Killed her!” Tears began rushing down Willow’s blank face. The man in front of her had unintentionally murdered her best friend, her companion. It didn’t matter to Willow that the incident was unintentional, he had still committed it. She wanted Damien to have the same fate as her mother had. She placed her frail pointer finger on the trigger, which felt large to her petite fingers, and began to apply pressure even through her doubt. “I don’t want to see you anymore. Never. Forever you will be gone.”
    “Please, don’t kill me! I’ll do anything!” Damien screamed at Willow.
    Willow ignored his comment and pressed firmly. She heard the bullet rush through the barrel of the gun. She moved the gun to his well-built chest and once again felt the recoil of the bullet as it rushed into the body of the young man.
    He fell lifeless to the ground. She knew she wasn’t done with Damien. Not yet. He was still very much intact, while her mother had been forcefully broken, shattered, cut-up and dead.
    Willow exited the house with the tall, heavy man dragging behind her as she pulled him by his arms. Willow threw the man into her back seat and drove off towards her house. When she reached the house, she took Damien’s limp arms and began to once again drag him into the house.
    The blood colored walls and curtained window of the her bedroom protected her neighbors eyes from what she was about to do. She grabbed the large butcher knife off of her bed stand and raised it above Damien’s body. She lined the knife up above his neck and swung it downward, squirting blood across the room. It oozed out from the slice in the neck of the horrid man. She once again swung downward, hearing a sharp snap as the bone broke and the head rolled to the side. She moved the knife over his legs and flung it into his fleshy thighs. She grabbed a serrated knife from the bed stand and began to saw at the thick bone, putting all the pressure she could to get through it. She sawed back and forth listening to the crunching and grinding sounds of the bone as she worked. Finally, it broke through and she sawed through the fleshy part of the leg, once again squirting blood everywhere. Then she swung at the arms.
    Willow realized she was having a twisted kind of fun. She didn’t think about herself chopping up a man, but that she was playing a game. It was like a frenzy had come over her and killing was a new part of her life.
    The red flew and colored the white ceiling and oatmeal colored rug. She could see the blood being absorbed by the comforter on her bed. Pressure onto the bed spread brought forth pools of the thick crimson liquid. The liquid gathered together and dripped onto the floor collecting in a puddle. Willow rushed downstairs to get two large garbage bags. She threw the parts into the two bags. She tied the tops of the bags as tightly as she could, making sure there was no opening. Willow knew what she had to do next.
    She threw the bag of parts into the trunk of her car and drove off into the night. It would only be an hour drive to get to Mammoth Cave. There she could quickly dispose of the body and forget the incident and her dirty deed. She thought she could hear the dead man’s beating heart pounding out of his cold body, but she knew she must be hallucinating. He was dead. He could not possibly have a beating heart. She heard a hesitant breathing and thought it was his, but realized it was her own. Only ten more minutes and this awful person would be disposed of and she would never have to worry about his haunting incident that killed her mother.
    Finally, she saw the entrance. Mammoth Cave National Park. Perfect. She pulled into a dirt driveway near the entrance and veered off the road into a shady patch of forest to park the car. She yanked each bag of parts out of her trunk and dragged them one by one to the entrance of the cave. On her way back from the car with her shovel, she saw a park ranger standing over the bags and examining them. “I’ll have to kill him.” Willow thought, her whole body tensing. She tiptoed closer to the ranger, lifted the shovel over her shoulder and watched as it connected with the head of the man. The man fell to the ground but he wasn’t dead. Not yet anyways. Willow threw herself on top of him and beat him to his death. She hadn’t intended to kill him, but after the first hit, she couldn’t stop herself. It was as if she enjoyed the act of killing, of murdering innocents. As she thought more about it, she contradicted herself, feeling bad for the victim but she wouldn’t let this slight insecurity get in her way of her mother’s approval. She dragged the dead man to the side of the cave and left him in the cold for someone else to find. She had work she needed to do.
    She traveled on into the cave until she reached a place hidden by the entrance light, a mysterious place. It was perfect for him. She began to hollow out the floor of the cave. Inch by inch, foot by foot, she kept on shoveling. The hole in the cave floor was about five feet deep now. “Good enough,” thought Willow and she stuffed the bags into the dug out. Willow shoveled the moist dirt back into the empty space of the hole and slammed it with the back of the shovel to pack it down.
    The deed was done. Willow slowly walked out of the cave, thinking about her late mother. How beautiful she looked the last time Willow had seen her, at her funeral. She was happy to have satisfied such a great role model as her mother had been. “What have I turned into?” Willow thought. She knew her time as a free woman was limited. She knew the police would come soon. Truth was, Willow hated herself for becoming a murderer but the pleasurable act of doing it felt good to her. In the moment she had a feeling she had never experienced before, she was satisfied, and she loved it. It was after that that Willow had uneasy feelings. Yet still, she had done it, she had gotten revenge. Damien would face the future that her mother faced and that was what she wanted. She knew her mother would have been satisfied with her work. So, with a smile on her dirt-covered face, she drove off into the midnight skylight.

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