Very Judged Murders

Started Tuesday.October 13.2009 at 10:00 pm – Ended Friday.October 16.2009 at 12:47 pm

A Dark Day

It all began in the breath mint aisle at the local convenience store. But, I’m getting ahead of myself. I am, at the moment, sitting in what most people would describe as a jail cell. My cellmate, a large man who calls himself Sandwich and smells like a tomato, was currently sitting in the corner talking to his pinky. This left me with ample time to reflect on the series of events which led me to where I am.

It all began in the breath mint aisle at the local convenience store. Earlier that night, my wife had eaten the last of those little candy-in-a-cup things that they have, and had sent me on a resupply run. While I was slipping a handful of extra strength Tic-Tacs into the cup amongst the sour gummy worms and fuzzy peaches (you know, as you do), a man in a big jacket pushed past me. When I turned around to tell him off, I noticed he had his hand on a gun sticking out of his pocket. He was heading towards the clerk. The clerk was facing the other way.

Thinking fast, I grab the man by the wrist and wrench the gun away from him. He turned and tried to take a swing at me. Being the weak little man I am, I raised my arms to protect my dashingly good looking face. Apparently, his fist hit my hand in such a way that one of the shiny rings on his finger got caught on the trigger of the gun I had taken. The gun went off and the man collapsed onto the cheap linoleum.

I turned to look at the clerk. He was standing in his booth with his mouth hanging open and is eyes wide in fear. His eyes darted to the gun in my hand and then to the man lying on the floor. He quickly reached under the counter.

“SILENT ALARM ACTIVATED!” shouted the store speakers. “SILENT ALARM ACTIVATED!”

The lights in the store began flashing and metal walls raised from the inside of the booth and reached up to the ceiling, sealing it off. However, there was still a small rectangular hole level with the counter top, you know, in case the clerk would still like to conduct business during a hold up. I ran up to the counter.

“Look, man. It’s not what you think.” I knocked on the metal wall. “Hey, buddy, come on! Turn off the alarm.” I realized that the gun in my hand might skew my credibility so I quickly put it onto the counter. “Look, this gun isn’t even mine!”

To show my lack of attachment over the gun, I slid it through the small hole into the booth and it fell off the other side of the counter. As it hit the ground, I heard it go off and then heard a clerk sized object crumpling to the floor.

Silence. Well, except for the sirens.

I try to peak through the hole. “Hello?” Silence.

“Are you alright?” Silence.

In the distance, I could hear the fuzz racing towards the store. I realized I only had a few minutes to get away. On my way out the door, I caught my reflection in the fish-eye mirror above the door. My shirt was covered in blood.

I ran over to the discount novelty shirt rack. The smallest size I could find was an extra-extra-large teal muscle shirt with a picture of a dolphin and the words “Feel the burn!” in green block letters.

If I left my bloodied shirt behind, the cops would have easily traced it back to me so I pulled the teal shirt over the shirt I was already wearing and ran outside.

I ran to my car and sat behind the wheel. After the third try, my car started and I quickly pulled out of the parking lot. As I was leaving, I looked over my shoulder and saw two squad cars enter through the other side of the lot. When I turned back around, I saw that I was driving straight towards a bus. The driver seemed to notice at the same time as I did, and quickly turned his wheel to the right. I heard a screeching that seemed to go on forever as the side of his bus scraped across the side of my car, tearing off the side mirror. The bus jumped the curb and ran into a lamp post. I pressed harder on the gas.

Now, at this point you’re probably wondering why I didn’t just wait for the police and explain that it was all a misunderstanding. Well, I ran because I didn’t think that the cops would believe me. You see, when I was five, I accidentally killed my father. He was working on the underside of the new car, and I decided that I wanted to get inside and test how bouncy the seats were. My jumping ended up… rendering the car jack unstable. A few years later, when I was twelve, my mom died when she slipped on one of my roller skates, tumbled down the stairs, and then fell on my science project about the common desert cactus.

I ended up being found not responsible for either, but I didn’t think I would be so lucky this time. So I drove.

Houses whooshing past me and the song Earth Angel blaring on the speakers. My wife had bought it several years ago and the cassette got stuck in the slot. The volume knob broke off shortly after. It was stuck on repeat.

The engine died and the car slowed to a halt. Out of gas. I stumbled out of the car and tried to make it to the sidewalk. Instead, I fell into the dike.

Muddy water soaking through my clothes, I climbed back up to the road just as a man on a bike rolled up a couple meters ahead of me. He and his bike were covered in reflector tape.
“Hey fella,” he said. “What ‘cha doin’ out here? And why’re ya all wet? You didn’t fall into the ditch, did ya? Only an idiot would fall into a ditch.”

“No,” I said. “I- I didn’t fall into the ditch. I… uhh… couldn’t find a bathroom? Yeah.”

The man tilted his head to the side. “Really?”
“Sure. Yeah.”
“Well, you’ve… you’ve got some brown on your dolphin,” he said pointing.

I sighed. “Look, could you give me a ride?”

“Why don’t you ask the guy in that car there?” He pointed at my car in the middle of the road.

“There’s no one in that car.”

“Well, what kind of idiot would leave their car right in the middle of the road?”

“I don’t know.” I replied, looking away.

“Here’s another car coming up. Maybe you could ask them.” The biker pointed behind me.

I turn and was blinded by a brilliant white light. My vision cleared in time to see an 18-wheeler plow straight through my car. My car crumpled like a pop can and spun out of control. It collided with the man on the bike and both fell into the ditch.

I stood there dumbfounded. I looked at my car, thick black smoke rising from it’s husk. I looked down the road after the truck and could barely make out the tail-lights in the distance.

I reached into my pocket, pulled out my phone and flipped it open. It lit up for a second, beeped twice and shut down. Out of batteries. Fantastic.

The cops found me a few hours later walking along the ditch. It didn’t take them long to connect me to the things that had happened. Next thing I knew, I was sitting at a metal table in a small windowless room downtown across from a very large cop shining a lamp in my face.

“Oh, we’ve got you now, scumbag,” said the man. He was a man who looked like what a balloon would look if you fed it a whole cake every meal. To clarify my analogy, the man was very fat. His face was bright red from having yelled at me for the past thirty minutes. “You go into the convenience store, shoot the clerk, shoot the witness, and then run a bus full nuns off the road and into a lamp, you run down the biker, and now you tell me that it was all some sort of coincidence? Do you expect me to believe that?” He pounded the table.

I raised my hands in surrender.
“I’m not a very lucky person,” I said. “I’m the guy who buys his wife a new lamp to put on the nightstand, and the next morning while getting out of bed half asleep…”

The man cut me off. “What, d’you knock the lamp onto the floor?”

“No. I knocked the dresser onto my wife! Twelve years later and she still walks funny.”

The man grabbed me by my shirt collar and pinned me against the wall. His face turned even more red. “You think I’m buying this, buddy? We’ve got enough evidence to lock you away for-”

The man stopped suddenly and started grabbing his chest and gasping for air. He stumbled backwards and fell to the floor. I guessed it was some sort of heart attack. Seconds later, five sheriffs burst into the room with their guns drawn. I sighed.

And that’s how I ended up here.

“That’s it?” asked Sandwich. It wasn’t until now that I realized that I had been thinking out loud. “That- that story was super boring!” Sandwich said. “I’m gonna kill you.”

What?!?

He lowered his head and lunged at me. I dodged to the side, avoiding his headbutt. He crashed into the wall behind me and fell lifeless to the floor.

It was at this moment that a warden happened to be walking past my cell. He saw the body if my cellmate on the floor and me standing over it. He un-holstered his gun.
“Step away from the inmate!”

Fantastic.