Halley Eldredge

Grade: 10

Hawken School

Instructor: Daniel O'Connor

Accident

Flash Fiction

Accident

I never meant to kill her. One moment, she was alive. Well and walking away. The next, dead. Her lithe body hangs limply from the metal rebar skewered deep within the recesses of her stomach. The wine-red blood drips like a faucet onto the stone and highlights the formerly alive woman that used to be my roommate.

I say that I never meant to kill her liberally. Of course, I fantasized about killing her poetically, like taking her heart out of her chest as she once did to mine. I just didn't want to do it in our communal parking garage with my car. It was rushed, unplanned, and quite frankly, sloppy. Her blood splatters were all over my car, and so were some of her brain matter. The pieces of bone that came off of her head drip down with her blood to the floor. It was exhilarating seeing that, and then not when I remembered the entire situation at hand.

It all started when I fell for my roommate, Ashley. I swore to never love in college as my parents did all those years back, but God said, "have this white girl and love her until the day you die." And so started my love for Ashley Wells, the smartest and prettiest girl I've ever met. Over the next 4 years together in our undergraduate degree, we grew closer. I told her everything, and in turn, she told me nothing. Of course, I didn't know this at the time but, she was telling her friends everything. Every little idiosyncratic trait of mine was being shared with Bethany, Hannah, and her little group of white girls. Looking back, I see all of this now. The lack of things I knew about her, only hanging out on her time, and how her face was always a grimace when I said that I "appreciated our time together". While she was stabbing me in the back, I was falling harder and harder for this straight girl. I knew I would never tell her my feeling, but it was a nice fantasy for late nights when I couldn't sleep.

This all came to a head when we finished college and graduated. She had nowhere to go, and I did so, I offered her a place on my couch. It was the stupidest decision in my entire life. I was desperately in love with her, and she tried to tolerate my presence, but tension boiled underneath the surface. One day, she came into my room, lamenting about her boyfriend, and I snapped. "I don't fucking care! Why don't you find one of those bitchy white girls you hang with? They would care about your mediocre boyfriend named Tyler, who looks at me weird 'cause I'm black. Get the fuck out of my room and think about why you and Tyler are fighting again, 'cause it's probably yo' fault!"

She left, mouth opened wide, and distractedly left the apartment. I felt guilty for yelling at Ashley, mostly unprovoked, and I grabbed my car keys to follow her. With my jacket over my shoulders, I walked to my car and opened the door. I realized at that moment that Ashley never cared for me. She never apologized for telling her friends everything about me after I found out a couple of months after graduation. Her portion of the rent is never paid, and I have to cover her for everything. My anger slowly rose from the deep pits of my being, and I got in the car to do something to her.

I started to drive out of the parking garage, and then I saw Ashley. Her head was down until she heard my car's engine behind her. She lifted her head and recognition flashed through her eyes, illuminated by my car's headlights. Ashley then flashed me her middle finger and I saw red. How dare she take advantage of my generosity, my kindness, just to throw it in my face when she doesn't need it anymore? I accelerated towards her body, and then I blacked out for a second.

When I come back, her body is suspended in the air from a piece of metal rebar from construction that I rammed into. My bright white headlights show the empty depths of her eyes and the flow of blood going toward one of the drains.

Ashley probably screamed loudly because I heard police sirens coming from another level in the garage. I lifted my head up to the ceiling and started to pray to whatever god or deity could hear me. Lord, why did you let this happen to me? I thought I was a good person, why did I kill her only then? The cops rolled down to where her body was, and I admitted defeat in my head. I guess that was it. My body moved on its own and got out of the car. The cops looked at me and started to come at me with handcuffs raised. My mouth started to move to explain myself. I knew that I never meant to kill her.

"Oops."