A piece of my writing

Finally getting around to sharing a bit of my writing. This is not from my current WIP. Enjoy. Any comment or criticism is welcome.


Somewhere over the Pacific a Boeing 747 carrying disaster is hurtling my way.
I don’t mean terrorists and their bombs.
I mean my future wife.
Let’s forgo the obvious question and accept the forthcoming marriage as fact. And if said marriage is inevitable and future wife is headed my way at 560 miles per hour with an arrival time of nine o’clock tonight, I have to do something about the body in my living room.
The body is dead, so asking it to move is out of the question.
The body was killed against its wishes, so simply calling the police to remove said body is also not a possibility.
Thirdly, the one who made this body dead (i.e. the “killer”) is very precious to me and should be protected at all costs. And this would not be assured if my future wife arrived at her future home to find her future carpet soaked in blood.
There is a lot of blood.
I am a park ranger. I see dead animals from time to time and the occasional bloody carcass feeding a group of vultures. But a human body is totally different. And the blood…
My closest friend Jenna sits on my couch. Any blood not in the body or on the carpet can be found on Jenna. She is said “killer.”
She is not a killer. It is not in her DNA to take life for sport of pleasure. She just happens to be the killer of this dead body.
I won’t muddle your thoughts with details about the so-called victim right now. The important thing is to find a way to clear my home of death in the next four hours.
“I stabbed him, Paul,” Jenna says.
“I get that, Jenna. I really do. It’s the seven other times you plunged the knife in I don’t get. Didn’t the first time do the trick?”
She is staring at the body again. Her eyes aren’t numb or unfocused the way I’d expect, but thoughtful.
“Will he be missed, you think?” she asks.
“It would help if you told me who ‘he’ is. Was.”
It’s been thirty minutes since I walked in my front door to this sight: Jenna standing over the body, blood spattered on her and soaking completely the victim’s torso. On the last thrust she hadn’t bothered to remove the knife, so it stands there still, like the handle of a dolly, convenient for transport. The beige carpet is now rust-colored, and blood is drying in streaks on my sofa where Jenna keeps moving around.
I really thought she’d be paralyzed by the situation.
“We have to move him, Paul. Do you have some old sheets? Or tarp? We could take him out to the forest, you know it so well. Surely there’s a good spot?” Now her eyes are pleading.
“You want me to help you move a body you stabbed eight times in my house, to a place where I work and would have to walk by every day? Not to mention it’s my duty to protect that forest. I mean, bodies are organic and all but I don’t think they’re on the list of approved items for Federal Park property.”
“Dammit, Paul!” Flames erupt behind her eyes and I see a bit of what the dead man must have experienced. Why does she keep saying my name? “You don’t believe me! You think I wanted to kill him? You think I enjoy being covered in blood? Is this really what I need the day Irina arrives?”
And there it is. Irina: my future wife.
But not really.