The Body

My note: Wrote this last year for my creative writing class.

“You really think you can get over your drug addiction after a year and automatically think you can be a mother again?” Greg had told her a few weeks ago. “I’m sorry but being her biological mother does not mean you are entitled to see her again. You’re broken, Stella.”  

Stella opened her eyes to the floor, rope entangled around her entire body on a chair. A man in a brown leather jacket, and a long tattoo of a dragon on his left arm, walked toward her. “If your ex-husband hadn’t spoken to me with cash in his hands, I wouldn’t even bother doing this. Who would have thought a goody two shoes lawyer would get his hands so dirty?”  “You are low-class criminal. I have worked HARD for a year to kick the heroin habit.”  The man shook his head. “You should have thought of that before you took the drug those years ago.”

 Stella knew her ex-husband’s game. She wanted a custody battle for her daughter, Anna, and Greg, being the snake he was, set her up so the thug could make her drug habit return.  The man put the syringe into Stella’s neck. She cringed but could not pull away. “Screw. You,” she grimaced. The man held two more syringes, putting each one into the side of her arm. Her eyesight became blurry, as it would when she used heroin. Her nose started bleeding, and her head slumped forward.

*

Why wasn’t Jason done? He was supposed to do his part and leave. But he never texted him back on how it went with Stella. Greg’s palms were sweating, as he started the car to go look for him. Maybe he was still with her in the abandoned shed…

What if he beat her and never gave her the drug? Beating her up was never the plan. Simply having her use heroin again was the only plan to keep her from Anna. Maybe he never did it… but he would never have gotten the money if he didn’t. 

Thunder clouds rolled in, rain beginning to hit the car’s windshield. Greg’s foot pushed onto the gas pedal hard, as the shed was at least 45 mins out of the city. 

He cursed to himself. Hiring Jason for the job was the biggest mistake he ever made. A criminal hired to drug up Stella. He should have hired a hit man, but desperate times called for desperate measures, and he would never allow that woman near Anna ever again. No matter how many times Anna begged to see her. At sixteen years old, she was still his child.

He could protect her for a few more years until she turned eighteen.

Greg gripped onto the steering wheel. The rain hit the windshield harder, and he wasn’t sure if they were mixed in with hail or not, but judging by the supercell clouds, a storm was coming.  The wind rocked his vehicle back and forth along the highway to the point the car hit the rumble strips on the side of the road. 

And there it was. The left turn leading into the shed. 

He took it without so much as a glance to see other cars coming the opposite way. 

The path was bumpy, and he almost regretted taking his own vehicle through here with rocks and trees in the way.

At last, the path was blocked by a fallen tree. Greg turned his car off, running while the rain hit his face like a punch of ice pellets. He breathed in relief when he saw the shed was close by but there was something… wrong.

The door was open, the wind blowing it almost off its hinges. 

Greg’s sprint turned into a full-on race toward the shed, almost tripping over a large rock on the way there. Nearly stumbling, he managed to find his way inside… but it was dark. No signs of blood anywhere on the floor, but there was a sign of a struggle. Syringes were littered all over the moldy floor. One of the syringes had broken, and the floor was still wet with the heroin substance. 

Something wasn’t right.

And that was when he saw it. Stella’s body on the floor.

“Shi- Greg?!” He heard a voice from behind him. 

“Jason, what the hell did you do?!” Greg shouted, grabbing Jason by the shirt collar. “Why is she unconscious? We made an agreement!”

“I know, man. I’m sorry. I… think… I accidentally caused an overdose. She isn’t waking up!” “How do you cause an overdose? You had SIMPLE instructions!”

Jason shook his head. “I became a too happy giving her the heroin. I’m sorry, I didn’t mean for this to happen…”

Greg tried feeling for Stella’s pulse. It was gone. Completely gone. Greg cursed out loud. “She is dead,” he confirmed, his hands shaking. He could have blamed Jason all he wanted but knew he could only blame himself for her death.  

The End.