How to hide a body

Gold ring

Tyler leaned back into the table chair as she flipped the gold ring in her hand, watching closely as it gleamed for a second in the flight whilst it was in the air. The object fascinated her. Not because it belonged to Clay. He was never married. It belonged to the killer. The thought that they'd touched this same object and worn it openly outside for a display of love, but now it was the proof of their murder. It was funny the meaning of something could just change in mere moments. How people could change.

It reminded her of when she waited for the police to come when she was younger. She held her uncle's body in her hands and wailed his name as the blood covered her hands. Just thick red blood everywhere. It was no longer the man who raised her instead, it was a pulseless body that proved her parent's wrongdoings. She phoned them and they took hours to come no matter how much she pleaded, she was left there as the blood around her started to turn cold.

Eleven years old was the age she lost her childhood. The age she lost the man that she looked up to.

Now she waited for the police to do the same what they did all those years ago. Decide the rest of her life. It'd been ruined once, so what's one more?

She glanced down at the split scabs on her knuckles and grimaced at the tiny droplets of blood that had trickled out of the corners of the seems. She sat waiting in the house of a man who was killed in hers. Wouldn't it be poetic if she happened to die there? What a tale that would be: a young girl with a troubled childhood full of murder grew up to be the murderer everyone predicted and no one's too sad when she suddenly dies in the house of the man she seemingly murdered, but no one would ever know the true story except the actual killer, whoever they were, they'd have this perfect life, probably steal the tiara she had and live off of the money for however long they had left in their lives. Case closed and another person wrongly prosecuted.

Quinn would probably argue because that's just what Quinn normally did. Get into fights because of her. She never liked the fact that no one gave her peace because of her parents and took it personally that she should deal with them which led to Tyler herself getting involved and she'd gladly take the blame. Quinn always wasted too much time on her. She was a lost cause.

Maybe it was a message that she should give up. But, nah. She'd done that the second her pe bag was flushed down the toilet in her year of secondary school. She went back to the orphanage with her dripping wet clothes that she was forced to wear sticking to her skin and bruises up her arms from where she tried to fight back. The world is never normally kind to those who try to fight on their own. When she plodded out of the gates at the end of the day, she wasn't met by one of the older children at the orphanage instead, they'd forgotten her and left her to walk home in the rain. That night she laid in her bath trying to drown herself because death seemed so much better than carrying on and trying to fight every day for something that never seemed to come.

She was alive because she hadn't done her chores so someone came to check. A few seconds more and she wouldn't be breathing. Then she met Quinn in maths.

She was the strange girl who sat next to her and was constantly moving. Quinn didn't seem to get maths but that didn't mean she didn't try. She always asked Tyler for help. In return, in science when Tyler wanted to ask questions but she couldn't because she was afraid, Quinn would make her write them down so she could ask them and pretend that she didn't get it. Tyler felt bad so she gave Quinn one of her favorite keyrings that was a small raven. Midway through the year, Quinn started to get into lots of fights, and once Tyler went to talk to her first outside the school gates.

"Why do you get into them so much, fights?" Tyler meekly asked.

"I can't ignore it when they say those things about you," Quinn glanced down at Tyler.

"I do," Tyler shrugged, "they're not exactly going to stop because you've thrown a few punches their way and said a few words."

"Might help. Besides-" Quinn bumped her shoulders with Tyler's, "-we're friends. Of course I'm going to stick up for you."

"You and I are friends?" Tyler fiddled with the large straps of her rucksack that seemed bigger than her.

"Don't sound so disappointed, you're stuck with me," Quinn smirked as Tyler subtly rolled her eyes.

Tyler smiled to herself as she leaned forward towards the table, placed the ring on its surface, and waited for it to stop spinning. As it came to a halt she poured herself a drink using a glass she'd found in a cupboard in the hallway and the kitchen tap. Whilst she sipped her drink, she stared out into the garden where the grass was overflowed because of the torrential rain which had stopped a few minutes earlier. The fence on the right of the garden had fallen over into the garden next door near a rabbit hutch they had which had a roof that was meant to give it an appearance of a cottage. That was all she could see in the dark, she didn't dare to turn any lights on in case the neighbors noticed. She rested the empty drink on the countertop and began to walk towards the doorway between the living room and kitchen, letting her silhouette be outlined by the lampost outside. It was the same shade as the one in the park where she used to skate most days with the old skateboard her uncle gave her. It was dark purple with a wolf painted in grey in the middle of it. 

After all those years, the paint would get chipped off or rub away so she had to get Quinn to repaint it. It was the best gift she received as a child. He knew she had always wanted to skateboard so when she turned ten he gave her one for her birthday and took her to the park to help her learn how to. It also helped them both escape what waited for them at home every day. He always tried his best to protect her from it and to give her a childhood full of love until his dying breath. She never got to thank him.

She never got to say goodbye. 

She closed her eyes as blue and red lights lit up opposites sides of her face and reached out for the ring she'd discarded earlier. As she heard steps thud against the stones on the driveway, she smirked and turned back towards the garden, slipping the loose ring onto her index finger.

She'd let the next few hours decide her fate instead.