House of Lincoln

25

Clyde's body bleeds into the floor, dyeing some papers around him red. Lincoln dips his finger into it like a hook and paints on the wall the words: "not realistic." He takes a water bottle from his desk and washes his hand of the blood. He leaves the house and goes down to the mall. Walking down the enormous halls, he looks over each store with empty eyes. He eventually comes to find a very colorful one, with neon signs that read "best clothes around" in bright blue lettering. He walks inside and is met by a young woman with auburn hair, a black beanie, and black lips. She asks him, "Looking for anything in particular?" He replies back to her, "Yes. Do you have any purple sweaters?" The girl points her chin up to think, hums a contemplative tone, then adds "Let me check in the back." She quickly walks off with a relaxed stride then returns with a few sweaters.

She lays them down one at a time in a line on the counter by the register. There are two purple ones and a dark pink one. She asks, "Any of these look good?" He reaches down and pulls up the second purple one. "This one's perfect." He pays for it, and the girl shoves it into the bottom of a thick plastic bag, which he carries with him out of the store. When he returns home, he goes back up the stairs and into his room. He pulls the sweater to him like he's giving it a hug, then gives it one last look over. He says to himself, "He's a nice guy. Maybe you two will get to talk again." He kneels down and places the purple sweater gently over Clyde's body. He sits there for a minute longer, then shakes his head, stands up, and looks around. He laughs and grabs a sticky note. On it, he writes the words "The End" and sticks it to the ground. He laughs, then he stops laughing and leaves his room.

Lucy meets him in the hall by coincidence. She sees some blood on the inside of the door frame from where she's standing. She identifies it immediately as blood. "What happened?" she asked. "I don't know," Lincoln says. "I guess I just killed someone." Lucy, with her morbid fascination, asks "What did it feel like?" Lincoln told her: "Like any other day," then walked past her and down the stairs. He didn't feel anything was real anymore. The fact that he killed someone and felt absolutely nothing, was a sign this was a dream, wasn't it? Just a very long dream. A very long and very real dream. Lucy went back to her room and started reading a book. Lincoln went outside and found that it was raining. He imagined those shadowy dark hands picking up and pulling him through the clouds. Up, and into a room with God himself. Not Heaven nor Hell.

He imagined that God talked to him, saying: "You've killed your friend. You must feel terrible! You must wish your life to be like it used to be before you murdered him, don't you?" He raised his arm to the sky and said, "No. It must be a dream, and if it's not a dream, then it must be that this is the way things are supposed to be. Isn't that the rule of fate?" God said back to him, "You confuse me." Lincoln agreed, saying that he confused himself as well, and then God faded away, and he left his imagination to quiet down. Lincoln started looking around, staring at people who passed by, and watching the cars as they came in and out of driveways. He spun around once looking all over the neighborhood, and asked: "Where am I?"

Days later the cops showed up and they found the body first, then they found Lincoln second, sitting in the kitchen drinking a hot cup of coffee. Judging by the blood that was still on his shirt, the same shirt he'd worn for days, they presumed that he was the prime suspect and arrested him. The next few weeks the trial carried on, the two sides fighting over the result for his future. After the case had concluded, Lincoln went to prison, and the two lawyers and the prosecutor were paid later that week. They both forgot Lincoln's name after a year and so did the judge and jurors. It seemed the world forgot about Lincoln, even the doctors and professors that found his case quite strange and decided to study him for weeks, before coming either to a boring conclusion or no conclusion at all. Lucy finished her book, started a new one, and found that when it came the time to pause her reading, she had lost her bookmark.

She paced around and looked all over her room, then the cabinets in the kitchen. Nothing would really work. She went finally into Lincoln's room, took a post-it note off his door, and wedged it into the book. Journalists from Criminal Investment knocked on the door, she answered, and they asked to interview her. She said sure, gave her answers, then they left, and she went back to reading. Her father returned home from the trial alone, cursing under his breath and flailing his arms angrily at no one specific. "They ask me to leave?! I was being too loud and disrupting the trial?! Who do they think they are?! Those..." He trailed back off into a string of insults and swears until he got into his room and slammed the door behind him.

Lucy finished another book and this time her family came back right after. Her mom went straight to her dad to ease his rage, and her sisters dispersed into their rooms without saying a word to each other. Her mom soon came out, her dad still cursing under his breath, and she came into Lucy's room. "Lincoln's going to prison," Lucy asked for how long and her mom told her. Then her mom left the room and went back to comfort her dad. A thought popped into her mind. That gemstone. The black tourmaline rock she'd given Lincoln back when he said he was going to leave. The last time they talked, he said he'd placed it on the shelf in his bedroom. She put down her book and went to check if it was still there. She walked down the hall past her sisters who wept behind closed doors, and she peered inside Lincoln's room. She looked over his shelf several times, going over it again and again to make sure she didn't miss it.

But she was sure of it. It wasn't there. Lincoln may have hidden it, or maybe he lost it, or it's possible the police confiscated it.

In her mind, she imagined he took it with him, and it was that thought that she had that made her smile.