Forsaken Below The Tracks

Chapter Nine: A Bloody Reality

 I sat on Erik's bed shaking. Blanket around my shoulders, I held onto the bottle of vodka for dear life. As if the moment I let go of it, I would start to drown. I took another drink.

"I don't understand. That's just not possible, Erik. There has to be some kind of mistake. I couldn't have pushed her. I wouldn't have pushed her. You don't believe that, right? This just doesn't make any sense."

I was drunk. Like annihilated drunk. I couldn't stop. Did not for the life of me want to. I had stopped crying. The tears I shed had mixed with my black eyeliner leaving rings and stains. I looked messed up, but not as messed up as I felt. She was gone. I had to be dreaming. This had to be a screwed up, sick twisted dream. I grabbed the pocket knife that Erik usually kept on his table and now resided on its resting place on his stack of records. I popped it open and sliced my inner thigh, deep before he could have even attempted to stop me.

Blood oozed from my leg and Erik yelled something at me as he left the room to get a towel. He came back in the room as I sat rocking on his bed, murmuring some sort of nonsense and watching my blood spill onto his dirty, wooden floor. It was real. No dream. This was happening. I took another drink. And another, and fell back backward onto his bed.

"What am I going to do, Erik?"

"You are not going to do anything. I am going to stop your leg from bleeding, which is going to be next to impossible thanks to your current liquid diet, then I am going to bandage you up. And we are going to figure out what in the hell happened last night."

"I mean what am I going to do without her."

He rubbed my leg that wasn't currently gushing blood and looked at me, "baby, we're going to figure this out, okay? We're going to figure this out."

I sighed and grimaced in pain, "I'm sorry."

"For what, babe? You have nothing to be sorry for."

"This cut. It was stupid. I just needed to feel something besides this pain. I needed to know that I'm not dreaming. Erik, this is real. This is happening. It makes no sense and yet here it is. My best friend is gone. And I killed her? I loved her. I fucking loved her more than myself, more than life. How did this happen?"

He grabbed the bottle from me, what little was left, and pressed it to his lips.

"We'll figure this out," was all he said as he wrapped some gauze and Scotch tape around my leg. I was shocked he even had gauze in the apartment, but that was Erik, always full of surprises, "get some sleep, babe, okay? We'll talk in the morning, set something up to narrow down how this happened. Where's your phone? I want to check to see if you got any texts."

"It's in my bag. But I don't know where my bag is."

"You threw it under the bed when we got home last night," he said reaching under his bed to retrieve it.

He pulled my phone out and instantly turned white. Sitting on an empty overturned milk crate he used as a side table/chair, he stared at my phone.

"Well? Anything?"

"Yeah, babe. You got a text from Morgan."

"Are you joking? When? What does it say? Give me my phone!" I screamed and reached out to him.

"No. Baby. Just no. Okay? This... doesn't make any sense. This text was sent twelve minutes ago. From Morgan's phone number... But..."

"But, what..." I had started crying again.

"Babe. I..."

"What? Erik, stop being so hesitant and just tell me. I need to know what happened. I need to piece this all together, be honest with me for Christ's sake!"

"Okay. Alright. Jenn, last night when the cops showed up to investigate the scene. It was pretty messy. You took off after it happened. I got there and you were gone. Liam said you shoved her and ran... And... when the cops got there..."

"Tell me."

"When they got there, there was nothing left her her body, man. She was just... like... a pile of nothing, dude. Gone. I'm sorry, Jenn, I didn't mean to make it sound so... messed up... But, it was..."

"So, who has her phone then? Liam? Is he screwing with me? Call him. Tell him to knock this shit off, it's not funny. Text him back. Give me the damn phone, I'll do it myself," I snatched the phone out of Erik's hands before he had a chance to react. The text sent chills up my spine.

"Murderer."