Chapter 14. Is This a Trope?
Second Writing Assignment—Poison
Prompt: Write a scene from the POV of one of your characters after the body has been discovered.
I didn’t think it would be like this.
I’m not sure what I imagined, but not this.
It’s not the guilt. I’m sure that will set in eventually.
But for now, I feel … relief? So much planning, anxiety, and uncertainty around the who, what, where, and when of it all.
And now that the shoe has dropped, I can go back to thinking of other things.
I can eat and sleep without the details of the plan intruding.
Because I think I’m getting away with it.
I’ve crossed all the t’s and dotted all the i’s, and no one’s looking in my direction. I made sure of that. Why would they? Why would anyone suspect little old me?
People have always underestimated me. Ever since I was a child, they thought I’d never achieve anything.
No one ever said that. But it was always implied.
In the silence when I asked for things. In the surprise when I achieved them.
In the rejections when they gave them. Like they knew they’d say “no” before considering it.
But it’s the quiet ones you have to be careful about. You have to watch the corners and see who’s standing there, or you might get surprised. And when I get away with this—I’m getting away with it, I am—then they’ll see.
The haters. The deniers. The naysayers.
It will all be worth it for me to know I’ve pulled one over on all of them.
I just have to stop thinking about that terrible moment when the life drained out of his eyes. The shock of it all. And the smell that no amount of showers will erase. Poe wrote “The Tell-Tale Heart,” but it’s not the heart that remembers. It’s a muscle that goes on beating unless it’s stopped.
It’s the memory that’s the problem. The Eternal Sunshine of the Spotless Mind of it all. But I think I know what to do.
I just have to act like I forget.