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  Moments later we were fully engaged, Heather rocking back and forth and me keeping my motions in sync with hers. A few minutes of this and then I sat up, flipping us over so I was on top. My thrusts were slow at first, gentle. Heather closed her eyes and grabbed my shoulders, pulling me closer. Her breathing started to get more rapid and so did my movement. Soon, she was moaning, quietly at first, and then more loudly. "God, Jackson… Faster. Faster."

  I obliged, and that’s when I made a big mistake. The biggest mistake a guy can make while having sex with a girl.

  As I started thrusting faster, and Heather got louder and louder, I started to reach the point of climax. Scientists have said that at the moment of orgasm, the male mind thinks of absolutely nothing. That may be true, but that night in the Holiday Inn, as I approached the moment of nothingness, my mind slipped. I forgot all about the person I was pretending to be, forgot about everything, and in that moment with my eyes closed and heart pounding, a sense of habit overtook me. I had been having sex with nobody but my wife, countless hours of sex with the same person for a long time before that night with Heather, and habits and actions of all those acts flooded into me and I let them.

  Heather let out a long and drawn out noise, which I assumed to mean she had climaxed, and then I let go as well, collapsing on top of her and saying, "Oh, Amy."

  Yep, just like that, two tiny words, and everything went to hell. Heather’s eyes shot open in a wide-gaped look of disbelief and disgust. All traces of her previous orgasm had vanished. "WHAT?"

  I jumped back, recognizing my mistake and trying desperately to quickly come up with something to possibly say. Of course I drew a blank. There was nothing even worth trying.

  "What did you call me?"

  "Heather, look--"

  "Amy? Who the hell is Amy, huh?" She tried to push me off of her.

  "Just listen for a--"

  "Oh my god! You’re fucking married aren’t you?"

  This struck me hard for some reason, flashes of Amy again flipping in my head, and Heather took my silence as a yes.

  "You cheating bastard! Get off me!" She pushed up, trying again to push me off of her, but I didn’t move.

  You cheating bastard!

  She was right, my God she was right. I was a cheating bastard. The words echoed in my head over and over. I saw Jenna, I saw the hotel in New York. I watched myself pick my boxers up off the floor and sneak out, leaving Jenna naked and alone in the bed. I saw Amy scream at me, and little Dillon crying under the kitchen table. I saw the Focus crumble under impact. I saw two tombstones.

  Heather punched me in the face. It wasn’t very hard, but it stung and it snapped me angrily back to the present. I instinctively grabbed at my eye with one hand and used the other to catch her flailing fist.

  "Stop!" I yelled, trying to calm her.

  "Fuck you!" she screamed back, slapping at me with her other hand. "Where’s your wife, huh? Is this what you do, fly all over the country on business and sleep with which ever girl you can pick up? She doesn’t know a thing does she?"

  She was getting very loud and I started to worry about the other guests in the hotel. All the while snippets of film played in my head. Jenna eating dinner with me, a traffic light turning red. Jenna kissing me in the hallway, a bumper flying through the air and landing in the grass next to the road. I was angry, angry with myself mostly all over again, and I started to sink back into the pit I had been crawling out of while pretending to be Jackson. My head swam, and I got confused. I couldn’t take it.

  "Shut up!" I yelled. "Stop fucking screaming."

  Her response was to spit in my face and deliver another punch with the hand I wasn’t holding onto. "Bastard!"

  That did it. I snapped. Abusive rage swallowed me. She screamed at me to get off of her again and I lost it. It was too much, the events of the past coupled with the present broke me. I grabbed one of the pillows on the bed with both hands and smashed it down onto Heather’s face. "Shut up!" I yelled again, pressing down hard. "I told you to shut up!" I held the pillow down, Heather’s hands swatted at me, her legs and feet kicking under me trying to free herself. I kept pressing. Her screams were muffled under the weight of the pillow and were almost inaudible. While pressing down with all the force I had, a few tears streamed down my cheek, and slowly Amy’s face faded from my mind.

  Eventually the soft sounding screams stopped, and shortly after so did the fighting. I was too afraid to lift the pillow, scared as to what might be waiting for me underneath. I got off the bed and looked at Heather’s dead body, motionless and still dotted with sweat. Swarmed with gut-ripping realization I whispered quietly to the room. "I killed her."

  She deserved it. She didn’t know what she was talking about.

  "I killed her."

  Get out of here.

  I got dressed and left, sprinting down the hallway and out of the hotel. Wary of cops, I abided by the speed limit all the way back to Jacob’s Bluff, which is harder then you might think when fleeing a murder scene.

  As I drove I was strangely calm, almost in a Zen state. I reflected on what had just happened; my thoughts and actions, and got some very interesting ideas.

  Chapter 26

  It was pitch black, as per usual on my frequent voyages from Larendale back to Jacob’s Bluff, and my eyes stared straight out, following the beams from the headlights as they sliced away just enough of the darkness to allow me to drive. I was the only car on the road, or maybe I just don’t remember any that may have passed. I don’t remember much of that drive at all, nothing except my thoughts. All visual elements are a blur.

  What I do remember is how eerily calm I was for somebody who had just committed murder. Looking back now, it astonishes me that I didn’t realize then that I had lost my mind and needed help. How could I possibly have thought it was normal for somebody to kill an innocent woman in a hotel room and then just leave, as if I could go home and get a good night’s sleep and everything would be ok in the morning. But, that’s the way I was thinking then.

  I also remember laughing. Yes, that’s right, laughing. I remember at one point bursting out loud with laughter, much like Heather had done on our way to the hotel, and continuing until my stomach hurt. I couldn’t help it, the irony was too strong not to find it humorous. I had blamed myself non-stop for the death of my wife whom which I loved deeply. I had then fallen into depression and anguish hard enough to want to take my own life. Once the attempt failed I had decided to become somebody else, basing my new life on a fictional character I wrote about who just happens to be a womanizing murderer. And then, what do I do? I go out pretending to be this person and end up actually killing somebody. It was hilarious to me at the time. I had screwed up originally, and in an attempt to fix things in my life I had screwed up even worse than the first time.

  Well, I had wanted to be Jackson Hugh, and now I was officially Jackson Hugh. Be buff and wear nice clothes. Check. Drive a nice car. Check. Seduce woman at bar. Check. Kill woman after sleeping with her. Check.

  At least I got that part right.

  The scariest part of all was that even though I had just ended Heather’s life with my own hands, I didn’t feel guilty. I felt… relieved. Yes, that’s the best way I can describe it. I had been struggling for months and months with enormous amounts of frustration and hate inside of myself, and it was a feeling that nothing seemed to help alleviate. I had driven across country, lifted tons of weights, ran unnumbered miles, and even spent hours with the sun beating down on my back helping Ralph around his house, all for which I was not awarded feeling better by one bit. These things might have helped a normal person relive tension, but not me. For me they did nothing.

  But killing? For some reason, when Heather was yelling at me, cursing me and calling me out on my faults--which were truer than she realized--that frustration and hate had started to boil once again, and as she continued to scream and pound at me with her fists, I had grabbed the pillow and allowed that hate to erupt out
of me. As I watched her struggle, and felt her convulsing under me, I suddenly had started to feel better. For just a second, I felt satisfied.

  The feeling was quick, but not forgotten. I had killed, yes. It was horrible, sure. But I had liked it. I didn’t even know it while I was committing the act itself, but yes, some part of me had liked it.

  Jackson.

  As I pulled the Mercedes into the storage facility and got into my Jeep, ready to drive back to Ralph and Minnie’s, an idea occurred to me. It was sick and twisted, but so was I.

  My Jackson Hugh novel had been coming along quite nicely. It flowed well, and was especially easy to write, not to mention incredibly detailed and realistic--which of course it should be, being that it was essentially almost entirely based on true events. But in my writing I had reached the part of Jackson’s life which was the equivalent of my unsuccessful suicide and would soon be tasked once again with making up Jackson’s first seductive and then violent ways. This time would be slightly different though. This was going to be the pivotal first murder scene. It was the moment where Jackson becomes the Jackson that all my readers knew; the killer.

  I drove quickly back to the Sanderson Homestead with no intention of going to sleep, despite the hour. I wanted to write while the events were still fresh in my mind.

  Realism. Check.

  It took me two hours. I changed out of my suit and made a big pot of coffee, being as quiet as I could, and sat down at the kitchen table. I pecked slowly at the keys on my laptop, reliving every detail in my mind and transferring them onto the screen. I changed names of course, both of people and locations, but the story was just the same.

  When I was finally finished, just an hour or so before the sun would begin to rise, I leaned back and stretched, smiling. I clicked the SAVE button and then, tucking the laptop under my arm, climbed up the stairs and went to sleep.

  Chapter 27

  I slept dreamlessly and unmoving until lunch time, waking up to the sound of Ralph mowing grass in the backyard. I got up and stretched, peeking out the window blinds and seeing him riding in a circle around a flower bed on a rusty John Deer, dressed in his customary jeans and flannel shirt. The sun was half-hidden behind the moving clouds, which made the daylight seem to come and go in slow flashes across the sky. I looked at my laptop laying on the floor next to my suit, which I had neglected to hang in my tiredness, and smiled. The chapter I had written the night before had been good. I dared to call it my best work. The underlying fact that I had murdered in order to achieve it failed to impress me. I was numb to all that. In my new and unexpectedly found joy I felt myself to be invincible. I knew of repercussions, but didn’t fear them. I forgot about Heather and dressed, taking off in the direction of the kitchen.

  Minnie was sitting at the kitchen table with the newspaper spread out in front of her and a plate of chocolate dipped strawberries next to it. She held a half-eaten one pinched between her thumb and middle-finger, and then after a flip of the page plopped the remainder of it into her mouth, jaw giving two or three quick chews and then swallowed. I walked past her, headed towards the refrigerator and she looked up startled, unknowing that I had stood by for a minute watching her sacrifice strawberries.

  "Oh, Dan, you scared me. Never heard you come down."

  "Sorry. Good Morning. Or is it too late to say that?"

  She let off a quick laugh that sounded like a grunt and said, "I suppose good morning’ll still do. Sure did sleep a long time. You feeling OK? Oh, there’s still coffee in the pot, left it on incase you would be wantin’ some."

  I grabbed the orange juice out of the fridge and then pulled down a small glass and a coffee cup from the cupboard by the sink.

  "Thanks. Yeah, I’m feeling fine. Went and had dinner later than usual last night and then felt frisky and stayed out for a late showing of a movie. Barely made it in the door before I collapsed. Guess I’m getting old."

  She let out a good laugh at this one and I watched as the rolls of her neck jiggled. I took the time to quickly think of what I would say when she asked what movie I had seen. I wasted the effort.

  "Honey, you want to know what old feels like? I’ll gladly trade shoes with ya for a day. Or heck, maybe just a morning. Was the movie good?"

  I smiled at the indirect question. "Not bad. Not winning any Oscars."

  "Mmm-hmm." She nodded, chomping on another strawberry.

  I poured myself my coffee and orange juice and was considering breakfast or lunch food when she asked if I’d take her to get her hair done at 2:00. I agreed. I’d come to learn that when Minnie got her hair done it was also her gossip time. Apparently her and her friends purposely scheduled their appointments around the same time at the same shop and spent the usually mundane time together giggling and chatting up like they were seventeen again. It could easily become a two hour endeavor. I’d drop her off and then go to the gym. I was feeling good and wanted to use some of my good energy for a workout or two. Then maybe come back, shower and do some more writing. I settled on breakfast food, scrambling some eggs and eating instant oatmeal. Minnie finished her plate of strawberries and then switched to pretzels for the remainder of her newspaper read.

  At ten till two we left in my Jeep and I drove her to her beauty shop. We parted ways with her saying the same thing she always said. "I’ll call your cordless phone when I’m ready." Minnie’s fill for technology had apparently been met with the invention of the cordless house phone. In her eyes cell phones were no different. I always wondered what she would call a Bluetooth headset.

  I watched her waddle inside and then drove to the YMCA, my mind already thinking about my first set of bench press and whether I wanted to start with flat or incline.

  I felt like all my cares in the world were gone.

  The workout had started well enough. I had gone through two sets of flat bench and already had a good pump going when I left the free-weight area to buy a bottle of water from the vending machine near the cardio equipment. That’s when I noticed something was up.

  In front of the two rows of treadmills and Stairmasters there were a row of TV’s mounted on the wall, all with the volume turned down, and closed captioned, showing various shows. One of them was showing the same Soap that the woman behind the hotel desk had been watching the night before. I didn’t know the name, but I recognized Shirtless Man. This TV wasn’t the one that drew my attention.

  Two TVs down from the one playing the Soap, the one on the very end of the row, closest to an Emergency Exit door, a group of five or six woman had gathered around. None were speaking, all had their eyes glued to the screen reading the black blocks of words as they changed rapidly. As I approached, a stick-thin woman said, "Dammit, I’ve got to hear this!" She dragged a chair from the coat rack in the corner over to the group and then stood on it, reaching up so she could turn up the volume. I came up behind them just as she got the volume to her liking. She didn’t step down from the chair, instead she stood there, eye level with the screen and resumed staring, only now with sound.

  I looked up at the screen and saw what they were watching.

  A reporter, short, round, and with a thick head of black hair combed straight back stared at the group of us from the TV. He was standing outside in a parking lot. Behind him there was an ambulance in the distance and a few police officers walking back and forth between it and the building which sat nearby. I recognized the building immediately. The police were going in and out of the same door I had used a little over twelve hours earlier. It was the Holiday Inn in Larendale.

  I stood with the women and listened. I wasn’t concerned, but more curious. I knew that Heather’s body would be found, I just didn’t know how quickly. I wanted to know what the police were saying that they knew about the crime, or at least what they were telling the public that they knew.

  "The victim, a yet to be identified woman in her early to mid twenties, was found a little after one o’clock today by a member of the house keeping staff. Rosario Sanchez s
aid that the Do Not Disturb sign was hanging outside the door, so she held off cleaning in the early hours." The reporter said. "When the guest who was checked in to the room failed to check out by the eleven o’clock check out hour, the front desk made repeated phone calls to the room until one-thirty, at which point the green light was given to the Housekeeping Staff to proceed with entering and cleaning the room. When Ms. Sanchez finally entered the room around two o’clock she discovered the body, naked and laying dead on the bed with a pillow over the face."

  The screen then jumped away from the black-haired reporter and cut to a scene of paramedics wheeling a stretcher out of the side door with a body on top covered by a white sheet. Then the scene jumped again and a police officer, sweat dripping down his face stood before the camera. He wiped his brow and gave a brief statement to the reporter.

  "Ms. Sanchez said she was only in the room for maybe thirty seconds, tops. She opened the door, announced her presence in case anybody was still in the room, and then turned to grab a few things off her cart. When she went back into the room she checked the bathroom to see what might be needed and, after finding it pretty much untouched, with the exception that the toilet lid was up, she went to make the beds. That’s when she saw the body and ran out of the room."

  Off all the times to leave the toilet lid up. I suppressed a chuckle.

  The officer continued. "When police arrived the room was empty of all items except that of the hotel, the deceased, and the deceased’s clothes, which were tossed about the room. At this point and time the speculated cause of death is suffocation, but we’ll wait for the medical exam results before making an official announcement."

  With that the cop’s image was replaced once again by the reporter who now had a Hispanic woman next to him who I assumed to be Rosario Sanchez. He turned and started talking to her.