Monkey in the Middle

   I turned the key and unlocked the door. I walked into our tiny loft to find everything completely out of place.It wasn't a dramatic dishevelment, however, I knew something wasn't quite right, I was a bit of a neat freak, everything had a place and a position, it couldn't be moved unless it was being used. So when I came in to find the welcome mat placed slightly beyond the door railing something turned in me. It tugged at my instincts, but I decided to let that go.

   As I continued even further into the small apartment I found a pair of dirt stained and torn men 's jeans thrown haphazardly on the arm of the lazy chair, this was most definitely a sign that someone other than myself was in the house. I cautiously made my way through the passage and past the bathroom, that gave off warm steam,someone had taken a bath in there not too long ago.

  I continued on, gaining a tighter grasp on my purse handle,as if that was any match for a loaded gun.I was now about two inches  away from the master bedroom when i heard her moans. That cheating bastard, how dare he do this to me, after giving him two years of my life. I became so enraged that I didn't even stop to analyze the situation. I frantically swung open the bedroom door and marched into the room, fully expecting to find Steven laying on the bed with some whore...

  "Steven!" I exclaimed

She looked up and back at me from where she laid on atop a strange man. "Jessica?!... what the hell are you doing in my house?" I yelled at her, trying desperately to keep from staring at their naked bottoms.

  "I'm so sorry, I didn't know that you would be coming home so early" she said, climbing off the bed and collecting her trousers off the floor. 

  "What?!, do you want to say that again and try listening to yourself this time..." I was staring intently at her now, as she pulled her jean above her slender hips. " ...you are in my house screwing some guy on my bed, what is wrong with you" I yelled, "I should call the police, because this would most definitely qualify as breaking and   entering!"

  I removed my gaze from her and over to the  scraggly haired man, he looked as confused as I was, he still sat on the bed scratching his untamed beard that touched his chest. He held a goofy smile on his face. I looked back at my sister. Jessica stared back at me from where she stood on the opposite corner of the room. I could see the embarrassment in her eyes, she saw this too, so she quickly transformed that into anger.

  "How dare you threaten to call the police! Shit, I've already apologized, and He is not a stranger, He's my fiance"

  I gave the man a closer look. He looked as if he hadn't taken a bath in days, and there were numerous needle scars on both his arms.

His body tweaked from time to time, no doubt in my mind that he was strung out on drugs. He stared back and me. 

"Hi, the name's Jason" He said with an outstretched arm inching closer to me while still on the bed. My head was spinning out of control.

  I ignored his hand and looked at my sister "I don't care if he is your God, get him off my bed." I said reaching for the sheets on the bed,they needed to be washed three times over.The horrid looking man got off the bed and began looking around the room. 

  "They're on the couch" I mumbled, still lost and trying to comprehend what I had just witnessed. He walked past me to retrieve his jeans and I got a whiff of his horrific stench. Those sheets were most definitely going in the trash.

  "You know what?!" Jessica yelled at me from her corner. I ignored her, but knew she was going to continue regardless,"you are a bitch?" she said right on cue

  "Excuse me..." my words came out in an exasperated screech, "...you were the one who came into my home, and decided to have sex with a guy, I'm sure you found on the streets somewhere, on my marriage bed, and now you have the nerve, the audacity to call me a bitch..", I inched closer to her with each word I said "let me tell you something Jes, if you weren't my sister, you and your "so called" fiance would be sitting in a jail cell right now!"

  I was now no more than an inch away from her. We were staring intently into each other's eyes, then a huge smile spread across her face. I got my left hand ready to slap her, when a loud bang came from the living room.

  We both stared at each other, the feeling of fear replaced the anger. Hand in hand, we creeped into the living room  to find Jessica's fiance spread out on the floor with an appearent bullet wound in his chest. Jessica screamed, left my side and ran to where his lifeless body lay on my living room floor. She tightly held on to him while stroking his forehead. I scanned the room to make sure the attacker was not still here.The front door was wide open, I must have forgotten to lock it. There were muddy shoe tracks that began at the door railing and ended at the foot of Jes's fiance. This was personal. 

  "Check his vitals Jes" 

  "I did" she said solemnly

  I picked up the phone and began to dial 911 when Jessica leaped from where she knelt on the floor and slapped the phone from my hand.I looked down at the dismembered phone on the floor then moved my gaze to Jessica. She held this wild look on her face, her dreads were sticking out in every direction, and her almond colored skin had gotten about three shades lighter. It was a bit frightening. I moved back a bit and began to say something when she interrupted me

  "Listen to me, his truck is parked out front" she said pointing at her fiance's limp body,"all I need is a decoy, a distraction, while I move his him"

  I was shocked, "Move him? Jessica what in the world is going on here? We have to call the police! He's DEAD!" She wasn't even listening to me, her mind was some where else. She looked at me again and began rambling

  "Look Lindsey," my name came out with a snarl "you don't have the slightest idea what is going on here, this is serious, not some childish game."she was staring intensely at me and her eyes had turned red

  "Jessica, tell me what's going on?"I asked in the calmest voice I could conjure

  "You wouldn't understand, plus it'll take too long to explain. Just trust me when I say that you do not want to get the police involved. Ha! they probably did this."

  I opened my mouth to ask another question, but she left my side and ran out of the room. I stood there trying with all my will to process what was going on.There was a dead man in my laying on my living room floor. The only logical thing to do was to call the police. I tryed to keep calm, but there was a dead man in my house!.

  I retrieved the pieces of the phone from the floor and began to call the police, but for some odd reason I ended up with Steven's voice on the other end of the reciever.

  "Babe?" he sounded agitated

  He didn't like it when I called him while he was at work, it was strictly reserved for emergencies only. I glanced at the lifeless man on the carpet and decided that this would qualify as an emergency.

  "Yes hun, you need to get down here fast, I'm afraid I can't say anymore than that over the phone."

  "Is this an emergency?"

  "Yes, I wouldn't call if it wasn't" I replied

  "Okay, I'll be there soon" he said

  As I laid the phone back in its resting place, Jessica made her way into the living with my bedspread bundled under her left arm. She looked at me with a frazzled look plastered across her face.

  "Who was that?" She asked with her eyes bouncing from the phone   to me.

  "Steven" I mumbled staring at phone, I didn't want to look at her. I still couldn't comprehend my feelings. My entire body felt numb, there was absolutely no feeling, it was an odd combination of shock and fear that left me feeling nonchalant about the entire situation. I looked up from the phone and saw Jessica green eyes glaring at me.

  "What?!" I spat at her

  "What did you tell him?"

  "None of your damn business" I spat out again, "I need you to figure out how you are going to get this body out of here!"

  "What do you think I'm doing"

  "Standing around, looking at me is what you're doing." I could see Jessica's eyes fill with fury when I said those last words. She walked slowly to where I stood by the kitchen counter until we were nose to nose.

  "You really think you're better than me, don't you" the last two words escaped her lips with a growl.

  I didn't respond, she continued.

  "You think your life is perfect and mine is a piece of shit, well I have news for you Linds, I'll would never trade my life in for yours, because unlike Mom and Dad and everyone else you're fooling, I know how miserable you truly are." With that she backed up and walked away. I stood there in a daze, I thought about what she said and how right

she was, I thought about the dead body in my living room that wasn't getting the amount of attention that it should be.

  I looked down at his, the hole in his chest had created a pool of blood on the semi-new ivory carpet we bought for nearly half a months rent. I stared at it and wondered if Stanley's Steamers would remove the stain without any questions. Jessica came back into the room with my discarded bedspread  in hand. It still reeked of her ex-fiance. She spread the sheets on the floor and began rolling his limp body onto the sheets. She stopped mid way and looked up.

  "Well, are you gonna help me or what?"

  I looked at her, looked up at the ceiling and let out a sigh, then knelt down beside her on the floor.

  His blood had already soaked through the ivory carpet so I decided that we should go ahead and wrap him in it.

  After we'd gotten him discreetly wrapped in the carpet we realized that we still had a huge problem. There was an appearent blood stain, the size of Texas in the middle of the bundle. There was no way we were going to get the body into the truck without getting caught. We were in the middle of urban New Castle, people were swarming everywhere. I looked over at Jess and knew she was thinking the same thing. I watched as my sister got up and went into the kitchen, came back with my meat tenderizer, a bottle of 409, the dish detergent and a kitchen towel. I starred at the items then quietly turned away. She knelt back beside me on the ground. Ten minutes later the stain had completely disappeared.

   "Do you think I could save the carpet, we paid a lot of money for it" I said in a timid voice, surprising myself.

  "No! they have things out now that will still detect the blood." she retorted, not bothering to look at me.

  His body was extremely heavy. Jessica held his shoulder, while I carried him by the legs. We carried him past the couch, beyond the kitchen, out of the small apartment, down the stairs, where old Mrs. Green gave us both her suspicious eye. Jessica gave me a questioning look.

  "She looks at everyone like that, trust me" I said in an attempt to reassure her, why i did it, I'm not quite sure. My basic instincts kept screaming at me, telling me to drop this body, run back into the apartment and call the police. But I didn't do that. I continued down the stairs with Jessica, until we reached the truck. The truck was red, torn down and beat up. I could'nt even belive that the ignition would still be running in the condition that it was in.

   We dumped the body in the bed of the trunk in complete silence. Soon the entire body, along with my carpet, was hidden. We jumped down from the truck and collapsed at the rear of the car. I closed my eyes and let the heat of the retiring sun hit my face.

  "You need to forget about this.. that any of this happened. This would be so much easier if you did" Jessica said from beside me.

  "Oh so you want me to forget that you broke into my house to have sex with a bum, only for him to be shot and killed fifteen minutes later in my living room, you're fucking crazy Jes you know that? You're INSANE!" I yelled.

  With that silence bestowed upon us again. When I opened my eyes I saw Steven's silver jaguar driving towards us. I looked over at Jessica,  she was extremely pale and was shaking, I knew what she needed. She looked over at me and her eyes got  big.

 "We could make this so much easier Linds, you know this" She said almost out of breath.

  I sighed and let out a deep breath. I picked myself up from the ground, while Steven pulled into the driveway.I offered my hand to Jess. Her palm was sweaty and she could barely stand still when she got up.

  "You said you got off that stuff" I whispered into her ear as Steven approached us.