Getting+Away+With+Murder

My heart galloped through the skies that night. Back home. Back to what I’d left behind. I wanted to go back home desperately though I knew I couldn’t. It hurt so much knowing I’d never be able to go back. Why had I done it? What had possessed me? I knew while I was holding the knife to his neck that it was wrong. My vision was blinded by the images of him doing what he’d done to me, my family, and my life.

The evil git deserved to die. I just regret his life having not been taken by my own two hands.

I’d met him a few months before the incident.

He was stacking the shelves in the cake aisle in Tesco’s, wearing that horrible royal blue polo shirt and black shiny trousers. I’d foolishly allowed an ex-convict into my life and didn’t take the time to think of the consequences.

It started when my sister, Phoebe, met him. She thought he was the best thing since sliced bread, later on we were to find out he really wasn’t, but at the time we had no idea. I remember when he first came over. We’d flirted a little while I was helping him stack the shelves so he could get home sooner. His shift had gone into overtime. I asked him over after we’d exchanged phone numbers. He hadn’t told me what he did before working in Tesco but had mentioned that he was new there. We, Clark, Phoebe and I, went on the computer in my room. He put on a song that he found on YouTube and started dancing to it. He made bunny ears with his hands, bent his knees and swayed his head left and right in time to the music while flapping the bunny ears.

It was a good day in all. My family loved him. Looking back I think I did too.

I soon found out he wasn’t all he made out to be. He’d been driving me to work and saw a child crossing the road with his mother. He swerved across the road to hit them… That day I think I saw the other, more dominant side of him.

Things got worse after that. He started hitting me, ‘jokingly’ at first. Then the punches and kicks got harder. I started wearing foundation more and more often and more of it as time went on. I needed to. He gave me cuts and bruises that showed through a little smearing of the stuff. Eventually I was being called ‘Tango Queen’ due to the fake orange pigment on my face. PE was harder. I had to cover the bruises on my body somehow. I started getting fake tans to cover them up.

When the love falls, there’s not much you can do. He didn’t treat me right at all but I was blinded. To me he was perfect. I couldn’t see what he was doing. I thought it was my fault he hit me.

It was when he started on Phoebe I really knew. It wasn’t me at all! It was him! The manipulating turd-burger had tricked me into thinking it was my fault he was hitting me!

I dumped him after that. But I didn’t see the back of him. He’d sunk his meaty tendrils into Phoebe. I noticed her wearing more and more make-up. It was happening to my little sister, what had happened to me. He had manipulated her exactly the same way he’d done to me. Only I knew it and Phoebe didn’t.

It was when I was getting off the bus outside the house on my way home from work, conveniently there’s a bus stop right outside my house, that I heard her screams.

I fumbled when I was putting the key in the lock. I was scared of what he was doing to her. Had I kept a cool head I would’ve been in time.

When I finally got the door open and crept up to her room. The screaming had stopped… All I heard was the unanswered shouts of Clark. I knew it couldn’t be good…

I opened the door to a horrifying scene.

<span style="background-color: #ffffff; display: block; font-family: Arial,Helvetica,sans-serif; font-size: 11pt; line-height: 115%; text-align: justify;">Phoebe… <span style="background-color: #ffffff; font-family: Arial,Helvetica,sans-serif; font-size: 15px; line-height: 17px;">Phoebe was lying motionless on the floor… In a deep red pool… I knew what it was but I didn’t want to acknowledge it… I ran up to Pheebs… Screaming her name… Clark had a smug, deluded grin on his face… He knew what he’d done and he didn’t care. I saw red, literally. My vision clouded over, my brain thought only of killing him for taking my sister away from me. That’s when I saw the knife at his feet.

<span style="background-color: #ffffff; font-family: Arial,Helvetica,sans-serif; font-size: 15px; line-height: 17px;">I ran forward, not thinking straight, grabbed the knife and edged towards him. I dodged his swing for me and somehow ended up behind him. I took advantage of my position. I grabbed him around the waist and held the knife to his throat.

<span style="background-color: #ffffff; font-family: Arial,Helvetica,sans-serif; font-size: 15px; line-height: 17px;">“Give me one reason why I shouldn’t!” A foreign voice shouted. I guess it was mine…

<span style="background-color: #ffffff; font-family: Arial,Helvetica,sans-serif; font-size: 15px; line-height: 17px;">“Ha ha” He had a guttural laugh… It sickened me. “You don’t think you can actually do it, do you?! You’re pathetic, scum, go on, do it. Slide that knife into me. Then you’ll be no better than I am. You’ll be doing to me what I did to that sniveling sister of yours, sinking to my level. Are you sure you want to do that? Little Bitch!!!”

<span style="background-color: #ffffff; font-family: Arial,Helvetica,sans-serif; font-size: 15px; line-height: 17px;">And now here I am, on the bus, running away. I didn’t kill him. He was right. But if I go back more people would get hurt. I wish I had killed him. Revenge is a dish best served cold. But he’s serving it up to himself. He has to live for what he’s done. Guilt is the best revenge. I’m not a killer. If I was I’d be just like him. I don’t know what I’ll do now. I called my parents on holiday in LA, told them not to come home. I’m coming to them. I’m never going back there. Not as long as I live.

<span style="background-color: #ffffff; font-family: Arial,Helvetica,sans-serif; font-size: 15px; line-height: 17px;">Harriet St John 12JJ