He stumbled backwards, a wheezing breath catching in his throat. With a wrinkled, shaking hand he felt for the counter behind himself and missed. Space was suspended for a few terrifying moments and time slowed.
The next thing Frank knew was that he laid on the floor, frozen with shock, and the cooled, bloody mess was soaking into his green cardigan. It was strange to him, really. The only thing the old man was considering was the fact that he could never wear this particular outfit again. He stared up at the water stained ceiling, took in the gray, subdued room.
“Isn’t it strange, Tilda?” He whispered to his wife’s body. “I would think that any other man in this situation…” He paused to clear his throat, ignoring the throbbing pain in his head from the fall. “would certainty be going mad, for they’ve just murdered the one person, the only person that truly loved them back.”
He bit his lip and released a pent up sigh. Outside the wind was teasing the bare trees, abusing at the house with it’s cursed yowling. Frank knew the only thing he had left to do was to simply dispose of his recently deceased partner’s body. But how?
The old man let out a groan as he forced his brittle body to sit up. It felt the same as sitting up from bed every morning, besides the fact that the woman beside him, sprawled out in a bloody array would never sit up with him, never again. All the soreness from a long life of hard work came back as Frank pushed himself to his feet and planted his hands on his hips.
The room before him was in absolute disarray. Just ten minutes before it had been a completely normal place. Now it was home to a crime scene.
“And you’re the wise ass that set it up, cracker.” He muttered to himself, reaching to turn on the tap.
It was an old, Victorian style home of three stories. Frank couldn’t remember the last time his poor, aching legs had allowed him past two flights of stairs, so the very top remained alone, gathering it’s own friends of dust and cobwebs. In the living room there were a few overturned chairs, but the rest remained as it had, with its tacky décor as Tilda had liked it.
But the kitchen, on the other hand, was in quite the disposition. The counters were liberated of any kitchen utensil, and all lay shattered and ruined on the floor. Itself, the floor was stained in blood, and littered with a woman’s body. Frank stared at her for some time, trying to accustom himself to the way her right shoulder protruded more so than her left, how her soft, gray hair was now in a hateful mess of crimson.
“Oh Tilda.” He whispered in a soft voice, weighed with sadness. “What am I going to do with you?” Of course she didn’t dare respond in so reposed a state as she was.
Frank hobbled to the window and parted the musty lace curtain. He remembered very clearly that they had been a wedding gift for his wife and himself. Now at the old age of fifty-five they had certainly seen better days.
Outside all things were normal. The wind made the day seem even more so gray, and the houses of the neighborhood seemed to be especially cramped. Frank winced, for at that moment he felt as though all eyes were on him, and on his sin. And panic began to set in, diminishing his strange calm.
He rushed back into the kitchen and began to drag drawer’s out of their places until he came upon the black garbage bags Tilda had, for some insane reason of hers, insisted on buying in bulk. Ripping one out of its package, Frank set about cleaning up his half an hour old crime scene in the wrong order of ways. His old heart complained over the heavy-duty work of picking up the corpse and shoving it into the bag. By the time he had finished, his back ached in the worst kind of way, and stars danced before his eyes. He set her down in the living room, not minding the fact that blood on the outside of the bag was getting all over the worn rug.
It took the man four hours to clean up the scene, including coffee and newspaper breaks, of course, to turn the kitchen back into what it had once been: a ram shackled mess. No one would know the difference.
Now he collapsed into one the of the cheap, plastic green chairs from the seventies and let his head hang back, sweat dripping down his wrinkled neck. He coughed a few times and lit a cigarette. God, murder was hard. Frank wished already that he had chosen a plastic bag instead of a knife.
“And for what?” He wheezed, taking another drag. Tilda had never allowed him to smoke in the kitchen, but that didn’t appear to be a problem now. “Why did you kill her, you cat loving pussy?” Frank didn’t know. Was he going insane? He sat still for a moment, studying the tiny specs of dust in the dull light from the kitchen window. There had been no reason, really.
He thought about all the stories he had read in the paper about murders. The killer had always had some damn fool reason to deplete their loved one, but Frank couldn’t recall one for his. He had simply stabbed the crap out of her.
“Alright, old man, you’ve gotta do somethin’ with her.” No matter how much he really, really didn’t want to, Frank brought himself back up to his weary feet, now visibly hunched over. He glanced at the clock and scowled. It was already twelve-thirty. He looked down at his clothes and sighed. There was no way these clothes could be cleaned up. His kaki, forties-style pants had dried blood all over the seat, and his favorite green sweater was crusted over in a thick layer of the stuff.
The stairs groaned and complained just as badly as his legs did, and Frank bent over, planting his hands on his knees at the top of the stairs for a breather. He slowly brought his head up and stared into the mirror before him. He was shorter now, than he had been in his earlier years, and his bare head resembled a rotten peach. Now, deep, blue-ish spots carved out the places under his eyes and his veins had begun to show themselves at his temples. The old man sighed and stretched up to standing. He shed his clothes and clomped down the hallway, liberated of man’s burden: fabric.
Frank sorted through his meager supply of clothes until he found an old, faded t-shirt, some loose drawers, a pair of ripped factory pants, and his aged corduroy jacket. He forced a smile onto his face as he buttoned his cufflinks.
“It’s the big day, Tils.” He muttered under his breath. “Wanna go swimmin’, or do ya want a big hug from the cold ground?” He wiped a spot of saliva from his mouth as he descended the stairs. “Ya know, Tilda, I always lived my life with no regrets. I think ya should take it as a compliment that this is the one thing I’m really havin’ trouble not regretting.”
The house felt empty. Too empty. Frank stood in the living room for a few moments, staring at the black garbage bag on the floor in front of him. A part of him wanted it to start moving, and for Tilda to rip a hole in it and climb out. He could see her, a wrinkled old woman standing before him covered in blood, mangled. She would plant her hands on her hips and give him one of her famous exasperated sighs, a smile surfacing just below.
“Frank Wichoswski! What in tha hell were ya thinking?! I ain’t ready to be dead!”
He smiled at the image of her in his head and waited a few moments, half expecting for it to truly happen. But it did not. The bag remained still and the house still kept it’s eerie, empty feeling. Frank slowly bent over and shoved his hands under the edges of the bag.
He could feel his wife’s limbs through the thin plastic and he shuddered. With a great heave, he lifted the bag up and saddled it to his right shoulder, spine giving a few painful cracks.
“I’m much too old for murder.” He mumbled, stumbling towards the front door.
Soon the old man was behind the wheel of his 1986 Oldsmobile, shivering in the late autumn air. He glanced in the mirror at the trunk, which refused to close all the way with Tilda inside. There had been too much crap inside, seeing that Frank’s exceeding laziness prevented him from clean the damn thing out. He had use a bungee cable to fasten it, nerves on end. Getting this scheme over with would prove a difficult task and Mr. Wichoswski didn’t have a clue as to where he was off to.
Frank turned off his road and poked his way through the suburbs. His philosophy was that yes, he was an old man, so he would drive like one. A person shouldn’t try to be something they’re not. He also had an intense fear of being pulled over. He was afraid Tilda might give him away.
“You ain’t a murderer, Frank, so why ya acting like one?” He put his foot lightly on the gas pedal and nudged down Sven st.
A sudden bump dragged a wheezing gasp out his throat, and there was a muffled clumping noise, barely audible to his worn ears. A glance in the mirror nearly stopped his already tiring heart. Behind the car, in the middle of the road, was the black garbage bag, torn open.
“Fuck!” He breathed, stomping on the brake. The car lurched to a stop two feet farther and Frank struggled with the sticky door for a moment before he was able to rip it open and pull himself out.
He hobbled down the street, head swinging in all directions for onlookers. Getting this body back into the car without arousing suspicion was going to prove quite difficult. He was just about to hoist the bleeding bag into his arms when the peal of a siren almost killed him with surprise.
...ugh. writer's block.