It's been getting hotter and hotter every day, so I was already upset to be driving in the middle of the day on a busy interstate. The air conditioning has been on the fence on whether it wanted to work ever since I got the car. I was miserable. I wanted out of the city and on a road where I could get gusts of air through my window.
I was not going to get a break.
"ROAD WORK AHEAD"
As brake lights on cars ahead of me lit up, I could tell the sign held its promise. Eventually, every car would come to a complete stop, only to move a few feet every minute or so. Sweat began running down my forehead.
"SPEED LIMIT 25 MPH"
"FOLLOW INSTRUCTION"
"FINES DOUBLED IN CONSTRUCTION ZONES"
The usual suspects were there. It wasn't anything I hadn't seen before; I'd driven through plenty of work zones. Orange signs, orange vests, black letters on reflective yellow plastic.
I heard a soft buzzing. I felt the soft buzzing.
"MOVE SLOWLY"
"KEEP EYES FORWARD"
I blinked. I don't know if I'd ever seen so many caution signs. Not like this, anyway. My neck became stiff, like I had only just became aware of the sign's importance.
I was on this road for… I think twenty minutes. It might have been thirty. It was so hot, it could have been only ten long minutes.
"MOVE SLOWLY"
"KEEP EYES FORWARD"
"KEEP FOCUS"
"WE'RE ALL IN THIS TOGETHER"
That last one. I don't know if that was a sign. It felt like someone said it from the backseat at the time, like a small voice behind me.
I blinked. Was the car in front of me always red? Was this buzzing always right above me? Was I going to be okay? These thoughts all occurred to me at the same time, and I had no time to process them. I had to keep moving forward. I had to keep looking ahead.
"STILL ZONE: 3 MILES"
"KEEP EYES FORWARD"
"TURN DOWN STEREOS"
"YOUR SAFETY IS IMPORTANT"
The muscles in my back were tight. A lump formed in my throat that I couldn't swallow. Rather, I didn't know if I should swallow. I blinked. What's going on?
"DON'T BE AFRAID"
"IT WILL BE OVER SOON"
"KEEP EYES FORWARD"
"YOUR SAFETY IS IMPORTANT"
"THERE IS NO LEFT LANE"
"THERE IS NO LEFT LANE"
There is no left lane. We all knew it. We all followed instructions, I know we did. We were all one breath, held deep inside our gut, waiting to be exhaled, waiting to be let go. There is no left lane. There never could have been.
"YOUR SAFETY IS IMPORTANT"
"STILL ZONE END"
"THANK YOU FOR YOUR COOPERATION"
I gasped for air. The ambient hum in the back of my head disappeared and I was left again in the summer heat.
The body of the human-like intruder laid on the tiled floor of my kitchen. I first hit it with my baseball bat because it was my understanding that I'd be the only one home today. I then hit it four more times because I had no understanding what something like that could have been. I struck it twice more when it tried to crawl away, afraid that I'd still be in deep shit if someone else saw what I had done.
Looking down at the soft pink body, I thought about how I could easily earn the sympathy of someone else. "I would have done the same thing!" No shame to be had here. But it was definitely dead, and it was definitely my fault. I ran through what the next steps could have been.
It was time to clean up the mess I had made of another living creature.
I looked under the kitchen sink and found a box of disposable gloves. Only two left. All I needed. I slipped them on. I grabbed a trash bag and re-addressed the creature. I looked at its arms, long thin things with chipped nails on each hand from its attempt at escape. I looked at its head, or whatever was left attached. I looked at its other limbs. I didn't know if they could be called legs, before or after the slaughter.
It wasn't all going to fit into one trash bag.
I spent an hour maiming the corpse, condensing it into easy-to-fit pieces; I hacked away at it with old tools dad left in the garage. Each strike was accompanied by mental preparation that eventually came into a mantra. "Hard day at work? I cleaned the kitchen. Of course I didn't have anyone over." Again. Again. Rehearsal.
Four trash bags, each filled with the body of a creature I never recognized. And now what? Bury it? This neighborhood wouldn't lose the chance to gossip about that. Burn it? It smelled bad enough dead, and someone would surely call the police. Hide it? Nowhere in the house was safe.
… nowhere in the house. But there was the second car.
I found the keys and heaved the bags into the garage. Fluid was starting to pool at the bottom of each bag, so I lifted them each to avoid causing a tear and a new mess to clean. I popped open the trunk, fit the evidence snugly inside, and closed it. I retreated back to the kitchen to finish cleaning, the process of which took nearly three hours.
Soon after, mom came home.
"Hard day at work?" I said, just like I practiced.
Mom smiled, clearly tired. "Not as hard as it could have been. How was your day?"
"I cleaned the kitchen. Nothing else new."
"Just you all day?"
"Of course. I didn't have anyone else over."
"Oh? Where's your father?"