Storymania - Star Shining Masterpiece. by Bradley Grimes

Star Shining Masterpiece.
Bradley Grimes

“I just don’t believe it’s infinite.” she spurted out. Maybe she said it quicker than she thought it. How could anyone feel otherwise. Just looking at it proved to be a daunting task. Forever may it stretch forever.
“It is.” I reply. My comment is simple. But it is backed with strong conviction.
“How can something just go on forever like that? That’s impossible. Everything has a definite beginning and a definite ending.” she asks me. It would appear that a philosophical debate was about to begin.
“Lines. Mathematically speaking lines go on forever.” I answer her back. There’s sarcasm in my voice, but she has a point.
“Only in theory. The universe is the only shining example of that theory.” She always has to be right. And I can feel a fight coming on.
Sometimes I wonder if I fight back because I always have to be right. And then I realize how stupid the things we fight over are. And then I realize how childish I sound. How childish we both sound, and then our fight is over.
“Then what’s there? What stops it?” I ask her. I can’t see her face, but I feel it turn to puzzlement. I can feel her fighting for a rebuttal in that mind of hers.
“A wall. A big gigantic wall.” she tells me. I decide not to respond, because all that’s going through my head are sarcastic, dick head comments. “And it just stops.” As she says this I remember a story from a high school class. Allegory for a cave.
I roll to my side. The star light hitting her face proves my theory true. She’s just puzzled and laying there. “Well maybe your right baby. Did you ever take a philosophy class?”
“Worst fucking semester of my entire life. Why?”
“Well there’s this story, by Plato. Allegory of a cave. You remember?” She shakes her head. No. She looks amazing against the back drop of this clear, starry night. If only she acted the way she looked, things might have turned out differently. “Plato described this cave with people chained to the wall. And they’ve been there their entire lives. So the only way of life they know is the life inside this cave.”
“Going somewhere with this, David?” she asks. That boredom sound she makes as she says this is all too familiar. I remember it quite fondly when she went through her I’m going to flirt with every guy I see when I’m around you phase.
“No shut up for a sec.” A faint smile cracks at my mouth. “These people have no idea about the outside world, except for this single candle that burns. And the way they see things is through the shadows created by this candle’s light. So a book to them is the shadow of the book.”
“Ok.” She’s listening now.
“Their reality is based on a representation of something else. So the only way I agree with you, is like that.”
“So you’re saying,” she starts off. “that we’re inside the cave, and we have no true concept of reality because ours is merely an image of the truth?”
“You listened!” I put extra emphasis in there. Emphasis on the sarcasm most importantly.
“I don’t know David, sounds a little far fetched.”
“You never know.” I stand up, clippings of grass stuck all over my back. I brush them off and extend my arms down to her. “Come on.”
“Where are we going?” she asks taking my hands.
I pull her up and say, “I have something to show you.”
“I thought this is what you wanted to show me?” she says, also brushing the grass off herself.
“No this was just a warm up. You know. To butter you up.” I kiss her.
“Interesting. I don’t feel at all buttered.” She kisses me.
“You sure?” I kiss her again.
“Not at all really.” She kisses me.

It seemed to take forever to drive out here, but it didn’t seem to take long at all to get back. The drive was short. Maybe it’s cause we were talking most of the way back. If you asked me now, I didn’t know why I was going to show her what I was about to. I knew how she was going to react. I knew how I was going to feel. But I wanted approval for once. I wanted to feel good about something I did. People all along told me they saw how miserable I was, but I never listened. I was in love. I was going to marry this girl and have a family.
“I bet it’s a diamond. Big in size, and valuable in money.” She says. For the third time.
“It wasn’t right the last time you said that, and the time before that.”
“So a ring, with a stone is definitely out of the question?” I can’t tell if she’s upset or relieved.
“One hundred percent.” I rub my hand against her cheek. I wonder for a moment why I feel nothing. But shut that feeling off just as quickly as it came.

Climbing the stairs to my room, I can feel a certain hesitation about what I’m about to do. I’m going to be very vulnerable. I’m going to feel very alone. But that pain should only be temporary I tell myself. Jennifer is sitting in my living room. I told her I’d be right back.
I think about backing down for a moment. Wait for another night. She’s unusually overly unsupportive tonight. I know how I’m going to feel. But in the other sense, I need to do this.
I get what I came for, and head off back down the steps. I hold it tightly against my side. My masterpiece.
She’s quietly smoking a cigarette, watching TV. I gaze at her for a moment, and the whole good years of us come flooding back. Everything’s been so fucked up between us. I’m hoping this fixes things. I’m hoping she remembers why she’s with me.
“Here.” I say. I can feel the nervousness in my voice. I exhale slowly as she grabs the binder from my hands. That was the hardest part of the whole thing. Letting go of that feeling of stage fright. I pick up the remote and hit the mute. Some reality show is testing its latest victims, perhaps it’s better the sound is off.
“What is it?” she asks me.
“Few years ago, right after we met, I came up with this idea. I never thought much of it, it was like a story idea.” My heart starts pumping an extra beat per second as she opens it up. “Anyway. Couple of months ago I starting jotting down a few sentences, turned into paragraphs, chapters, and this is what happened.”
“A novel?” she stares right at me. My hand clasps itself shut. The last person on the planet you would want to critique you is Jennifer, yet I’m letting that all slide tonight.
“Yeah. I just finished it, a few days ago. I haven’t really edited it. But I was wondering if you’d take a look.” My voice is very faint, and the message very clear. I want her to be my first critic.
“Sure. I’ll give it a read.” she sets it on the coffee table and goes back to her cigarette. I look at her. Maybe for the first time with confidence. I want her opinion but I also want it now. She stares back up at me. “Now?”
“Well not the whole thing. Just look over it and tell me what you think.”
“Ok. Yeah. Cool.” She picks it back up.

I go out to the kitchen. I remember anytime in school when I did in front of class presentations, I sucked. I hate putting myself out there. It’s scary. Especially when you don’t believe in it. I wrote something I don’t even believe in.
“It’s about a guy and a girl falling in love. I sort of based it on us.” she doesn’t respond. I look back in. Her eyes seemed to be glued to it. I smile.
My refrigerator is packed full of things. Tons of things. I cook a lot, and always have leftover, but I don’t think I’ve ever eaten them. I buy new food and just throw it in front of the old stuff. My plan was to clean it tomorrow.
Maybe if I hadn’t been so messy none of this would have ever happened. I rummaged through until I found the apple I was looking for. Shiny, and red, and it sounded so good just then.
I look back in once more, and she’s flipping through some of the pages. Further and further into the book. I smile while I cut the apple in half. And then I hear a chirp. Or at least it sounded like a chirp.
It ended up being a giggle. I turn and head back in, and she is fighting a smile.
“What?” I ask her.
“Nothing. It’s good.” she says.
“You like it?” I expected a lot worse just there.
“It needs work. And there’s… never mind.” she says.
“No tell me.” I say. I set the apple and knife down on the coffee table.
“Well I can’t believe you actually wrote a whole novel.” She starts laughing slightly, and that feeling of success slowly simmers away. “I didn’t even know you had ever even read a novel.” She was laughing a little heavier now.
“Well what needs work?” I ask her. I could feel myself face, warm and red.
“To be honest the whole thing. You’re imagery is horrible.” she is laughing uncontrollably now. My stomach is churning and I beg for the feeling to go away. “Her hand was heavy. Her hand was so heavy that not even Superman himself could life it. Yet somehow he prevailed.” She burst into a new spew of laughter.
“I worked really hard on it.” I said. But it made no difference.
“I know. I know baby. And it’s good. And I’m real proud of you.” she sounded like she was having a pity party for David. But her incessant laughing continued. I felt like the whole world was laughing at me.
“Please stop laughing.” I warn her. But she continued. She quoted some more of my masterpiece. But not in respect, she was drawing pleasure from my misery. She dwelled on the fact that she was better than me in everything.
“If I don’t will you never show this to me again.” She said behind another burst of laughter.
Embarrassment, and anger go hand in hand. One can indirectly lead to the other. And as my face became cooler, I felt a new rage boiling inside of me. Stemming from five years of constant rejection. Our whole relationship seemed so distant that things turned gray.
The last thing I remember was thinking why I even wrote the story. Why I even cared so much to share how I felt with her. I wonder if all along I knew this would happen, or if it was just a mere coincidence.
For a moment things went gray. Then black. And then a wide array of colors seemed to take shape before me. Bright blues and reds. A quick flash of yellow and orange. And then green and purple protruded the scene. A rainbow formed in front of me. Right before my eyes.
I flicked the ash onto the floor. A bigger mess was going to need to be cleaned sooner. I exhaled, possibly the best and worst exhale in history. The smoke seemed to billow around me. Protect me. Protect me from my crime.
My girlfriend lay on the floor. The knife intended to cut the apple was nicely carved into her neck. I barely remember doing it.
“I only meant to scare you.” I say aloud. But it wasn’t the truth. I wonder if I wrote the whole story because I knew this would happen. I wonder if all along I wanted her dead. People like me aren’t in the right mind.
The blood still coming from her neck is creating a puddle on the carpet. It’s not new. Or white. So I guess that was two pluses about the whole situation. For a moment I seem surprise that I am optimistic about the whole thing.
“I just murdered a girl. I’m going to go to jail, and your sitting here discussing the advantages to the situation.” but it was a plus. The carpet was the least of my worries right now.
I head back up to my room, and everything seems so different now. More liberated. I want to sit down at the computer and keep writing. I feel inspired. Her death became my muse. I could feel line after line of well scripted dialogue spewing from my mind. Paragraph upon paragraph of the most amazing exposition you would ever read. Protagonists that swims in danger, and become better people in the end.
But morning is a few mere hours away. And disposing of the soon to be decaying corpse is at the top of my list. I grab a white sheet from my linen closet. I never had a linen closet before I started dating Jennifer, just one pair of sheets. Her affect on my life is now post-humously helping me, and I can’t help but feel a little sentimental about that.
Heading back down stairs, I look at my watch, it’s only quarter after two, but I have no idea where I’m taking this girl. Disposing of a body became a lot like a first date. Ironically, it would be our last.
As I wrapped her up, I took one long last glance at that face of hers. The one I fell in love with all those years ago. It looks bruised and bloody. Somewhere deep down in the bottom of my soul I know I feel sorry, but I have no time to regret what I did. Time was working against me.
Loading her into the trunk proved to be the easiest task of the next few hours. I hoped in the car, before I realized what I forgot.
I run back up my steps, I feel like a grade school kid again. I’m breathing easier than ever, and my heart’s racing. The whole world is against me right now, and I’m one man fighting for my future, I’ve never been more motivated to accomplish a task than I was right then.
On the floor is the blue binder. My dreams. My masterpiece. It too suffered some damage. Jennifer’s blood was all over page 67. And it seared through and got onto the rest of the book. I grab it and throw it under my arm.
Racing back out into the night, I tell myself, “She has an eternity to love my story. She has an eternity to love me.” Punishment for years of detrimental sarcasm.
My car roars off into the night. That same starry sky I was looking at only an hour before, I can barely see it now. Or maybe I’m just not looking at. Too busy.
Where am I taking her? I thought for a moment that same field where we were. But that is too open, too public. Not to mention everyone knows we were there tonight. The woods. It’s only two hours away driving at fifty five. We camped there a very long time ago. But I’m almost positive no one knows about it.
The highway was fairly empty tonight. A few trucks, but I passed them up and rode farther ahead. I glance at my speedometer every once and a while. 70. 80. 90. It was never lower than the time before it.
Driving that fast, with a dead body is a bad thing. And I didn’t realize how bad it was until red and blue lights starting swinging in the rear viewing. Violent reds, and complimentary blues. I pull to the side of the road, my first thought was hoping not to get a ticket.
“Driver’s license and registration.” He says. It’s a command. I pull my license out of my wallet and hand it to him. My other hand is covered with blood.
“My registration is in the glove box.” I tell him. My heart was pumping gallons a second, and my voice seemed creaky, and scared.
“Go ahead and get it.” He tells me. I feel like saying there’s a dead body in my trunk, also. But I find the strength to retain that comment.
His light shines to the back seat. I sort through my glove box, before I remember the binder was back there. My masterpiece. My bloody masterpiece is sitting in the back seat. But he shines the light back up front and towards the glove box. My glove box is filled with all sorts of scraps of paper that I’ve never seen before.
“I can’t find it.” I say.
“That’s fine. Hold tight a second.” He walks back to the car. The reds, and blues omnipotent, and a constant reminder that a cop is close by. I remind myself also that there is a dead body in my trunk. And of how close I am to the drop point.
In the glove box is a boy scout Swiss army knife. My gift from my father at the age of sixteen. I always kept it in there, but never used it. Be prepared. Boy Scout Motto. I tuck it gently between my sleeve and wrist. I see the cop walking back towards the car.
“Everything checks out. You know why I pulled you over?” he asks me. His maglite is shining right into my eyes. I wonder what he looks like.
“Speeding?” I say as a question. I try to sound confused as possible.
“That’s right. Speeding. You were going ninety five in a sixty five. That’s a four point penalty.” he tells me. “Would you mind stepping out of the car?”
“For?”
“Just come on.” he ordered again. He opened my car door for me. Very gentlemanly of him. I ran my index finger over the Swiss army blade. I could feel the power in my hands. I could feel the strength in the knife. Such words reminded me of God for some reason, but I was hardly doing the work of God. “What’s this in the back seat?” He shined the flash light towards the binder.
“A story.” I answered. I could see the blood that had by now touched every page in the book. The cop opened the car door. My heart beat slowed. I already saw what I was going to do. His back turned to me I thrust the knife into his back. He fell against the car and reached for his gun. I ripped the knife out and pounded again. I could once again feel the blood of another flush against my hand.
He pulled his gun from his holster, and as he pointed it at me I kicked his hand. The gun went flying into the road, never firing once. I rammed the knife again and again into his stomach. I saw my dead girlfriend again. I pictured her laughing at me again, and it fueled me.
His boy went limp. And I again felt the need to write. I felt like writing for hours and hours. About everything I saw. And also once again, it was hardly the time.
I moved even quicker than before. I loaded the cop into the car. His body was much heavier than Jennifer. I put him in the back seat. There was no time to put him in the trunk. And I wasn’t exactly in the most private of places.
His red and blue lights still rolled away into the night. I never bothered to shut them off. I looked out into the road and saw the gun sitting near the median. I ran out and grabbed it. I wish I hadn’t.
As I headed back towards the car, I heard the cop. He was coughing. I picked up his still shining maglite off the ground and poured it into the back seat.
“Hurt bad, I76. West.” he choked out. That’s all I heard, and I had no idea what else he had said. Nor did I care. I fired the gun several times into the back seat. No target, just general direction. And then I took off.
I drove faster and faster, further and further. It wasn’t for about an hour that all the cops started to appear in my rear view. At first it looked like there were two cars behind me. Then out of the nowhere, ten or twelve. Then twenty. And a police helicopter was over head. They were all after me. But I threw most of those thoughts out the window. I thought about a new ending for my story as I was chased. I wondered if my parents were watching. I wondered if they knew.
I drove far past where I originally intended. I had a new destination that wasn’t too far. I wondered how this was all going to end, but part of me already knew.
I’d murdered tonight. I’d killed two innocent people. To be fair, the cop was innocent. The girlfriend I had my doubts about. Nevertheless, I continued to run. I’d plead guilty in court for sure. Hopefully get life. Maybe worse.
A bridge up ahead overlooked the entire Tavis County Valley. A nice four hundred foot dropped ensued. I once read a story about a girl who came hear to commit suicide, and ended up seeing the beauty in this world from the view.
I stopped the car near the middle and jumped up to the side of the bridge and waited.
The cop cars came to a screeching halt in front, and behind my car. The helicopter circled overhead. I could hear twenty or so guns being locked and ready to fire.
“Stop right there pal,” someone yelled. There was so many of them it was impossible to tell where they were coming from.
“You fucked up tonight hos, no need to make this any worse.” another yelled. It was fainter than the first, so it must have been someone else.
I could feel the butt of the gun, tucked beneath my belt behind me. I’d go to court. I’d plead guilty. One, two, punch.
“You cannot kill the protagonist.” I yelled. “He’s the hero of the story.” I reached behind for the gun, but never made it. Bullets tore into me, and the wind was knocked from my chest. The parade of bullets made my knees weak, and I slipped under the pressure.
I could feel the wind blowing against me, as I began to fall. The sound of water running became louder and louder, as I farther drifted away from the helicopter. The bullet wounds ceased to hurt anymore. I felt the need to write one last time. But as usual, it was hardly the time. I face the sky on my way down. I looked back up at those stars I had been looking at only hours before. They looked different. Brighter than ever. I took one last deep breath, before I hit the water. I knew it was going to hurt. I knew it would burn. But I also knew it’d be really quick.