Patience only lasts so long. No matter who you are. Surely, even the Dalai Lama wanted to punch someones teeth out at some point. Every living being has a limit. A limit to how much punishment, physically or verbally, they'd take before they break and absolutely lose their minds. Everyone breaks in a different way. Some start screaming uncontrollably, some start swearing every bad word in existence alphabetically, others, throw objects like coffee mugs or toasters across their kitchens or living rooms, or maybe they just go completely mute and disappear for a few hours to calm their minds again.
A select few, lose complete control of their bodies and minds and do things so deeply disturbing, they regret it almost instantly. Good people can do very bad things.
It was a Thursday, exactly forty three minutes past three and it was hot outside. No bird should lay an egg in this heat, for they'd be cooked before they'd ever be born. Thirty four degrees celsius in a car with no air-conditioning out in the middle of nowhere on a desert highway, was considered less than ideal. By any standard.
Mark, a young man who had just bought a new house and got married to the love of his life, was driving a full fifteen kilometers per hour slower than the speed limit. Not because he was a law abiding citizen or scared of driving faster than that, or even because he was hiding something and didn't want to draw attention to himself. But because he was so deep in thought, that he'd have to find a metaphorical rope ladder to get himself out of it.He kept rubbing on his sweaty forehead. He had these stinging pains on his skin, like someone kept poking him with a bunch of needles. Probably the heat. He looked at his watch every three and a half minutes or so. It was one of those fancy ones, that could tell you the time, the day, the month, the year, how many steps you've taken, what your heart rate is, how many times you've pooped in the last week and so on and so forth. He was only looking at his heart rate. He was concerned because it felt like his heart was beating in his throat and it felt like it was trying to escape his body via his jugular.
Even if the air-conditioning in his car worked, he would still have all that sweat all over his forehead. He would still be a little bit out of breath. He would still be that deep in thought.
The sound of a gunshot ripped him out of his daydream.
"Fuck!" he yelped nervously. Thinking someone was shooting at him. It was the car, it was breaking down. He stepped on the accelerator, but nothing. He looked at the gauges, he was slowly going from one hundred and two kilometers per hour down to ninety, then eighty, then seventy. His car had no power, he turned it off while it was cruising in neutral and tried starting it again, but nothing happened. He slowly pulled over to the side of the road. Safely.
"I don't have time for this." he said while looking at himself in the mirror. He realized his eyes were bloodshot and moved closer to inspect it. As if he could diagnose the problem himself.
"Fuck!Fuck!Fuck!" he screamed uncontrollably while hitting his steering wheel with his balled up fists.
Today, of all the days that had yet to come, was not the day. It couldn't be. He kept on, for about forty seven minutes, trying to start the car again. He turned the key hundreds of times in that time, each time hoping, this time it'll take. There are many things in this world that frustrate an already frustrated man, but that felt like the worst of the worst when it came to frustrating things.
He wanted to give up, he almost did, but he couldn't. He had to make some other plan.
Because being stranded, on the side of the road, in the middle of nowhere with a corpse in the trunk of your car, has a way of crushing absolutely every ounce of hope that you ever had.
He had to make a plan.
He got out of the car and started pacing around it. He was hoping for two things at the same time. That someone would come along and help him, and that no one came along to help him. Both of those ideas scared him.
"Mark!"
"Huh?"
He thought he heard his wife call his name. He looked around to see her. To see any living being that had the ability to utter words, really. But no one was there. Obviously. He was in the middle of nowhere.
"You're in the middle of nowhere, get it together!" He whispered to himself while slapping his sweaty cheeks.
He had to make a plan, and fast. It was getting dark, and though he might have been able to survive out there for a night, he might not have been able to survive the inside of his own mind.
A guilty conscience is a hungry hyena.
It was dark. The sun had completely disappeared and the only good about this situation was that all the pretty stars were visible out there in the desert. But he didnt care. He didn't come here to stargaze and relax. He didnt even plan on spending the night. Especially not with a dead woman in his trunk.
He gets back in his car and tries to breathe deeply. One, two, three, four counts through the nose and seven, slowly out through the mouth. It took one full round of that breathing exercise for him to realise that this was not the time for silly meditation tricks. His anxiety had taken on a whole new form and breathing wasn't going to fix it. He needed to get rid of that body and get the hell out of wherever the hell he was.
"No, it's too dark" he whispered to himself while glancing at his watch to check on the old ticker. He had trouble with his internal monologue. He was conflicted. he wanted to just leave the car and run away. But he couldn't see, he'd never make it in the dark, he could die, or accidently get lost or a giant owl could drop in and carry him away.
"Don’t be stupid" he said to himself.
He obviously didn't really think the owl would carry him away. But that's just how his mind worked. For a split second, every now and again, every unimaginable thing was possible.
He opens the glove compartment and takes out a bottle of pills. It's to calm his nerves. It wasn't prescribed to him by a doctor. No. he'd never seek medical attention for being nervous. He knew he had to but he never wanted to let his wife know that he needed help, she'd just keep telling him about how right she'd been all along and he couldn't have any of that.
He was a real man afterall. He had a penis and everything. So he started taking the pills in secret.
She may or may not have been the cause of most of his mental problems.
She always said something wasn't quite right, but she loved him anyway.
Thing is, he never really wanted to marry her. She talked him into it. He said yes to everything he should've said no to. He clearly remembers wanting to leave her but he just happened to end up in a jewelry store one day, and the ping sound of a bank notification snapped him out of his daydream. And there it was, the engagement ring she always wanted. Right there in his hand and a huge smile right there on her face.
He often felt that she might have had some sort of invisible tool clamped around his balls and somehow controlled it with her mind.
"What have you done?" said his wifes voice again.
"Shut up!" he yelled at the rearview mirror. So loud that his voice made the mirror vibrate until the image of his wife's sad face disappeared from it.
He popped two pills down his throat and chugged it down with his last bit of water. He knew he should’ve saved some for later but he wasn’t thinking about the later anymore.
He gets out of the car and gets a torch from the trunk. When he opened the trunk a vivid memory of what happened played out in his head at the speed of light. Nauseous doesn’t begin to explain what he was feeling at that moment in time.
He wandered into the field to see where he could possibly dig a deep enough hole to bury the corpse.
“I’m doing this.” he said while pointing his torch at an open patch of ground with no grass or plants growing out of it.
He started running back to the car and got some sort of shoveling device from the trunk. He could only find a hardcover book.
On His way back his wife pops up.
"Really?"she says with that sarcastic eye brow lift thing she always does "in the middle of nowhere?"
"This is so unfair" he shouted, knowing she's just a figment of his imagination.
"I know you're not really here. Do you know how? You can't be. It’s impossible. no one knows I'm out here"
He breathes heavily while staring off into the darkness. Realising he just had a scream fight with the oxygen that surrounds him. One more tiny chip off the little sanity he had left.
"This hole isn't digging itself"
He starts digging, using the book as a shovel. It was a crap idea, it's much harder than he thought it would be.
"Your ideas just never work do they?"
"Oh yeah? It was your idea to get married, stupid, how’s that working out for you? You happy? Are you fucking happy now?"
"Just saying, if you're going to be killing people and ditching their bodies in empty open fields or in the desert you might want to consider buying a shovel. You can afford it now right? Big man with your big salary."
He jumps up and starts swinging the book around in circles through the air trying to beat up the hallucination of his wife.
"Shut up! I’m sick of you!" he shouted, causing himself to choke on loose spit and dust particles in his mouth. He fell down on his knees and coughed into the sandy surface of the desert.
"Fucksakes" he whispered. "Need to finish the hole first"
He picked up the book again and started shoveling sand like his life depended on it. Which it probably did. The book was useless. He threw it to the side and started digging with his hands. He had never done this much physical labor in his entire life. His hands were soft and his fingertips immediately started bleeding.
‘Shit!’ he cried, with a voice that said, ‘I’m about to cry because I just can’t take any of this anymore of this shit’. He was at the point of breaking down when suddenly, an idea rushed into his aching head. He froze as he thought about it.
“That could work,” he said. “Yes.”
He could just dump the body and cover it in soil and sand. There’s no way he’d ever be able to dig a deep enough hole with his hands before the sun came up, anyway.
“Everything out here is just heaps of sand.”
No one would think it looks suspicious.
“No one would know.”
He got up, grabbed the torch and ran back to the car, popped the trunk and looked at the body.
That vivid memory hit him right between the eyes again.
He remembered how hard it was to get it in. Getting it out and carrying it all the way out there might be a bit harder.
“Okay. Okay, I can do this.”
He put the torch in the trunk, got the corpses feet out first then pulled them toward him more and turned the body straight. His intention was to pick it up by the torso and try to throw the whole rotting thing over his shoulder.
For a second he thought he might be fainting as everything seemed to get brighter and more illuminated. So bright it drowned out the light of his flimsy torch completely.
Hoooooooonk!
“Fuck!” he screamed and it felt like his heart sunk past his stomach and into his rectal area. He dropped the corpse and a truck was approaching. There was no way he could hide it fast enough.
Never in his wildest dreams did he ever see this happening. He used to be a small time business man with a plan. He finally made something of himself and rose to the top and with the single swing of a bat he sunk all the way to the bottom again.
"Fucking truck!" he shouted into it's rear lights.
He looked to his feet. The corpse he dropped face down in the sand hadn't moved an inch. Naturally. He kind of hoped it somehow disappeared from his miserable existence. He bent over and picked it up with absolutely no grace at all. He was never the strongest man.
"You happy now? Huh?" he asked the dead old corpse.
"No!" his wife answered. You beat my lights out with a cricket bat nearly making my eyes pop out and you think I'd be happy?"
"Shut up!"
"You want to bury my body in the middle of fucking nowhere? You think that makes me happy?"
He throws the body down and falls to his knees. He starts sobbing like a baby.
"I'm sorry, okay?" he cries. "I'm sorry I killed you, I just couldn't take it anymore."
For a moment the only thing that could be heard out there in the dark desert was the sound of a grown man sobbing like a child who just lost his puppy. Almost choking on his own tears and dust blown around by the ice cold breeze, he puts his head on the ground.
"Why won't you just leave me alone?"
"Why don't you join me?" his wife asked. He looked up at her. She didn't look the same anymore. She wasn't the woman he killed the day before. She looked like the young lady he married all those years ago. Bright eyes and radiant skin, smile full of joy and ambition.
"Join me, Mark. You can't leave me here alone."
"No."
"Come to me."
"I can't."
"Yes you can. You know you can."
He went quiet for a minute. A part of him knew this ghostly figure was just a figment of his imagination replaying old memories of the woman he once loved. But a bigger part wasn't quite sure. She felt real. She sounded real. He didn't know how he'd live without her. He never planned this. Everyone will have questions. They'll wonder where she went. A wave of unpleasant thoughts crashed through his mind almost leaving him breathless. He'd never felt this anxious in his life.
"Fine!" he screamed, breaking the eery silence and jumped up.
"You know what to do, baby."
"Yes. I'll do it."
"Go get it, it's in —"
"I know where it is!" he snapped.
He started walking to the car, determined to get the knife he had. He wasn't sure who's idea this was anymore, but he felt possessed, as if he couldn't get to the knife fast enough. His walk turned into a slow jog, then he started sprinting, kicking up so much dust a grown ostrich could choke itself to death. He got to the car and ripped the door open, going straight to the knife.
"I'm coming,"he whispered. He took the knife and walked back into the desert.
"I'm coming baby!" he screamed and with one smooth stroke he cut his throat wide open, from ear to ear. Blood gushed out of him like a fountain, feeding the dry desert for the first time in years. He walked to the body of his wife and lay next to her. Choking. The dark blue hue of the starry sky turned to black.