almost okay

Choking back the urge to panic, I rushed to Jackie's body and felt for a pulse along either side of her throat. No sign of a heartbeat, but the flesh was still warm. I turned her face towards me and tried mouth-to-mouth, even though I really didn’t know what I was doing. It didn’t work.

Poor Jackie. What was she doing here? How had she managed to find me? Suddenly overcome with nausea, I pressed a hand to my mouth, felt a slickness on my lips. I held the hand before my face, fingers spread apart, saw smears of purple lipstick mixed with saliva. Purple? When did she start wearing that color?

My mind raced to try and remember what had happened, but I simply had no recollection. Even so, it didn’t take a genius to figure out that I must have been the one who killed her. The likelihood of a third person doing it seemed pretty slim, even though I had visible signs of fending off an attacker. No, the killer had to be me. As horrifying as that thought was, nothing else made sense. And that would logically mean Jackie would have been my attacker. But why?

I looked around the room and it was only slightly more out of order than normal. I had always kept a pretty sloppy house, and even the sight of an overturned chair wasn't all that uncommon. But this was different. More than a few things had been knocked around and there were books on the floor - some open and face down, others face up with torn pages. I was always careful with my books, even when I was drinking. Shards of broken glass were strewn across the floor, and the floor lamp lay on its side, the bulb shattered.

I sat down heavily on the chair across from the sofa, held my head in my hands and tried to make sense of it all. “What was the last thing you remember doing, Marty?” The sound startled me for a second before I realized that it had been my own voice I'd heard. “Oh my God,” I added. “What have I done?”

I thought back, closed my eyes and tried desperately to recall what I'd been doing before going to bed. As I sat there searching my mind for some memory of what had happened, I spied the blue plastic casing of my hand-held tape recorder on the floor below the coffee table, half hidden under a book that had been tossed there.

That was what it was, I thought. I had been taking verbal notes, brainstorming as I often did late at night, hoping one of these days to come up with an idea that would land me on easy street once and for all. An invention... a novel... that one script idea that was so fresh and good that I could option it to Hollywood and become a household name overnight. Anything that would get me out of Detroit.

I couldn't remember what I'd been working on, but I did have a vague recollection of using the recorder as I sat on the sofa. I dropped to the floor and crawled through the debris towards Jackie.

My hand was trembling as I picked up the recorder. The tape had run to the end and was stopped. The ‘record’ button was still pushed in.

I thumbed re-wind and held my breath.

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