A FEW MURDERS

Not even the tree had been there for Maria.  Its branch snapped the instant that it felt the force of her weight.  She twisted her ankle and scraped her throat; that was all.

For a moment, breathing absorbed her, as she felt her back expand and contract against the bark.  Somewhere in her subconscious a burner had been turned on, but it had not yet reached a boil. She licked her teeth.

The voice in her head, stunned into silence, snapped awake.  Her sister would be angry--she liked that tree.  At age eight she convinced their parents to not cut it down.  Too bad she had eloped with Carl.  Maria ripped the rope off her neck, yanking her left ear by accident.  At least she knew why he insisted they wait for an official marriage license.   

What had he done with the wedding ring? Sold it?  As she felt tears begin to leak from her eyes, Maria jolted away from the tree and slapped herself.  Unaware of her injured ankle, she kicked the tree until her lungs seared.  Warm blood trickled down her leg as she pressed her face deep into the bark.  When she pulled away, it left an imprint on her forehead.  She picked up the broken tree branch, rope still dangling down, hurled it across the backyard, and screamed.

Catching sight of herself in the window, she stopped.  She walked over to the table to read her own suicide note and shredded it.  She sounded pathetic.  Who was it for anyway; her brother John was in jail for her parents’ deaths.  Even if her parents had been around, the most they would do was laugh. They thought that she was funny. Ever since she was in kindergarten, they would give her alcohol, because they thought that it was funny. And now they were dead, and she was free, but wanted to be dead--was that funny too?  
Why was she crying?   Like eating a funnel cake for breakfast, tears of self-pity promised satisfaction and delivered revulsion.  She hit herself again. The tears stopped.

They would be at her family’s summer house.  Neither of them had money; it was the only place they could go.  They knew she knew it, but thought that she couldn’t stop them. Like the judge, like jury, they believed that John was guilty.

She went around the house to her car and got inside.  Before she started it, she opened the glove compartment.  The gun was still there.  That was why the police had never found it.   She began to drive.

She had accepted that this time there would be no one to take the blame.