The Cover Up

“Excuse me? You’re out of your mind if you think I’m confessing!”

I stared at my best friend in absolute disbelief. How am I the one out of my mind here?

“Do you want me to crack a window? Is the heat getting to your head, Anya? Because YOU just committed murder. Cold. Blooded. Murder!” I whisper-yelled, not wanting the neighboring apartments to overhear our conversation. My emotions were a raging storm that was seconds away from becoming a natural disaster for every person in this building.

Anya instantly lost every bit of color from her face, as if hearing the fact stated out loud solidified it in firm concrete for the first time.

“She wanted me to leave my wife and was going to tell her about us! I panicked, I didn’t know what else to do!” Anya was frantic now, her blood-soaked hands running through her long, dark hair as she began pacing her living room floor– still being careful to step around the dead body where blood was beginning to pool. She looked at me with terror-filled eyes, like an animal cornered with no way out.

“I’m not kidding, Kris, I seriously need your help. You got my back, right?”

My stomach tightened with anxiety; that heavy, burning feeling you get when you know something bad is coming but you can’t do a damn thing to stop it. My blurring vision and the increasingly rapid spinning of the room was starting to make me nauseous. The walls seemed like they were getting smaller and smaller by the second. I knew she wasn’t kidding, that was what made all of this so bad– the true severity of it all.

I truly don’t know where today went wrong. If you had told me when I woke up this morning that I would be stuck deciding whether to be a felon or an upstanding citizen, I would have laughed in your face. Now I’m here, wondering if the woman whom I’d considered my sister for most of my life, had planned this heinous act or if it had been a crime of passion.

“Anya. . . I’m only going to ask you this once. Did you plan this? I mean, did you know that she was going tell your wife about the affair? Is that why you killed her?” My questions were spilling out quicker than Anya could answer. She tried, but I continued to allow my anxiety to bombard her.

“Why do I always get roped into every one of your bad decisions, Anya? I mean, it never fails, you do something stupid, I bail you out, you thank me, the cycle repeats– it’s like a broken record! Although, I will say that THIS takes the cake.” My voice was getting louder, my blood pressure simultaneously getting higher.

“I know, I know! Don’t you think I know how bad this is! Of course I didn’t plan this Kris, I just have too much to live for to go to jail. And so do you! If anyone finds out you were here today, you’re an accomplice. Neither one of us can afford that.” Anya continued to try and reason with me while my mind intentionally disassociated somewhere far away.

This poor soul had an entire life before today– before Anya decided that a stab wound to her carotid artery was better than simply coming clean to her wife about what she had done. Did this woman have a family of her own? Did she have children? What plans did she have for next week? What did she plan to have for dinner tonight? Anya knows the answers to all of these questions. I won’t ask because I don’t want to upset her any further right now; but I know in the back of my mind, Anya stole all of those things from her in an instant– all because she didn’t want her dirty secrets and wrongdoings exposed.

“I can’t go to jail, Kris. I can’t leave my wife all alone, she needs me! You have to help me get rid of this body. I know I ask you for shit all the time, and I’m probably an awful friend 90% of the time. Unfair doesn’t even begin to cover what I’m asking of you but I’m scared! I promise I’ll answer any and every question you have– just please, I’m begging you to help me.”

By this point, Anya had begun to cry. The worry lines in her forehead portrayed the sheer trepidation of being caught, her heart bleeding alongside the lifeless woman on the floor as she pleaded with me.

“Stop! I’m hearing a lot about you and absolutely nothing about the dead woman on the floor! Just shut up and let me think, okay?” My tone was more raucous than I intended and I flinched right alongside Anya. I was approaching overstimulation entirely too fast and desperately needed silence.

Letting out a frustrated exhale, I walked over to the couch to sit down and buried my face in my hands– wondering yet again how I ended up in this horrific position.

I know it’s wrong to cover up murder. This woman’s family deserves to know what happened to her, to know where their loved one is; wouldn’t I want someone to report my death if it were me laying in a pool of my own blood on my lover’s living room floor? I mean, sure, she was just as guilty in this affair, but that doesn’t mean she deserved death as retribution.

On the other hand, what kind of friend would I be if I left my best friend hanging out to dry? What if she did something even more heinous because I wasn’t there for her like I said I always would be? She wasn’t wrong when she said that I’d be implicated too if someone else found out and reported it. My DNA was certainly all over the place by now. I have a family that I provide for and support too; what happens to them if I go to prison?

No matter my choice, the guilt was sure to decimate my conscience and crushed me beneath it. I stood from the couch, squared my shoulders, and looked my sobbing, overwrought friend in the eye.

“Fine, Anya. What exactly do you need me to do?”