The Bloody Valentine (Old)

Celo Delecto

The long, ear-piercing sound of a "bell" tolls to signify the end of the school day. It was a pretty uneventful day, just the usual course outlines we get each semester. My locker is on the second floor, between two fat kids. A sign of things to come I'm sure. I'm standing in front of my locker waiting for the fat kids to move. Somebody calls my name. It's Mary, she is walking towards me. She pipes up, "where've you been man? I haven't seen you all day."
"You know how it is. Senior year, wanna fit in with the cool kids, can't hang out with a nobody," I say with a smirk on my face.
"Ouch. Hey you busy tonight?"
"I might be. Why?"
"Me and Patrick are going to see a movie, you wanna come?"
"Nah, I think I'll pass."
"Oh c'mon man, we haven't seen you since June!"
"I really gotta go."
"Okay, see ya tomorrow."

Patrick is Mary's boyfriend. He is on the basketball team, and he's an asshole. She walks back in the direction she came from. The two fat kids are gone, but I can still smell them. Or is that me? I look down the hall and see Ashlee Gatts starring at me, she smiles. She's blonde with mesmorizing blue eyes; she's quite attractive, but she's no Mary. I quickly grab my things and leave the school.

My father is waiting for me outside in his beyond dead car. I walk past the car, but he honks the horn and calls my name. He loves to embarrass me. I reluctantly get in the car. He just sits there. "Would you drive already?" I bark.

He looks at me. Great, he's going to give me a lecture here! He turns the key and the car ignites with a bang. He begins to drive off, silently. Okay, this is new; he has something up his sleeve. He begins, "John I want to talk to you about something. You see, uhhhh, there's plenty of fish in the sea, and uhhhhh, obsessions always end bad. Do you get what I'm sayin?"
"No shakespeare, please explicate," I say sarcastically. He looks confused. "Elaborate," I say with pride.
He goes on, "I want you to take down those pictures in your room."
"Fuck you!"
"Excuse me?"
"You heard me-"

A loud thump disrupts the argument. The car comes to a halt and my father exits the car. "Shit! We hit a cat!" He says. For most people, hitting a cat is no big deal. You just drive off and forget about it. However, my mother loves cats so hitting one is a big deal. It's as if a vegan ate meat or something extreme like that.

My father picks up the tender corpse and drops it in the back seat. I bet he wants to let it float down the river or something stupid like that. He's so lame. He gets back in the car and looks at me for a good five minutes. He creeps me out. As he ignites the car again it begins to rain. What a perfect way to end this perfect day. The rest of the ride home is silent.

"Stay here," he orders. He runs towards the garage, with each heavy step he takes a distinctive splash overwhelms me. All the colours mesh together and distort my plane of sight. With each step, the colours mesh more and more. I feel as if I'm looking at the world through a funhouse mirror. I snap out of it as he approaches the vehicle with a shovel. He tosses it in the back seat, on top of the dead cat, then enters the driver's seat. "We'll finish our discussion after we bury the cat," he says, then drives us to the outskirts of town.

There's a small forest with a river running down the middle. We find an open area near a bridge. We did not have to look hard to find it. My father hands me the shovel. "Dig," he commands. I begin to dig up the marshy ground. He turns his back towards me. He gazes out past the tranquil, dancing river and in the direction of the giant McDonald's sign. He begins to rant. "John, it's, it's just not healthy; to uhhh, you know? Why don't you get a hobby? I mean, Jesus John, you just sit in that room all day. Don't you want to do something with your life? Why don't you get a hobby? I mean, Jesus John, you're just wasting away and you don't care."

I sneak up behind him and smash him over the head with the shovel, then repeated hit him until his head no longer resembles it's former self. I step back and look at him. What have I done? I've killed him. I fall to the ground. The courts have little sympathy for a kid who kills his own father. Think dammit think! I devise a plan that cannot fail. I hit myself in the face with the shovel but it does nothing but cause a lot of pain. That wasn't the smartest thing I've ever done. I devise a new, better plan. I start running towards the police station, tossing the shovel in a dumpster on the way. As I get half way there I collapse. I'm out of breath, why was I running?

I finally make it to the station. I enter, staggering and crying, then shout, "My God, he, he killed him!" A young detective rushes towards me. He looks naive, all I have to do is pull the right strings and watch him dance. He sincerely asks me to explain what happened. So I begin, "My dad, he was picking me up at school but we hit a cat. We went home to get a shovel and then we went and buried it. That's when the murderer came! He killed my dad! He killed him!"

The young detective looks confused. He inquires, "Why didn't he attack you?"
"I don't know." I retort.
"What did the killer look like?" he asks.
"He was tall, very tall. Built like a tank, and uh, he had a hood."
"Stay here, I'll be right back." He tells me.

He enters his office and another detective follows him. They talk, but all I can hear is the slight sound of their voices. They often glance at me. They aren't buying it, I should get up and leave. But if I do that, they'll know I did it. So I sit and wait for them to finish talking. It seems like hours, but the clock shows it to be ten minutes. They emerge from the office and come towards me. "Can you show us where this happened?" The young detective asks. They seem to be more concerned with catching a murderer than worrying about a dead man. "Okay" I say. We leave the station and enter an unmarked cruiser. The engine starts and we leave the station.