Oh God... What Have I Done?

Nick stood above the body, his breaths heavy and ragged, and his body trembling at the adrenaline that shot through his veins. The bat, now drinking in the crimson blood as if it were a man in the desert finding an oasis, felt like a large weight he couldn't let go of. His fingers were tightly clenched around the bat's handle, splinters finding new homes in his fingertips and palm.


He couldn't tear his eyes away from the body below him as the dark gold seeped into the old, decrepit, groaning floorboards; It was like the two forms of wooden structure had shared a similar thirst, and now he was the one giving them the satisfaction of a long-awaited drink.


When Nick finally dropped the bat, the loud crash as it hit the ground below fell on deaf ears; The only thing Nick could hear was his racing thoughts and his heart pounding. Beads of sweat appeared on his brow, trailing down his face and tickling the skin of his neck, pooling into his shirt. The only thing he could feel in that moment was the wet stick of sweat-soaked fabric against his skin; Other than that, there was nothing. He couldn't feel his fingers twitch, the way his body trembled, or the movement of his feet carrying him away from the man he had killed. His mind was still trying to pick up the pieces of what was now, what was going on after the impact, long after his body had moved on from the event.


“Oh fuck, oh god oh fuck! What have I... I couldn't have done that, right? What am I going to do? It's not like the police can find me out here—shit I can't think like that! I'm not a criminal, right? No, no of course I'm not! It was self defense! I... I can tell them that he pulled a gun on me! Yeah! Wait—dammit why am I trying to cover this up?!”



Nick looked at his victim, his green eyes now forever frozen in a look of shock and his mouth slack open, drool mixing with the blood—like it was escaping the body's mouth before it fully dried up for good. It was hard to believe that the person was alive just a few minutes ago, that moment of the bat's impact repeating in Nick's brain like a scratched record.


That sound—that feeling—wouldn't leave no matter what Nick tried to focus on. Whether it was the way the sunlight cascaded through the window, making the blood shimmer, the faint smell of iron filling the air around him, or even the weapon itself. That sound, that soft crack as it impacted the person's skull invaded his mind once again, looping over and over, refusing to let the guilt of what he had done fade.


His hands trembled, but they were no longer his—they belonged to someone else, someone capable of what had just happened. Nick let out a soft sigh, finally able to tear his eyes away from the body, and take in his surroundings; the old abandoned house. He heard the walls and floors creak and groan with age—it was like the house itself laughed at him. The smell of the mildew that clung to the decrepit floorboards mixed with the familiar metallic smell of blood, a horrid scent that made Nick's head spin.


Nick reached down, his moves slow and limited, almost robotic as he grabbed the body by the ankles and began to drag it somewhere else, almost as if he was on autopilot. He wasn't sure where he could put the body yet, but somewhere hidden, as if letting the body leave his eyeline would erase the horrific sin he had just committed.


It felt heavy, every tug of the person's ankles felt like another weight was being put on top of it, making it harder and harder to pull with each passing moment. Eventually, though, Nick did manage to find a basement; its staircase leading down to what looked like an empty abyss, nothing but darkness waiting for something.


Nick looked at the body for one last moment, seeing the person's green eyes once again as they stared into nothing in some unforeseen shock or fear. For just a moment, however, he could swear that those eyes were staring right at him. That... Couldn't have been real, right? No, no of course not, it had to have been just something he imagined; there's no way the dead could stare at him like that. Nick hesitated after picking the body up to dump down the stairs of the basement, his grip tightening on the dead man’s shirt as he stared into the abyss—what was he waiting for? He couldn’t wait forever, but he couldn’t make his body move. His body felt numb, it was like he was watching himself rather than controlling his own actions.


Eventually, he managed to push the body into the basement, watching it tumble down the stairs and disappear into the darkness, but the pit in Nick’s stomach didn’t disappear like the body seemed to, it only deepened. Nick’s footsteps as he walked away from the open door were nothing more but muffled sounds, his body continuing to move without input from his brain, and eventually carrying him outside. He felt the cold winter air biting at his face, the sweat that had seeped into his pores only working to enhance the chill of the cold that buried its way under his skin. The trees around him were bare of leaves, instead, snow covered the dead branches; it was calm and quiet—the exact opposite of Nick’s mind.


Nick’s legs buckled as he finally managed to regain consciousness; the exhaustion finally catching up with him. Nausea swirled within, threatening to spill over as his vision blurred. He collapsed to his knees, his fingers digging into the snow as vomit poured from his mouth, burning his throat and leaving a terrible taste behind. The guilt and horror of what he had done weighed down on him like a lead blanket, suffocating him. The bat, the body, the blood… It was all behind him now, nothing more than a distant nightmare. Yet the awful truth---that he had committed such an act---remained burrowed in his subconscious. There was no coming back from this, not after what he had done...