A quick writing exercise

Writing words and singing songs, he did anything to take his mind off it. Nothing worked. There in the back of his head it niggled at him. He ran a bath, he did some gardening, he cooked some meat and masturbated but still it was there. Eating at his brain. He wanted a cigarette but he had quit. What a time to quit. The stress was mounting inside him as he thought about what he had done and what he must do. He couldn’t block it out now. He had focused on it for a second and now it was there. Prominent in his mind he could not escape it, but what to do. He searched the cupboards for a smoke, anything to relax his mind. He found a bottle of rum. He skulled it down, the liquid burnt his stomach but did nothing to calm his mind. He found a smoke and lit it. He went through it in just over a minute and was already looking for another. It would not do. He had to face it, deal with it some how. He walked back to the room. Slowly. Not slow enough for his liking. He reached the room and opened the door. He had hoped the door would block it out; shutting the door would shut his mind to it. He was wrong. He stood there staring, a blank expression on his face. He wasn’t feeling anything, not because he was emotionless but because he didn’t know what to feel. Maybe it hadn’t sunk in yet, he said to himself. It was a lie. He knew it was a lie. He could lie to everyone else but one thing he couldn’t do was lie to himself. Not while staring at all that blood. There was so much, too much. He would have to clean it. He had never cleaned blood from a carpet before. Why did the carpet have to be cream coloured? He was ill equipped to deal with this situation. He wanted to call someone, but whom could he call? He couldn’t tell anyone or he would have to kill them too. No, he was on his own for this one. He snapped out of his reverie and went to the shed to fetch a shovel. It was dark; it hadn’t been dark when he had done the deed. How long had he avoided it, and how long did he have before his crime was discovered? He fumbled in the shed before grasping the shovel and carrying it to a suitable plot in the back yard. He dug a hole. He dug it deep. Much deeper than was necessary but he didn’t want the smell seeping out, didn’t want the rain uncovering it. Hours later he dragged himself out of the hole and returned to the room. It was starting to stink or was he paranoid? He couldn’t tell. With the body gone would the smell remain? Was he doing all this for nothing? He had thought of saying it was an accident. He accidentally hit her on the head ten times with a ballpoint hammer. Who would believe that? Even he wasn’t that stupid. He had let her get to him and he had lost control. Not for long, just long enough to kill her and splatter her blood all over the room. He stood there staring at her lifeless body again. He didn’t want to touch her. The rug. The blood soaked rug. He wrapped it round her body and picked it up. It felt so light in his arms. A body shouldn’t be so light. He took it out the back and dropped it in the hole. There were no tears. No remorse. He went back to the room and scrubbed everything. Even when the blood was gone he kept scrubbing. He could still smell it. That rotting decay of dead flesh, it was stuck in his nose, even when he breathed through his mouth the smell still haunted him. Eventually he collected the cleaning rags and took them out the back. They too went in the hole and then he filled it in. He sighed in relief when the job was done now all he needed was a story. Something believable. He went inside and sat down. He waited for someone to come. No one did, he woke when the sun was high on the horizon. There was a knocking at the door. It echoed in his head. The alcohol he had consumed last night had given him a headache, along with the knocking was a ringing in his ears. All at once every memory of the previous night came rushing back into his head. What he did and what was dead. He got up and walked to the door, he creaked it open and looked outside. Police. His mind instantly panicked. How could they know? They just stared at each other, him and the policeman. The policeman looked down, in his hand was a jacket. He handed through the door and said something but the words got lost. He couldn’t hear a word of it; he just looked at the jacket that was now in his hands. There was blood on it, his wife’s blood. Oh cruel fate, he had killed her dog to gain more of her attention and had sent her out so she wouldn’t know that he was hiding the body. Now he would never see her again. Never confess his crime to her or his love for her. He hugged the jacket and something jingled. He heard it. He searched through the jacket and found it in a pocket.
A new collar for the bloody dog.