When my friend Kay told me she had killed a man, I couldn't stop laughing. I know it was the worst thing I could do, her hushed voice suddenly mute with horrified shock as I grinned, then chuckled, and then, fully realizing she had just confessed a horrible guilt from her soul, screamed with laughter. "Tell me how," I gasped, as she stared, pale and still visibly shaken by my reaction. "I-I'm sorry," I choked, struggling to breathe, to wipe the tears from my eyes and cheeks, to turn with perceivable control to look at her again, which was impossible and set me off into another torrent of hysterical laughter.
"I'm serious!" she gasped. "I'm not kidding, I'm really serious!" It was such a helpless thing to say, so worthless to the moment, that I screamed again, begging now for her to stop and continue at the same time. "Please... stop..." was all I could say.
"I can't believe you're laughing!" she wailed. I could see the anguished expression blurred through the tears I kept squeezing out. "This isn't funny, you shouldn't be laughing!"
"Kay, I'm sorry... give me a second..."
It took more than one, or even a few. Not knowing what to do at that point, she handed me a box of Kleenex from her desk, and I took several, laughing harder: handing someone Kleenex while you confessed murder was such a Kay thing to do. I didn't secretly call her Special K for nothing, and she really wasn't letting me down today.
It took several minutes to compose myself. Kay would start to speak, and I would shush her, shaking my head and giggling, blowing my nose, taking a series of long, deep cleansing breaths. I had to be ready for this, after all, because at this point hearing too much at once could possibly kill me.
Kay and I worked together in a cubicle of gray burlap and gray steel. I called it a Hell Cage, and most days worked accordingly with a her-or-me attitude. Kay had a child she rarely mentioned, and the only picture on her desk was one of herself, a terrible Glamour Shots style photograph in full Merle Norman glory, hanging backwards out of the chair to show off some god-questioning angle meant to erase too many doleful years while raising her sagging breasts back to a pre-child anti-gravity position; the look was completed by a stretched waxy coral smile. The only other "personal" item in her desk collection was a heavy gilt-framed mirror on a pedestal, which was angled so she could see herself while she worked. Kay liked herself. A lot. She was one of those 15-watt bulbs that sometimes gets put into a 100-watt package, if you know what I mean. She had trained me my first day on the job to send a Fed-Ex package, something I knew already, and had informed me that Canada was part of the United States, so no "international shipment" applied. I explained to her that it was not part of the United States, that someone would have told me about a merger like that (and no one had), which led to a lengthy debate she insisted be verified by a supervisor. I did entreat her not to make this a public inquiry, solely for her own sake, and especially not from upper management, but Kay insisted we "get our facts straight." Needless to say, I was right. Please keep in mind, this is a true story and since I have never given a shit about Kay, really, I have changed none of the names to protect the guilty or innocent... namely, Kay, since she is the only name. This really happened.
I looked at Kay again, who was sitting now, her chair spun to face mine, her eyes harder, a little glint of anger to them. "Ok," I said, smiling, "How did you kill him?"
"I would like you to know, this isn't funny..."
"Oh yes, it is... it really is." I giggled again, disrupting the haughty little speech she had obviously pulled together in the silence to admonish me. "This is the funniest damn thing I've ever heard... and Kay, you know me. I'm not... laughing at you, darling," I had to stop, giggling to the point of getting to real laughter again, because I certainly couldn't finish that with 'I'm laughing with you'; Kay certainly wasn't laughing at all. Instead I went with, "I know how horrible this must be, and if I could stop, I swear I would... but I can't. I just can't." It was the best I could do. I really couldn't stop laughing, and Kay, having blurted out this confession to me, was obviously going to tell me the story, whether I laughed or not, in order to explain herself. "Now, how did you do it?"
"I hit him with my car."
Needless to say, I was disappointed slightly. Kay was so blindly stupid, and I could see this as a real possibility for anyone, especially for her. "My God, Kay," I said, able to stop laughing now, "I'm so sorry! Was it in a wreck?"
"No... he was walking."
"In traffic... a red light?"
"No, just on this country road."
I smiled again. The story was more Kay now, and definitely going somewhere. I was quiet, composed, and she started picking at her fingernails, continuing. "It was dark, and he was black, and I swear... I SWEAR I didn't even see him until he looked into my headlights and I saw his eyes."
I knew it was wrong, but we were at the top of the rollercoaster, poised to go backwards or fall forward... I knew falling forward would be really funny. "God Kay, that's awful! What was he doing when you saw his eyes?"
Of course, she showed me, miming some poor man's last horrified expression with her powdery white face, holding her arms in a scarecrowishly-surprised pre-splat angle, and I saw it all, the headlights, the unfortunate figure, and laughed only half as hard as before, the horror of the moment settling in a little as I started seeing beyond the story and more the real person involved. "Oh god!" I said, staring at her wide eyes now with more empathy.
"It was terrible... it was just terrible, I still feel that thump sometimes driving. I couldn't drive again for a long time."
"Kay, I'm so sorry," I said, and I was, not laughing now, shamed that I had. "How did it happen?"
"He was running across the road."
"To what?"
"Nothing. There was nothing there."
I was silent, taking that in a moment. "Did you give him CPR or call 911 or anything?"
"Oh GOD no!" she gasped, recoiling in horror at the suggestion of CPR, speaking before I had finished the question. "I didn't know what to do! I didn't have my phone, nothing! I went home..."
"You went home?"
"Yes."
"You went home... and left him there?"
"I didn't know what else to do!"
Even for Kay, this was incredulous. I thought about those stories of women who drive into some poor man and leave him in the windshield overnight, and I couldn't believe I was talking to one, much less working with one, and of all people, it was Kay!
"You... can't just leave someone there!" I stared at her, feeling a sense of violated social protocol. "I mean, you... you have to do something, you can't just leave them laying there and keep going!"
"I didn't know who he was!" she sputtered, defensive to my judgment now. "I didn't know where I was, or if there were more of them..."
More of them...? Christ!
"Kay, then what did you do? Did you tell anybody?"
"Yes, I told my husband! I got home and he was asleep, and I ran in and woke him up and told him, 'I think I just killed somebody!' He looked at me just like you are, and then he called the police!"
"He called the police on you?"
"I know!" Her eyes were even wider now. "I told him not to, and he said that we had to call them! And then he got dressed, and we had to go to the police station..."
"Did they find the man? The man you hit?"
"Oh, he was dead, yes." She seemed to be more interested in her adventure at the police station, and continued. "I had to tell them what had happened, and they were telling me I needed an attorney..."
"Kay..." I remember wanting to shake her. "What about the man?"
"The man I hit? He was drunk. They did a alcohol test on him, he was legally drunk. But his family..." Her eyes widened again, and her voice hushed a little. "Those people were sending me death threats, and we finally had to leave Grenada! Can you believe that?? They thought I should have gone to jail! THAT is blacks, right there... they even called me a white bitch!"
That was all it took. I was in hysterics again, completely and utterly absorbed in trying to catch my breath while she continued the story about moving here, and the job we were working, and how very few people she tells this story to, and that until she told me, no one has ever laughed over it.
That was the only part I found impossible to believe.
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Submission Name: Special K's Vehicular Homicide
