Saturday, July 9, 2016

A Simple Life



Jake stood frozen in his kitchen staring at the corner. Actually, Jake was staring at Isaac, his roommate who was sitting on the white-tiled floor against the wall, and Jake noticed that his headache was coming back.

Isaac was propped up with his back in the corner, his legs straight out in front and slightly spread, his hands on the floor to his sides, and his chin on his chest, eyes open, like he was staring down at the floor in front of him.

At first, Jake had thought, it was a gag. Isaac wasn’t particularly serious but this kind of a prank was way beyond his usual sense of humor. For a moment Jake thought maybe Isaac was trying to lighten up a bit more and this was his big break-through moment. The new Isaac. But that was only for a moment. No, you don’t just leap from “pull my finger" to "dead roommate" without trying out a couple things in between.

Well, that. and the knife handle sticking out of Isaac’s chest, the pallor of his face, the foamy blood from his mouth and nose, and the lack of breathing for this long. No, this was way too advanced for the Isaac he knew.

So, not a prank, then what? Jake heard kids playing in the backyard next door through the open back door. He twisted around, shoved the door shut, and turned back to look again at his ex-roommate.

Suicide? Mmmm. Isaac was not the funnest guy, but he hadn't seemed depressed to Jake, who was, or had been, a Psych Major. This was the second semester of his sophomore year and Jake had been thinking about switching to Dramatic Arts. He'd told his parents that he'd become interested in acting, deeply interested, after seeing Kevin Spacey in a production of Our Town over winter break, but really it was because most of the girls he'd met in the psych program were either too smart or too troubled and serious for him. Jake tried to live a simple life and he saw such considerations as worthy of concern. At any rate, he'd been to enough classes to learn a few of the signs of depression and Isaac hadn't shown any of them. Although, truthfully, he hadn't spent a lot of time with him.

Jake looked around the room. Everything was in its place, no half-empty whiskey bottles and no suicide notes lying around. It was sunny out and as far he knew, Isaac had been doing well in school and had an OK girlfriend, um, Silda, or something like that. In Jake's philosophy, that covered the major bases. It probably wasn't suicide.

"Wow!" Jake said slowly. That meant it had to be either an accident or homicide. A big tingle ran down Jake's back, like when he peed. Murder?


Or an accident? But he recognized the wooden handle of the knife sticking out of Isaac's chest. It was from the kitchen drawer. It had been shoved all the way in, only the handle was sticking out. That knife was his favorite for chopping vegetables on the rare occasions when he cooked a meal to impress someone. It was a chef's knife and it was pretty big, 6 or 7-inch blade, big. 

He could understand falling forward onto a 6" knife and planting it all the way in, but not accidently driving it in from the front and then falling backward. That would take some insane determination and that didn't fit with Isaac. He was way more laid back than that.

That left just--you know--murder. The heeby-jeeby feeling passed over Jake as he wondered if "the murderer" was still in the house, like in a movie. He listened closely and quickly decided that nobody'd stick around this place after they'd stabbed somebody like Isaac. There wasn't anybody tearing the place apart looking for money or drugs or secret plans. What other reasons were there for killing somebody? There wasn't anything here that people would kill for.

So what had happened? Who knows? A jealous ex-boyfriend of Silda's? Somebody from Isaac's past finally caught up with him. Maybe a crazy person or a druggy from the neighborhood broke in, was surprised, stabbed him, and took off. He'd read about things like that.

Anyway, it wasn't really any of his business to find out what happened. That was for the authorities and he needed to call them now. That was the thing to do.

He shook his head slowly. It was sad that somebody killed Isaac, they weren't best friends but still, he was an all right roommate. He moved to his right and took the receiver off the hook from the wall phone and reached up to dial 9-1-1. That's when he saw the blood on the side of his right palm.

He must've accidently touched something bloody in the room. Jake hoped that wouldn't be a problem.

* * *

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