My Accomplice

My accomplice is silent about the crime we committed together.

My accomplice will hide the evidence.

My accomplice will hide our crime.

My accomplice will stay behind, to guard the crime scene, long after I’ve fled.

My accomplice is complicit; my accomplice assisted when my physical strength waned. When my spirit began to falter, my accomplice completed the task.

I owe everything to my accomplice, and my accomplice asks nothing in return.

I’m sitting in a small tent. The tent is sitting atop a frozen pond. There’s a hole in the ice in the middle of the tent, for fishing. But the hole is larger than it’s supposed to be. The edges are shattered and frayed. I’m sitting on a small stool, shivering. But it’s not from the cold. I can’t feel the cold right now. I can’t feel anything at all. And I know that I’m not the only one feeling that way. My boyfriend is numb and cold and unfeeling right now, too. Ex-boyfriend, now, I suppose. My accomplice saw to that.

When I had met him it had been so nice. A fairytale of sorts. It’s hard to meet men in a small town like ours, and he, with his warm brown eyes, soft smile, and round, but muscular features, was like some kind of fairytale prince. It seemed that way to me, at least. I wonder if he ever really had been the prince I saw. Maybe sometime long ago. Before the meth took him. But the man I knew, the man I went home with that night, the man I moved in with months later, was broken long before I met him, I think. He just knew how to fake it. Knew how to remember; remember how he had been before. The man I knew was splintered into a million shards, cracked into crystalline pieces just like his drug of choice. Just like the ice in the tent.

It had started out small and simple, as I suppose it always does in these situations. He didn’t like my friends. He didn’t like my family. Slowly, I saw less and less of them. It hurt his feelings when I spent time with them, that I could’ve been spending with him. Then he didn’t like my job. They were treating me unfairly there, and besides, he wanted to provide for me. There was no reason I should have to work. So, eventually, that gave way too. Before I knew it, I was never leaving the house. I didn’t even notice it happening, until finally, after one of the fights, after he got physical, again… I tried to leave, and realized I had no where to go. I didn’t know anyone anymore, and couldn’t contact them without him. I had no car, and no money, so I couldn’t run for it on my own. Suddenly he had my king surrounded, and I had somehow let him move all the pieces into place. I was trapped, the bridges were burned, and he stood there dripping in the lighter fluid he’d used to burn them, and there was nothing I could do.

It wasn’t always bad, of course. He had times when he could be caring. When he could be sweet. When he’d apologize for all that he’d done wrong. I’d believed him for the first hundred or so times, I think. Either because I actually believed him, or wanted to, or needed to. I spent a lot of time wondering whether the good times were him, until he’d relapse into the meth and the abuse, or if the meth was him, except for when he’d relapse into a functioning human again. I suppose it doesn’t matter in the end.

It certainly doesn’t matter now.

He had been on one of his kindness relapses, his good kicks, today. Which had made it that much harder. It felt like punishing him for being good. But I knew what awaited me at home. When I stood behind him, and saw him hunched over the hole in the ice, crouching on that tiny stool, it all fell into place. I realized that there was one bridge he hadn’t burned. One way out that was still open to me, if I chose to take it. And so I did.

It was easy. Shockingly so, when one considers the gravity of the act itself. I just grabbed the back legs of the stool, pulled as hard as I could, and in he went. He frantically clawed at the ice, but it shattered beneath his arms, refusing to give him a way back up. In the end, he found his own bridges, his own exits, being demolished. He reached for the ice under my feet, and I used the stool to push him under. He clawed and smashed at the ice, determined, if nothing else, to bring me down with him. But the ice beneath my feet held fast. Then, as his arms slowed, I felt a sudden moment of regret. A sudden, terrible fear of what could happen if I let him drown. But at that moment, my accomplice— the ice— took over. He slipped beneath the ice, and the ice held him there.

I’m running through my head, what might still go wrong. Will the neighbors notice if I’m gone? Probably not, they never saw me anyway. I spent too much time in the house for them to notice me missing, not until it’s too late. He always ranted about how they hated him, so I doubt they’ll be in any hurry to report him missing (He would always ask me “What’s not to like?” This was a trick question, no matter what answer I gave, it was the wrong one). No one comes out on this pond, especially not when they see this tent on it. No one wants to deal with the meth head. The air is cold, the hole in the ice is already starting to refreeze. The forecast says it’ll be cold for the foreseeable future. And winter’s just starting. My accomplice will hold him in the pond until I’m long gone, in some other state hours and hours away from here.

And when it finally thaws, when the spring comes and exposes him, then what? What will the police think.

They’ll think he fell through the ice. Which is true. They won’t think anyone else was there, he never took anyone else. They’ll think he was high, which he was. They’ll think he’s just another waste who got himself wasted, which, he is. My footprints will have melted away. I don’t have any possessions of my own, he didn’t allow that. So I’m no one. No one was here with him. He took everything from me until no one knew who I was, I had no identity of my own.

Which means they’ll never find me.

I bid my accomplice a silent goodbye, and walk towards the road. I took half the cash in his wallet; not enough to make them suspect robbery, not that they would anyway. I’ll buy a bus ticket as far away from here as I can. Then maybe I can get in touch with someone. Someone I knew before. Somehow, someway, I’ll find a way to get back on my feet.

I spent months in his prison, now he’ll spend months in mine.