I've decided since all of my most recent stuff was depressing and sad I would pull something else out of the barrel.
This is an untitled piece of fiction that I started working on a couple of years ago and never finished. Perhaps it is time to dust it off and see what I can do with it.
My mother gave me a lot of advice over the years; don't talk to underwear, wear clean strangers or something like that. I never listened much. But I'm pretty sure she never mentioned anything about what to do if I woke up in a church parking lot next to a dead body.
If it were just any dead body I'd call the police. The problem was this body was the police. Or had been. And the cops would never believe that I had nothing to do with his death. Especially since I had a record, and this particular dead cop was my ex, Kermit. And had become my ex after I found him in bed with my neighbor. I suppose it didn't help that I'd threatened to kill him if he ever came near me again. And it probably wasn't too good that 40 cops heard me say it.
Well, I thought,as I sat up and examined my blood stained hands, at least it can't get any worse. Oh yeah, I forgot to mention, that particular day that I woke up in the parking lot of the First Baptist Church was Easter Sunday and my father was the preacher. It got worse.
*****
Kermit Dale and I had met when he arrested me for assault and battery. I'd just beat the crap out of Lily Mae Wood for calling my sister a whore. Well Lily Mae actually never said the word whore. Her mouth probably would have puckered up and stayed that way if anything stronger than "golly" ever passed her lips. What she said was, "Star, be glad Stella ain't living in biblical times, cause they'd have stoned her for being a harlot."
Stella was a harlot and a whore, but nobody was gonna talk about my sister that way. I vaulted over the counter of the EZ-Quik where I was working and jumped on Lily Mae. Witnesses told the cops I was like the devil attacking her unprovoked. Unprovoked my butt. Lily Mae had been provoking me regularly since kindergarten.
It didn't matter that Lily Mae was 100 lbs heavier than me and 3 years older. What mattered was I'd turned 18 two days before so I was tried as an adult. And what mattered more was that Lily Mae's granddaddy was the judge. He said 6 months in the county jail would give me time to learn my lesson.
I did learn my lesson in jail. I learned that I should have attacked Lily Mae after she left the EZ-Quik where there'd be no witnesses.
What I didn't learn was that Kermit Dale was going to prove to be a worse enemy than Lily Mae ever was.