Inspired by prompt OLWG#417- If you hold a match to a candle, it will burn
Her name was Belmeta or Almeta or something like that- Donna told me she wasn’t sure. Honestly she said, she had ever been sure of her classmate’s name.
” She was this scuzzy looking kid that was in my class in the 5th grade. She had a desk in the back of the room- and she was always last in line when we went to the library or gym or recess. I think she used to steal food from where we kept our lunches in the coat room. Even the teacher want to have anything to do with her. Like I said, she was scuzzy.”
” That’s pretty damn sad, ” I said ” poor kid “.
Donna’s lip curled and she looked at me she looked right into my eyes and said again with venom oozing from her lips like a poisonous snake trying to rid itself of excess poison ” she was scuzzy. She smelled like rotten eggs- that’s what she smelled like rotten eggs rotting away in an over flowing litter box and her teeth were bad.”
Donna Helmstead was our State’s only woman on death row and I was her guard and on her last day of her life she copped to a murder she said she she committed when she was 11 years old.
I didn’t believe her talk about the classmate- she denied killing her son and daughter. She denied killing her own brother. But before they put the needle in her arm, she told me about a murder that nobody had ever heard of- I grew up in this town, just like Donna and I never heard of a kid that went missing and was found murdered.
That was the murder she says was hers and hers alone and she wanted to confess to it. I figured it was her way of saying she was guilty, but not really guilty.
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Donna told me she did the deed on a school field trip.
At the end of the school year each grade took a field trip – the older kids got to go to places like Maclure Park.
They’d ride their bikes ( or they took the school bus- like Donna did because she didn’t have a bike ) to the Pier 12 and catch the ferry to Hatley Island and then they’d ride their bikes to Maclure Park and spend the day on the beach with a Park Ranger exploring the tidal pools and ticking off the animals and plants in their log books that they had decorated in art class.
The murder, the one that I really doubt took place, happened on the bridge over the train tracks that led down to the beach.
Donna said she thought she was the first to have gotten up the steps and was going to be first to cross the bridge to the beach when she saw Belmeta or Almeta (whatever her name was ) just ahead of her leaning against the railing.
Almeta had been looking down and Donna said she was surprised- first of all because Almeta – or Belmeta, Donna said she thought her last name was Grimsted- was not at the back of the line slithering around the edges of the class the way she always did.
Donna said she wondered what her classmate was looking at and she joined her at the railing and then she looked down.
Below was nothing but rocks- dark, barnacle covered black jagged rocks.
” What are you looking at? ” Donna said she asked.
” The dead body.”
Donna shoved Almeta aside. Donna said she remembered how her heart raced it was zipping around in her chest just like it did on Christmas morning and she saw their tree in the living room engulfed in packages wrapped in Christmas paper and trussed up with ribbons and bows.
” There’s no dead body you liar!” Donna yelled. ” YOU SCUZZY LIAR!”
Almeta put her face up to Donna’s and Donna could taste her smell- that rotten egg smell in her mouth ” Go on Donna, if you want it put one there. Do it Donna.”
Donna and Almeta could hear their classmates pounding their way up the metal stairs. ” Now Donna. Do it- now. You know you want to do it Donna, you want it so bad and I want to give this to you. From now on it gets easier, I promise ”
So Donna said she reached out and pushed Almeta over the railing and then she watched her fall and hit the rocks below. ” She busted open like a pinata. It was glorious.”
Mexico vintage monochrome seamless pattern with papier-mache pinata with bridle, sun with twised round, simple small decorative elements on black background, vector illustration
After Donna said that, I could have saved the state and choked the life out of her, but I’m a professional. So I didn’t. I just kept listening.
” I took one more look and then I went down to the beach and had a great day. Like I said, nobody asked about whatever her name was because they never did. But I figured when they counted noses before we left for the ferry dock, they’d know we were one kid short. The thing of it was- you know when they counted noses like I knew they would we weren’t short because when I got on the bus she was there- sitting on the bench seat in the very back of the bus. She waved at me. Nobody noticed her of course. Nobody ever noticed her-
except for me.”
Donna got the needle as planned and I even went to her funeral because nobody else was going- I mean the Funeral Director who handled her remains was there and the receptionist from the cemetery – because nobody gets buried around her with only the grave diggers to see them off to the next world.
After the rent-a-minister said a few words, we were all saying goodbye when I saw a little girl sitting on a memorial bench a few yards away from us.
She waved at me and smiled.
I waved back and I thought I heard- no I knew I heard, the bell at the school a few blocks away calling it’s students back to class.