Bambrielle

I’m living back at home. Douglas, my older brother, is too, for a short while at least. It’s late, like 2 or 3 or maybe even 4AM. I’m pacing the living room.
Someone comes to the back door. I don’t know who it could be so late at night, especially since our back door is pretty isolated from the main road. I open the curtains, it’s a man I don’t know, older. I let him in.
Douglas comes downstairs, probably to see what’s going on because the Man is attacking me now and looting the house. I don’t know why I let him in, maybe because he seemed so harmless...
Douglas bursts into action, taking the Man on, they struggle. I grab something heavy and hit the Man over the head with it. He crumples and dies.
Doug and I look at each other, eyes wide, then we both move in different directions looking for assorted items. I come back with a blanket, Doug has duct tape and cleaning supplies. We wrap up the body, and I clean up the blood.
The doorbell rings. It’s the police. Ma comes downstairs in her night gown, rubbing the sleep from her eyes.
“What are you both doing up? Who’s at the door?”
“It’s the police," I tell her.
“Why are the police here?” She asks, moving to clasp the doorknob.
“I don’t know,” I say, truthfully. They’re no way they know what just happened.
Douglas and I look at the body still lying in the middle of the floor along with all the supplies used to clean up his mess. Obviously he can’t stay there, but what do we do with him? I pose this question out loud to Douglas.
We both stare a moment longer, then he reaches down and lifts him up. “Don’t worry, I’ll take care of him. You hide everything else.”
I nod, and grab all the cleaning supplies, running up to my room. I know its dumb hiding evidence in my room because that’s just going to incriminate me. But I don’t want Ma to get in trouble, so I think really hard about where I should hide everything. The closet? Too obvious. Under the bed? The same. In the bed? Now that’s an idea. No one ever thinks to hid evidence IN their bed so the cops won’t look there. I scamper over to my pillows and stuff the assorted items in between the insane number of plush pillows that cover my bed. Then I move around my room and straighten up as much as I can--neat people are less suspicious.
I come back downstairs as mom finishes up talking with the police. They ask if they can come in do a routine sweep. Mom says ‘yes’ knowing that saying ‘no’ to a routine sweep would only bring more cops down on us, and as far as she knows, we have nothing to hide.
They move through the rooms, slowly, and they don’t search with any sort of immediacy so they aren’t making a mess of things which I really appreciate. There are two of them and they wear all black with black motorcycle helmets pulled down over their heads so I can’t tell anything about them except that they look like they’re in shape.
I have no idea what Douglas did with the body, only that he hid it somewhere in the garage. I probably would have tucked it up behind the water heater, but I suppose that's why Doug hid the body and I hid the cleaning supplies. The police move through the kitchen and through the garage and find nothing. For this, I am pleased.
Next they go upstairs. They open the spare bedroom, it’s a bit of a mess, so they don’t bother going in. Then they search Ma’s room, nothing. Then they come to mine. They open the closest, look under the bed, nothing. I’m in the clear.
They leave.
Douglas and I regroup in the living room.
“Now what do we do with the body?” I ask.
“What body?” Mom asks, joining us in the middle of the room.
“We get rid of it,” Doug says. “Go pop the trunk.”