Florida Reclamation Zone 2137
It had been inevitable.
Charles, if it is me...
So goddamn inevitable.
It started with Elizabeth smiling.
Smiling at a boy.
Smiling at a boy while he played soccer with his friends.
Smiling at a barefoot boy playing soccer with his friends. Soccer in the mud. Mud flying and spraying with every kick. The ball bouncing erratically, if it bounced at all. Sometimes it would hit a puddle and splat instead. When this happened the boys would laugh. THE boy would laugh. And Elizabeth would laugh too. Leaning forward, her blonde hair shining in the sun.
Charles, if it is me...
It continued with Elizabeth talking.
Talking to the boy.
Sharing all her thoughts, her secrets, the budding poetry of her heart.
The boy had dark, heavy lidded eyes. Proud brows.
His arms were tanned and lean and strong, and they would pick her up off her feet and spin her around.
Charles...make sure I get a box...
Then somewhere, maybe in the back of a abandoned car, maybe on a picnic blanket in a dappled muddy glade, maybe up against the wall of a corrugated iron shed, somewhere, Elizabeth was passionate. Elizabeth was unwary. Elizabeth made a mistake.
Charles... I'm afraid...
And then she was secretive, pale and nauseated.
And then she was dead.
...afraid of the gators...
The shot came at two o'clock in the morning. Charles didn't think he'd been asleep. It took him nearly an hour before he could bring himself to walk into the next room. He'd hated himself every second of that goddamn hour.
...I think he'll want to just make me disappear...
But an hour was how long it took him.
His father was still in the room. Or maybe he'd left briefly to get that six pack. Or maybe he'd brought it with him, when he'd walked into Elizabeth's room with the gun. The goddamn gun.
Charles had promised Elizabeth, so she didn't just disappear. He borrowed the money for the funeral. Borrowed it from the only sort of people who would lend someone like him money. And there was only one way he could earn the sort of money needed to pay it back.
Charles...make sure I get a box...
It was such a lot of money. The funeral director was kind, in a practiced, professional way. Said that at least she'd not been shot in the head. No need for reconstruction. A saving.
She HADN'T been shot in the head. Charles's father, slurring, sitting on the floor of his dead daughter's bedroom, had told Charles that he shot her where she had got herself into trouble.
...afraid of the gators...
This was precisely the moment when Charles decided that he would kill him.
