Kyla’s Secret

When Kyla opened her eyes, she was looking upward at the room’s recessed lighting. It struck her as all wrong. Why wasn’t she in bed instead of on the couch in Corrine’s living room? She tried to raise her head, but it felt like it was filled with cement. She wanted to close her eyes and sink back into oblivion, but she knew that wasn’t a wise idea. She had to try to figure out what was going on. She struggled to sit upright and saw Corrine staring at her from the chair across the room. The sight of her filled her with relief. Corrine would keep her safe. She always had. And then she remembered. Through blurry eyes, she watched as Corrine rose from her seat and came to sit by her on the edge of the couch. “Cor-Corrine. What happened? Why did I pass out?” She clawed through her mind, trying to remember what she’d last been doing. She was at the table, talking with Corrine about her being a peeping Tom in cyberspace. She’d been sipping wine. Then she suddenly felt drowsy as hell. Shit. Corrine had drugged her wine, probably while she was in the bathroom. “Do you remember what I asked you before you hit the couch?” Corrine suddenly asked. “W-what?” “What do you have to hide, Kyla? Remember me asking you that before you crashed?” Kyla shook her head in confusion. She might’ve caught on already if she wasn’t so foggy-brained. “What are you talking about?” Corrine walked over to her computer as Kyla sat up and tried to clear the fog from her head. She glanced at the clock. It was late. “Come here,” Corrine said. “I think you need to see this.” On shaky legs, Kyla crossed the living room. Although it was only about twelve feet wide, it might as well have been twelve hundred. “See what?” Corrine tapped a series of keys, and then a video began to play. Kyla watched with sickening dread as she saw herself arguing with Meagan and then pushing her to her death before later shoving her into the large plastic container. Kyla’s hand instinctively clutched her chest while the other clutched her stomach. She thought she literally might be sick. “You fucking sick bitch. You knew all this time?” “That I did, little lady, that I did. But I also knew it wasn’t your fault. You didn’t mean to kill her.” You didn’t mean to kill her, thought Kyla. “So you were the one fucking with me with all your untraceable messages, huh?” Corrine didn’t answer. Instead, she said, “I’ll get right to the point, Kyla. I can live with what you did. I understand why you did it. Hell, I’d be scared to report it too, knowing how it could ruin my life even though it was purely an accident. After all, why should you assume the jury would believe it was just that—an accident?” “Why are you doing this to me?” “Like I just said. I don’t have a problem with keeping your secret. You’re not a murderer. You didn’t intentionally set out to kill the girl. You were simply defending yourself. I know that, and you know that.” Kyla stood gazing incredulously at Corrine. She was simply too stunned to speak. Corrine continued. “I meant it when I said I no longer cared about anyone else. Not since the day I found you. I know it was in a dishonest way, but you, of all people, should know and understand that no one’s perfect. Just because we have some serious flaws in our lives doesn’t mean we’re bad people, does it?” “Why didn’t you tell me?” was all Kyla could eventually think to say. “Oh, come on, Kyla! Why didn’t you tell anyone you accidentally killed a girl? Some things you just don’t tell people. That’s why you didn’t tell anyone, and if you want to keep your secret, then you damn well better keep mine. Got it?” Kyla nodded slowly. “Fair enough?” Kyla nodded again and then stumbled down the hallway and into the bedroom. Corrine followed. “What are you doing?” “Packing.” “Packing? Oh? You going somewhere?” “Yeah, I am. In case you haven’t figured it out, I’m getting the hell out of here and going back home. I’ll still keep your secret, and I appreciate you keeping mine.” Corrine took some clothes out of Kyla’s hands that she’d begun to gather and said, “I’m afraid it won’t be that simple, Kyla. I can’t just let you go.” “What?” asked Kyla, adrenaline speeding back up again. “You know I can’t just let you go and trust you to keep your mouth shut.” “What do you think you’re going to do, keep me here forever?” “You won’t keep quiet about this.” “Why wouldn’t I? What have I done to make you think I wouldn’t? I’ve got to worry about you way more than you’ve got to worry about me.” “That’s right, you do. Remember that too, because while it’d be easy enough to fix my problem, yours isn’t very fixable. You probably won’t go down for life, but you’re almost certainly looking at many years. Just disposing of the body the way you did without reporting it is enough to get you locked up for many years, even if the jury did believe it was self-defense.” “That may be so, Corrine, but you know we can trust each other. I don’t want to go down any more than you do, so rest assured when I say I’m not going to say anything. Not even in private to my closest friends. Even if you had nothing to hang me with, what you do online is your business anyway, so long as you don’t email me or involve me in any way.” “I’m not taking any chances,” the officer said in a matter-of-fact tone. “I know your secret, you know mine. So now we stick together and cover each other’s asses.” “We can cover them from a distance. Why would you want me around at this point anyway, Corrine? You don’t even love me.” “This isn’t about love.” “I know. That’s the problem! Why would you want to stay with someone you didn’t love?” Corrine smirked, almost as if she were amused. “Maybe the lust is enough for me. Besides, I like it when you clean the house, and I know you like it when I cook for you. We’ve got an ideal arrangement. Why change things?” Without even thinking, Kyla lashed out and slugged Corrine in the cheek. The officer was stunned, not expecting any such thing to come her way. Kyla thought the worst Corrine might do after she’d thrown the blow in frustration would be to slug her back, but unfortunately for her, Corrine beat the crap out of her instead. Kyla gritted her teeth as she was thrown about the room and delivered a series of slaps, kicks, and punches she was no match to defend herself against. “Stop!” she managed to scream between blows to her sides as she lay slumped in a ball on the floor. “Oh, you mean you’ve had enough? Good God, I should hope so, my dear, because this is nothing. You sure I shouldn’t turn things up a notch for you?” “No! Leave me alone. Just leave me the fuck alone!” Kyla raised her head and glanced at the dresser where the gun had been. It was just a few feet away. “Look,” said Corrine. “We stick together or we don’t. It’s either jail or me. Make up your mind. I think I’m a lot more fun than jail would be.” “I’m not staying with you,” Kyla said as she pulled herself up to her feet, using the foot of the bed for support. “No? Well, maybe you still have two choices if you choose not to stay with me.” Kyla was almost afraid to hear just what these so-called choices were. “There’s an old abandoned well in the back. It’s hundreds of feet deep and could hold a body so long as it was skinny enough and wasn’t wearing anything bulky. Would that be a better place to live than jail, Miss Crime Reporter?” “So what do you want me to do?” Kyla screamed in a mixture of fear, anger, and despair. “Live on with you as if nothing ever happened? Do you want me to just pretend nothing ever happened and that everything’s just fine?” “Kyla,” Corrine said, softening her tone. “We can’t change or forget what we’ve done.” “No, we can’t. But we can go our separate ways and keep our mouths shut. If you don’t think I can be smart enough to keep my mouth shut in light of the seriousness of my case, then you really don’t know me very well, Corrine.” “I know what I need to know, and that’s that there are some things you take chances with in life and some things you don’t.” Kyla sat at the foot of the bed, once again at a loss for words. Corrine glanced at the digital clock by the bed and then back at Kyla. “Look, it’s morning in Germany. I need to call home to my mother now like I told her I would.” “So you are German and not French, huh? That was a lie too, wasn’t it?” Kyla said as she followed Corrine down the hallway. “You sound it, you know. I may not be an expert with accents, but you sound it enough even to an idiot like me. Why would you lie about what country you’re from? Who cares anyway?” Corrine stopped dead in her tracks and spun around to face her, nearly causing Kyla to walk right into her. Kyla stared into the woman’s icy blue eyes as she spoke in a rapid and foreign tongue. There were only two things she was sure of: the language she spoke fluently in was indeed German, and it couldn’t have been anything nice she was saying either. Suddenly, she was being dragged by the arm and down the basement stairs. Kyla cried out as her barely healed shoulder protested in pain. Once at the bottom, the corrupt officer let go of her arm long enough to grab a chain off a metal shelf, which Kyla had never paid much attention to before when she’d come down to use the washer and dryer. The chain was about twelve feet long and had a pair of handcuffs on each end. Kyla watched, frozen in fear, as she yanked a small, thin vinyl-covered mattress that was leaning against the wall and threw it on the floor. Then she grabbed Kyla’s good arm and cuffed it to her wrist while she cuffed the other one to a thick, round metal loop she’d also failed to notice, protruding from the brick wall. Corrine kicked her feet out from under her and knocked her onto the mattress, where she cried and screamed for what seemed like an eternity. Then it hit her… just what the hell was the sick bitch doing with handcuffs on chains and hooks embedded in the basement walls?