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First of all, I was at a party … you know, just partyin’ … when a girl asked me to kill a guy.

I was really minding my own business when this hot chick started talking to me. We were the only ones in the living room – everybody else was in the kitchen, drinking that stuff you make with Everclear and grape drink mix. They made gallons of it up in a trashcan and … what’s that? I guess that is off the topic. Sorry.

So anyway, she’s a hottie, this girl, and before long she’s sitting on my lap and we’re making out and all I can taste is the Everclear grape stuff but I’m having a real good time, if you know … OK, yeah, sorry. Stick to the story.

Anyway, this girl says she knows me but I don’t know her and she knows I’ve been in trouble before and I say, yeah, I’ve been in jail a few times and I point to the shoes I’m wearing and say, I got away from the lockup with these, and she says they’re cool orange slip-ons but I’m not sure I believe she really thinks that?

Then she’s telling me about how bad her life is, how her boyfriend beats her and I’m thinking holy shit, she’s got a boyfriend? And I ask if he’s here at the party and she says, yeah, he’s upstairs. And I ask if he’s a big mean dude because I’m worried I’m gonna get my ass kicked.

She says no, he’s a big shot downtown, but he’s an abusive asshole and he don’t deserve her. So I ask why don’t you just break up with him and she said he told her he would kill her, straight up dead, if she ever tried to leave.

I’m feeling sorry for her and I’m loving her on my lap at the same time and I’ve been drinking that purple shit – I mean, do you know how strong Everclear is? – so I’m thinking that maybe I could take this guy. Teach him a lesson, I’m thinking maybe.

So I tell her that and she says, you don’t have to fight him and I say, Huh? Well, she said, and she’s saying all this as she’s sitting on my lap and we’re making out, she said it’s because he’s upstairs in bed. He drank too much of that purple punch shit and passed out.

He’s out cold, I ask? She says yeah. Then she gets this look in her eye and says that all I would have to do is go upstairs to the bedroom and put a pillow over his face and hold it there until he quits breathin’ and everybody will think alcohol poisoning killed him.

Well, I think about that for a few minutes and I think she’s just trying to get me to do her dirty work. I’d have to be stupid, right?  

But she kissed me again and I thought, no, this girl needs my help.

So she told me what bedroom her boyfriend was in upstairs and kissed me for another minute and I went upstairs and found the room.

I went in and there was this guy, totally passed out on the bed like the girl said, and I looked at him for a minute to make sure he wasn’t fakin’ it, and I’m thinking he must be a big shot somewhere because I can kind of recognize him but Jesus, that purple punch, I don’t know where I saw him before.

I picked up a pillow and held it over his face and he didn’t really fight all that much.

When he stopped breathin’ I went back downstairs but the girl was gone and people were takin’ off because there were cops outside and they came in and busted my ass. They busted my ass good and took me to jail for murder.

And sometime the next day in jail I figured out where I knew the guy from.

Anyway, that’s why I need a new defense attorney, your honor.

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Bio

Keith Roysdon was a newspaper reporter and editor in Muncie, Indiana for 40 years, beginning in high school. His writing won more than 30 first-place awards in state and national journalism competitions for covering politics, government and crime and where the three intersect. For the past two years a resident of Knoxville, Tennessee, he’s co-author of four award-winning true crime books about Indiana. His crime novel “Seven Angels” won the 2021 Hugh Holton Award for Best Unpublished Novel from Mystery Writers of America Midwest. He’s written nearly 60 articles for CrimeReads. His short fiction has been published by Punk Noir, Shotgun Honey, Cowboy Jamboree Press (in the MOTEL anthology) and Slaughterhouse Press (in the MAXIMUM FIREPOWER anthology).

Find Keith on Twitter @keithroysdon and under the same name on other social media.

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Photo by Chad Stembridge on Unsplash