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Chapter 2 The Corpse

I had spent the whole day racking my brain with thoughts and naked possibilities of outcomes.
I was at that point in life, at least in some lives, where no matter how much you think about how to stay afloat, you only end up saving the little oxygen that you have left within the depths of the sea of problems in which you are drowning.
The hospital was expecting me to make the payment for my father's pending services within seventy-two hours.
An attorney from the insurance of the unknown person my mother had hit with her car was also waiting for my compensation, and to top it off, there was the issue of eviction due to non-payment.
The hospital could cancel it with my entire month's salary, which I should receive in a week, but that was not the term they had established for debt payment.
When my father became sick and I found out he would die because there weren't enough available hearts for transplantation, I included myself in the database as a donor, in case I died with my healthy heart. I had to do everything in my power to save my father's life. And I did.
I underwent the necessary tests and felt that perhaps this good deed would be taken into account by the universe, and someone would donate a heart to my father. But it seems that the universe is blind and deaf, because that never happened, and my father died in my mother's arms, who, to make matters worse, left the hospital so distressed about everything in general that she ended up dying in a car accident, sending someone else to the hospital, leaving them in critical condition.
I tried to contact the person she had injured when they crashed their cars, but the hospital said the family had taken the patient to another location and couldn't give me any information.
All of this made me feel bad. But what could I do?
I hadn't even been able to mourn my parents; I don't even have time for that.
Having a cup of tea to try to calm my nerves and get some sleep, Patricia called me.
—What's going on, honey?— she was working that night, but I was off —.Lore, you have to leave your house right now.
She sounded nervous. Even agitated.
—Why, what's happening, Patri?.
—Alfonso gave your address to that old man, the one who wants you to dance for him, and he went there with another man. I don't like his attitude, Loreine, get out of there. I'm scared.
While she practically screamed, I couldn't quite comprehend what was really happening.
—I'll call you in an hour. Relax.
I hung up and rushed to my room to get some clothes. If someone came, I couldn't receive them in pajamas, especially not someone as repulsive as that man.
Finishing getting dressed, I felt some knocks on my door. Letting them know I was going to open it, I grabbed a pair of scissors and hid them in my jeans. At least I could scare them if they tried something.
As soon as I opened the door, that man with a dirty beard and greasy hair was accompanied by another, slightly younger and just as disheveled, with a criminal look on his face.
—What do you want, Mr. Stuart?
I asked, looking outside where only darkness could be seen. The street was empty, as usual.
He pushed the door and both of them walked in. I fell against the wall and right away the man who accompanied him pounced on me. He held my hands behind my back and kneeled between my legs. He moaned when he felt the contact with my womanhood, and bile accumulated in my throat, along with panic on my skin.
With the door open and my nerves on edge, all I could think of was the disgust I felt right now.
My green eyes locked onto Stuart's revolting blue eyes.
—I'll pay off your debts, and you'll fulfill my clients' desires.
The man holding me restrained, licking his lips and making me feel like I was going to vomit on him.
—Fine —I agreed to buy some time and ease the grip of the one holding me —.I don't have many options.
Both men smiled triumphantly, and the one holding me lowered his perverse mouth, licking my skin and biting one of my breasts, very hard, causing me intense pain. But I didn't cry or scream, I wouldn't give him that satisfaction. Nor any other.
—You will be the most expensive of my whores but you will be worth it, I will be paid a lot for you, and no one will claim you because I know you are alone. You are perfect for me, and for my business.
He took out money from his pocket, and as he counted it, the other had exposed my breasts and was latching onto one of them. Panic set in and I didn't know what to do.
I felt like I would be violated. That disgusting pig biting my breasts would take away my dignity if I didn't stop him.
And in a moment of distraction for both of them, I pushed him, and while he was latched onto my chest, he tore the flesh and made me bleed.
—Damn whore!
He kicked me and threw me to the ground, I rolled on the floor when he hit me again, and at that moment, when I saw the old man approaching and my aggressor approaching my face, I couldn't think straight and only defended myself.
In a poorly planned move, driven by the rush of adrenaline, I pulled out the scissors and stabbed him in the neck, wherever I could reach first.
He fell on top of me, covering me in blood and the old man looked on horrified.
—What have you done, you damn woman? —he yelled at me while I trembled under his gaze and the bleeding man on top of me. Obviously, I had punctured an artery because the blood was gushing out —.I will not be an accomplice to murder. I have never been here.
That was all he had the courage to say and do, and he left, leaving me with a room full of blood, the door open, and a dead body on top of me.
Shaking from fear and realizing the gravity of what I had done, I pushed that man, whom I had killed and who I didn't know if he had a family or children, and as that made me cry louder than ever, I started to try to get out from underneath him, my body trembling and even my teeth clattering from the terrifying aftermath of the visit those two damn men had paid me.
They had turned me into a murderer… I was a murderer, I repeated in my mind… I had killed someone.
I finally got up and slipped on the blood on the floor, escaping the carpet.
I looked at my body covered in that red liquid and could only distance myself.
I ran up the stairs and locked myself in the bathroom. I let myself fall to the shower floor and, taking a towel, I put it inside my mouth and desperately screamed my crime into its softness.
The water cleaned my skin of the viscous substance, but how would I clean my conscience?
I don't know how long I was in the shower, but I do know that it was long enough to convince myself that it was self-defense, I didn't kill in cold blood, I just defended myself.
I left my clothes in a bag and looked at my injured chest, I poured alcohol directly into the wound and didn't care about the burning sensation, I just wanted to cleanse myself of any trace of that man.
I went downstairs again, ready to call the police, but I was surprised when my living room was perfectly clean. Spotless and fresh smelling.
The corpse and the carpet were gone, but someone had cleaned the scene and did it very well, so well that it seemed strange to me to think, how long had I been in the shower for someone to have been able to do something like that?
But the most important questions were…
Who had done it?
Why would they do it?
And what would I do now?
No body, no crime. There was no longer any evidence that something like this had happened.
I thought maybe Mr. Stuart had done it, to avoid being blamed for other things if this became known.
But I dismissed it immediately when I remembered how he had left right away. Why would he come back and clean my house?
A noise in my kitchen made me startle in place, and I couldn't find the scissors there when it occurred to me to grab a vase to defend myself against whoever was in my kitchen.
I walked there silently, and when our eyes met, the vase fell to the ground as I saw that the man who had offered me his card and bought me a coffee was holding the scissors with which I killed that man, inside a plastic bag, and he was looking at me seriously and coldly, as was his characteristic apparently.
Alexander McGregor had cleaned everything!
In exchange for what?…