Free Undermind: Nine Stories by Edward M Wolfe Page B

to a dead girl! And the last
thing I remember was drinking beer with you, so this is all your
doing. What the fuck is wrong with you? Why are you doing
this?”
    “Listen, Tommy. If we’re—“
    “Stop calling me Tommy!”
    “Okay, Tom. Listen up. To have a conversation,
you’re gonna have to slow down. First things first. What’s the
first thing you’d like to know before you go to prison for
murder?”
    We stopped at a red light and I couldn’t decide
if I should get out and run, reach over and strangle him, or try to
engage in a conversation that might result in some answers. I also
wanted to ask him where we were going, but that seemed like the
least important matter at the time.
    “I didn’t kill her!”
    “Sure you didn’t. But you can save it for the
judge. I already know what you’re guilty of. And I know you’re
going to be punished. Justice is being served, as we speak.”
    My head was spinning again. Nothing made sense.
He agreed that I didn’t kill her, but he was certain that I’d go to
prison for her murder.
    “Why are you framing me for this? I don’t even
know you!”
    “You may not know me, Tommy boy–sorry, Tom , but you know of me.”
    He got in the left hand turn lane and tapped the
turn signal control down. The air conditioner was on, but I could
clearly hear every tick as the left arrow blinked on the instrument
panel.
    “How do I know of you?” I managed to ask a sane
question when I felt like I was losing my mind completely. As far
as I knew, that Twix bar was the first thing I’d eaten in
twenty-four hours and my blood-sugar was as fucked up as my life
was now.
    “Lisa told you about me.”
    “Lisa? Who’s Lisa? Is that the girl at the
house?”
    “Yes, Lisa is the girl you killed – for all
intents and purposes.”
    “I don’t know her. I never met her before in my
life. You’ve got the wrong fucking guy.”
    “Oh no. I have the right guy. I made sure of it.
This is the culmination of years of planning, so you can be sure I
didn’t go to all of that effort to setup the wrong guy.”
    “Why? Why are you setting me up? I swear I don’t
know you or Lisa. You have to have the wrong guy.”
    The signal presented a green arrow and he pulled
through the intersection, staying in the left hand lane and once
again getting into the turn lane. We were making a gradual U-turn,
erasing the progress I’d made walking.
    “I’m motivated by the oldest reason there is.
Revenge.”
    “But I didn’t do anything to you!”
    “But you did, Tom. You ruined my life. You took
away everything I cherished. And now, in keeping with the law of
‘an eye for an eye’ I’m ruining your life, and taking everything
you love away from you.”
    “I’ve told you that I don’t know either of you,
so rather than repeating myself, how about you just tell me what
you think I did?”
    “Does the screen name moanalisa86 ring
any bells?”
    “No. I’ve never heard of it.”
    “Yes, you have, Tom. You heard of it, saw it,
and wrote a response to a request for advice that was posted by
someone using it.”
    “Okay, then. I don’t recall it.”
    “I believe you. As I said, it’s been years, so
that makes sense. Allow me to refresh your memory.”
    “Please do.”
    When we reached the street that I had walked
down to get to Lankershim, he pulled over to the curb in front of a
house. He was apparently taking me back to where I woke up a short
time ago – but not yet.
    “Lisa posted to Yahoo Answers about her
relationship in 2009. She complained about her boyfriend, saying
she suspected he was insane, and possibly violent. She said she
wanted to leave him, but literally scared for her life to do so.
She said she was in a bind and didn’t know what to do. She asked
for help. Are you starting to remember any of this?”
    “No. Not at all.”
    “Well, you should. It was your advice that she
took.”
    “What did I advise?”
    “You said, and this is verbatim, ‘You are
definitely with a