Impulsive Freedom

            Larry and Yvonne had been friends for 10 years.  They met their Freshman year of college and remained close when college ended.  As is common with school friendships, they didn’t see much of each other as Yvonne was working and going to graduate school.  She generally disliked men so when she did have a moment to breathe, she often wanted to have a girl’s night out, which obviously didn’t include Larry as he is a male.  When she did meet up with Larry, they picked up where it left off and their plutonic friendship didn’t really diminish.  At one point, Larry did try to make a deal to meet up once a month on the 15^th but this failed miserably as Yvonne most often had to cancel.  Finally Larry gave up on his plan and conceded that there would probably be months at a time he didn’t see Yvonne.  This was unlike college when they saw each other at minimum once a week. 

 

            While they were in college, Yvonne had a psychopathic boyfriend by the name of Ben.  He often abused her both verbally and physically but she would never admit to the physical part.  Like most abusive woman, Yvonne would explain large bruises on her legs and face from dancing mishaps or bumping into something or just denial of knowing how it happened and writing it off to her just bruising easily.  Larry noticed that her easily bruised skin didn’t bruise as much when she finally called it off with Ben.  He never mentioned any of this to Yvonne because while she was with Ben she became enraged and vehemently defended him, like most abusive woman.  When she wasn’t with Ben she yelled at him for bringing up a horrible time in her life.  As the years progressed however, Larry realized she always picked bad men to fall in love with.  One time, Yvonne got fed up and actually blurted out an excuse to this, “Bad men are more confident and that’s what I’m attracted to.” 

            This is a common belief among women who fall for horrible men because they don’t realize that their don’t-care-about-anything rebel attitude refers to them as well.  At this point, Larry was done trying to help Yvonne, he knew she would never admit her problem and even when Yvonne realized the guys she was with really were despicable, she never gave Larry any credit for his prognostication but projected it on another close friend who would always praise the guy when she was with him, but attack him and claim she always felt that way when Yvonne realized he was wicked. 

            Larry commonly had a misconceived notion of himself as being violent.  This is because as a child, he would get in weekly fights.  Larry was a dork, and was picked on a lot as a kid, and his reaction would to be respond violently.  It got him into trouble but he believed himself to be better for it.  This is why he had no respect for current anti-bullying campaigns and people blaming bullies for weak pathetic people who kill themselves because they got picked on.  Being bullied gives you the freedom to be yourself and that mental maturity helps in the long run if you can get through it.  If you can’t, well you probably would have failed later in life anyway.  What Larry didn’t realize is that after 5^th grade, he outleted his anger to writing dark, violent stories.  Throughout high school and college, this manifested in an overactive imagination where when someone wronged him, he visualized horrendous things he would do to them in his head knowing that his imagination was so vivid that he often times forgot it didn’t really happen.  When this happened, he realized that his subconscious responded as if it did so the situation was moot as he had already gotten his revenge, even though in reality he didn’t.  Although back in his early friendship with Yvonne, Ben ruined many evenings and he had met Ben on occasion, he never attacked him physically like he wanted to.  His reasoning was that if he did, Yvonne would never talk to him again, and he didn’t have many friends and was not a sociable person so making new ones was hard, so he cherished the friendships he had.  Losing Yvonne as a friend would have devastated him.  So, he let Ben be and just tried to make sure that when he was around, Ben and Yvonne were never alone together.  Ben even complimented Larry on this to Yvonne, but Larry didn’t take it as a compliment.  He knew what Ben knew, Larry was powerless because he owned Yvonne and Yvonne controlled Larry when it came to their relationship.  Nowadays, Larry hadn’t heard about Yvonne being with Ben in eight years so it was a non-issue.

            One day, Yvonne and Larry met up for drinks.  When they were done, it was late at night and Larry walked Yvonne back to her apartment.  Yvonne lived on the Hudson River in Battery Park and there weren’t many people around late at night.  There was a running route where joggers gathered during the day but as the weather was cold, they weren’t out as much.  As Larry approached Yvonne’s apartment, Yvonne’s eyes widened and she jumped back.  Larry didn’t realize it but there was a silhouette near her apartment.  To Larry, it was just some random guy but Yvonne recognized that silhouette anywhere.  It was Ben.  Ben approached Yvonne not worrying about Larry and said, “Yvonne, can I talk to you alone for a second?” as he did 10 years ago very frequently when she was with a man. 

Larry smiled and said, “No, you can’t” finally realizing who it was

Ben turned to Larry and looked at him contemptuously as if to say, “we’ve done this before, you’re not going to do shit.” And said, “Come on man…”

Before he could finish, Larry darted out his arm and grabbed him by his two carotid arteries in the neck.  This is the most effective, non-lethal way to choke someone as the brain is deprived of blood and the brain uses 20% of all the bodies’ blood.  Larry also knew that if you controlled the neck, you control the body.  He pulled Ben forward and lowered his head driving Ben’s nose into the top of Larry’s head exploding it on impact.  Ben backed up and Larry shuffled toward him and drove his entire body with a right jab straight into Ben’s hands that were covering his nose.  To Larry’s surprise, Ben didn’t fall, he took several steps back but only glared at Larry.  He stepped forward deliberately and took a swing at Larry, which Larry ducked under and then unleashed two punches to Ben’s kidneys.  Ben swung his swinging arm backing hoping to backhand Larry but Larry ducked under once again and slammed the heel of his palm into Ben’s solar plexus.  Again Ben backed up as the wind had been knocked out of him.  Neither man heard it but Yvonne was pleading with them to stop but she dared not step in between them.  Ben came at Larry out of more fury than brains.  Larry twisted his body and put his left arm on Ben’s left hip and Larry’s right arm on Ben’s right hip and then twisted back using Ben’s forward momentum to twirl him upside down.  Larry interlocked his hands on Ben’s lower back, Ben’s legs instinctively wrapped around Larry’s neck and his head was below Larry’s knees.  Larry looked down quickly to ensure that Ben’s head was indeed at Larry’s upper shin.  For the first time he looked at Yvonne, lifted his hands off Ben’s back and raised both his middle fingers at her before tightening his knees against Ben’s head and dropping to his knees.  Although Ben tried to put his arms out, it was too much weight to support both his and Larry’s falling momentum and his head crashed against the concrete sidewalk.  Larry leaned forward flattening Ben out on his back.  He got up and glanced at Yvonne who looked shocked. 

As Larry was certified in CPR, he knew that with trauma such as this, the most important thing to do was to secure the neck and make sure it doesn’t move.  That is why it was the one thing he wasn’t going to do.  He grabbed Ben by the head and twisted it as he used much of his energy to lift Ben dead weight by the head.  Larry had to resort to wrapping his arm around Ben’s head to get more leverage.  Ben was only a few inches shorter than Larry but they were the same weight.  Larry was running on pure adrenaline to lift Ben up but he was determined.  Finally he got him to a standing base, he pulled forward slightly and again diverted Ben’s forward momentum to get him up in the same position he had before.  This time Larry was in no hurry as Ben was defenseless.  He turned toward Yvonne and smiled before again flipping her off and driving Ben headfirst into the sidewalk once again.  If Ben’s neck wasn’t broken, Larry didn’t know if he’d be able to break it.  He got up and kicked Ben in the side of the head before walking off.  Larry took out his phone and played the Undertaker’s theme music from his phone as the maneuver he performed was the Undertaker’s signature move known as “The tombstone.”  To Larry, he didn’t believe Yvonne would ever talk to him again.  He was okay with that as he never really saw her anyway.  Unlike his college days, he was used to going long months without seeing Yvonne.  He knew that what he did was good for her even if Yvonne wouldn’t appreciate it. He walked off satisfied with what he’d done.  He knew Yvonne wouldn’t call the cops because she never called the cops when previously people had harmed her so why would she when someone harmed someone she knew?  He went to the train and went home knowing the next 48 hours would be stressful as the probability of being caught for a murder is cut in half after 48 hours.  He had seen enough real life shows to know, that murders were almost always spouses, close friends, or something of that nature.  Larry hadn’t seen Ben in over 8 years.  It was dark and nobody was close enough to make a positive ID except for Yvonne so canvassing the neighborhood wouldn’t help.  Still though, he couldn’t be certain, so he would just have to wait to see if he’d have to go to jail.  To him, it was worth it.  Yvonne was one of his best friends.  Larry knew his life wasn’t really going anywhere.  He was asexual, didn’t want to get married, had already seen 29 countries and was too afraid to leave his job for something else.  He knew that the years left would see more and more of growing apart from his close friends so killing for one of them and sacrificing his life were okay to him.

Yvonne watched as Larry walked off without turning back.  She was more confused than anything.  Seeing Ben most likely be killed in front of her was relieving to her.  It was a big weight lifted off her shoulders but somehow Larry didn’t see that.  She rolled her eyes at how little he understood about her and then looked back at Ben, looked at Larry’s walking away, and sighed.  Larry’s lack of attention to detail continuously baffled Yvonne.  He had just killed a man and walked off.  His fingerprints would be all over Ben’s clothing.  Yvonne was a smoker; she played back the fight in her head and realized that there is only really one place Larry touched.  She kicked Ben onto his stomach and took out her lighter and lit the back of Ben’s shirt.  She took her water bottle and dumped it around the area skidding her feet around so as to clean up any of Larry’s fingerprints from when he pushed himself off the ground to get up.  She stared at the East River and realized that dumping Ben’s body would be smart but there was no way she could lift him and calling Larry was out of the question.  Instead she just nonchalantly walked to her apartment and went upstairs.  To her, the only person that could implicate her was her door man but she had to risk that. 

Within 10 minutes, she heard sirens as someone had called in a body being burned.  She could smell it from her apartment and viewed it as a good sign because that means the fire got hot and burned some of the evidence.  It didn’t take long before the police came into her building wanting to canvass the area to see what happened.  Yvonne had been questioned about Ben multiple times so was accustomed to lying to the cops.  She claimed she noticed some people talking by the water but she didn’t pay them any mind.  The cops grilled her for any type of description but she kept denying she got a good enough glimpse.  The cops went away but she knew they’d be back.  As soon as they identified the body, it wouldn’t be hard to check records and realize that she had many complaints about Ben in the past.  The only thing that worried her was if Larry called her.  Right now, she needed to handle this and Larry couldn’t be associated with her in that time.  The next day, Yvonne got an expected visit from the police.  The cops had identified the body as Ben.  She hadn’t left her apartment or answered her phone all day knowing that anyone she contacted would be questioned about the murder and she didn’t trust anybody to keep their mouth shut enough in response to heavy questioning by the police.  She got called into the interrogation room and survived through the cops questioning her over and over again about Ben and their relationship.  She answered the same questions over and over again always saying that she hadn’t seen him in eight years, they used to date, she had no idea why he ended up at her apartment, it was probably to stalk her but she didn’t have any encounter with him that night.  The cops even claimed they had a witness who saw her talking with him but she still denied doubting the validity.  Eventually the cops had to let her go, knowing they had nothing to hold her as they did fabricate the witness.  Yvonne went back to her normal routine of work and school closely monitoring her conversations.  After a month went by, she went over to Larry’s apartment, rang the buzzer and asked to come up.  By this time, the cops could gather no new information and wrote the case off as cold. 

After the two days were over, Larry rested a little easier.  Before, he kept thinking that a cop would come to his door but it never happened.  He didn’t contact Yvonne because he figured she hated him for killing the man she loved.  He went back to his normal routine of work and watching sports.  He never felt guilty for what he did but he did have a burning desire to tell someone.  He wished he could discuss it with Yvonne but he felt that was unfair.  He needed to respect that his actions had the consequence of never speaking to Yvonne again.  It made him sad but he always came to the same conclusion that he did the right thing.  He searched the news but never found anything about Ben.   He found this odd as Battery Park was not a dangerous area so things like this didn’t happen often but nevertheless the news didn’t pick up on it.  About a month after the incident, when Larry had put it far in the back of his mind, the buzzer went off at his apartment.  Larry was shocked, nobody really came to visit unannounced and he hadn’t ordered food.  He clicked the buzzer and asked who it was.  He was shocked to hear Yvonne’s voice say, “It’s me”

Just to make sure he said, “Me who? Yvonne?”

“Yea” he heard back very sarcastically.

Larry buzzed her in and opened the door.  He lived in a 4^th floor walk up so knew he had time before she came up.  He looked around and his place was a mess as can be expected with a man who lives alone.  He didn’t have enough time to clean so even though he knew Yvonne to be a neat freak, she would have to endure.  Yvonne came in and sat down on his couch.  Larry offered her a drink and Yvonne wanted alcohol.  He responded he only had rum and beer, both of which he knew Yvonne didn’t drink.  Yvonne said, “Better go with a rum and coke,” knowing that Larry would definitely have soda in his apartment. 

            Larry made her the rum and coke and gave it to her.  Yvonne said, “Are you going to make me drink alone?”

            Larry poured himself one and sat down on the couch opposite Yvonne.  Yvonne extended her legs across Larry’s lap as she had done countless times before but this time Larry felt it odd.  She started, “You’re an idiot.”

            “Okay”

            “We need to rent a car and drive to your parents’ house in Cleveland right now.”

            “We both hate how each other drive”

            “Don’t care; I’ll be more focused on what I have to say to you.”

            “Why not just tell me now?”

            Yvonne gave him a dirty look, “Because you live in a small apartment in the city, which notoriously has thin walls.”

            Larry immediately saw her point.  His neighbor often times knocked on the wall when his TV was too loud. Even though he’s never heard him talking in his apartment, he could hear the door four floors down closing and people walking up.  If someone was in the hallway they may overhear something.  He got up and said, “There’s a car rental place on 87^th.”

            Yvonne and Larry went to 87^th Street and rented a car.  Larry took the driver’s seat and headed to the FDR over the George Washington bridge, where he would be on 80 for approximately 400 miles before he hit the Ohio Turnpike.  Yvonne didn’t waste any time; the second they were on the FDR, she started “So, do you know why you’re an idiot?”
            “Probably because of what happened to Ben, you’re going to come up with all this crap about how he’s got a posse and back up that are going to come and kill me yatta yatta yatta.”

            “Yea no”

            Larry believed this because when he would ask her if he wanted him to get physically involved she said no referencing all the back up he had.  Since this was dismissed so quickly and he was out of options, he said, “Alright why?”

            “Because you left a dead body in the middle of the sidewalk that had a lot of incriminating evidence against you.  But don’t worry; I cleaned up your mess.”

            “What?!”

            “Yea, I had to light that son of a bitch on fire to burn your finger prints off his clothes.  Then waste my water to pour on the area just in case it got on the sidewalk and then go past my doorman and to my apartment.  Do you have any idea how easily I could have been seen?  Not to mention, the cops have detailed files about me and Ben.  If you would have just stayed, we could have thrown his ass in the river and then the water would have concealed the evidence, he wouldn’t have been found for a couple days and we would have had time to think.  But no, you just stormed out of there like some cowboy in the Wild Wild West.”

            “I thought you would be mad at me and I didn’t want to deal with you screaming at me.”

            “Well you were wrong, and I couldn’t call you because then the cops would see my cell phone records as calling you shortly after time of death.  Thank God you were smart enough not to call me.”

            “I thought you wouldn’t want to speak to me again.”

            “Yea because you killed a man that had terrorized and stalked me for like four years.”

            “Yea, the one you claim to be in love with.”

            “I loved him, past tense”

            “Okay, I’m not quite sure it goes away,”

            “Well, I’m happy he’s dead.”

            “You never wanted me to get involved before.”

            “Because I thought you’d get hurt asshole”

            “I can see you’re not afraid of me.”

            Yvonne hit Larry despite the fact he was driving.  Larry didn’t lose control of the car but chuckled.  Yvonne continued.  “Why would I be?  You can’t hurt me”

            Larry nodded, and said, “So what happened?”

            “I got questioned by the cops repeatedly I kept denying.  Thank God nobody saw us and now I think it’s safe but you and I can never talk about this.  I just need to tell someone.”

            “We can tell people, but we need to make sure it’s in a private place so we won’t be overheard.”

            “Yea we should tell our closest mutual friends.”

            “Yea”

            “So, have you told anybody?”

            “No, I was always afraid someone would rat me out.  I didn’t want anyone to ask you.  To be honest, I was waiting till I went to Cleveland.  I know a couple people who would never go to the cops with this.”

            “Yea because they probably know about me and Ben.”

            ‘Yea but they don’t know you, so it’s okay.”

            “This is what I was most afraid of.  You suck at keeping your mouth shut.  Do me a favor, don’t tell ANYBODY about this, let me bring it up to people.  Clearly I know how to do this better than you as I’ve already lied to the cops.”

            “Yea, it’s a little worrisome how easily you handled that.”

            “How do you know it was easy?”

            “Because it wasn’t on the news, and you didn’t get arrested, I was never questioned, nothing came of it.”

            ‘Yea, unfortunately, the piece of shit you took care of gave me a lot of practice.”

            “That’s one good thing that came from him.  We’re like Bonnie and Clyde”

            Yvonne glared at Larry, “Except I don’t kill people.”

            “True”

            “You’d be in jail if it wasn’t for me.”

            “I agree”

            “Why did you flip me off by the way?”

            “Because I thought you still had feeling for him and you were routing for him in the fight.”

            “Why would you think that?  I was telling both of you to stop.”

            “Just assumed because of the way you protected him back in college,”

            “Yea well I’m not 19 anymore.”

            “Unfortunately, neither am I.”

            “By the way” Yvonne started in a soft vulnerable voice made to engender sympathy from men, “Thank you”

            Larry looked over and smiled and said, “My pleasure.”

            Yvonne nodded and smiled back, “I feel so free now, like a weight has been lifted off my shoulders, the son of a bitch is dead” as she rose her arms.  Larry chuckled, Yvonne regained her composure and said, “You’re the only person I can react that way around so that reaction stays between you and me.”
            “Okay”

            There was a long silence as everything was said.  Larry changed the subject and said, “So, do you really want to go to Cleveland or should I turn around now that we’ve talked about this,”

            “No, go, I want to get away and I like your parents.”

            “Alright, I’ll call them and tell them we’re coming.”

            Larry called his parents and told them he was surprising them with Yvonne.  They spent the weekend there and then went back to New York.  Larry didn’t tell anyone but Yvonne mentioned it to trust worthy people that were close to both Larry and her.  They remained friends and things went back to normal, Larry didn’t see Yvonne very often but when he did, they picked up right where they left off. Nothing ever happened with the Ben murder case.  It stayed cold.