When I went into the house they were both nodding off with needles and spoons lying on the table by the bed. The door was still locked but the window was open where they had been going in and out. I grabbed Janice and started shaking her. When she wouldn’t answer me I started slapping her and when that didn’t work I started hitting her.
“I tried to help you get straight!” I screamed at her. “You are just a little dope whore! You’ll never do anything but cause misery for your family.”
I went into a sort of rage where I didn’t think about what I was doing. I just did it. I knew what I was doing but I wasn’t in control of myself. I was choking her and
shaking her and screaming at her. It was like I was watching myself do it, but I
wasn’t doing anything to stop it. I wanted it to happen.
“What the hell are you doin’ girl? You start with Heroin, it takes over your life. I’ve seen it in the prisons and on the street. Nothin’ a Heroin addict won’t do for their next fix? You’ll never be anything but worry and misery for your momma.”
“I don’t know why you’re so mad at us. We’re just tryin’ to have some fun. You’re not in charge of our lives. You been to prison, what makes you know what’s right for us,” was her slurred reply in a dreamy voice.
“Ya’ll just gonna be two more dope whores. That’s what I see and I ain’t lettin’ that happen –not in my family.” I yelled at her as I stopped hitting her and started choking her. I think I knew at that point that I wasn’t going to get her to listen so I would just stop her my own way.
My anger just boiled over and I choked her until she stopped moving and breathing.
The other girl was so doped up that she just lay there awake but out of it. When Janice went quiet and stopped breathing Patricia started to get scared even as doped out as she was. She started to run but she fell. I grabbed her.
“Please don’t hurt me,” she slurred. “You can do whatever you want to do to me. I’ll make you feel really good.”
“Ya’ll are turnin’ into drug whores. You been seen with that high yella girl Clyde. She runs whores. She’ll be sellin’ you to niggers when the air force crowd gets tired of you. Well, it ain’t happenin’ I’m gonna put a stop to it once and for all.”
I hit her with my fists and I kept hitting her until she was unconscious and then I
choked her until she was dead.
I was exhausted. I lay down for a few minutes to get my breath and think through what had happened. I was sure it was better that they were dead. I had tried to straighten them out and they just wanted the drugs. They were just going to be addicts and whores. It would break their families’ hearts when they found out what kind of life they were living. The families would try to save them but they would steal from them and lie to them and then go right back to doping and whoring. I had seen it over and over. I had watched it put men in prison and
watched it tear up men who were already in there I had seen the hurt in men stacking time when they found out what their daughters or wives were doing.
There was a big abandoned farmhouse on the next property. I had lived there for a short time and had been around the house plenty of times when I was staying out there at the little house. In the back yard there was a septic tank. It was unusual because it was not completely covered with dirt. The concrete slab top was on the tank but it was above ground level. I waited until the next night and went over to the house. The slab was extremely heavy but it was slightly open at one corner. I lifted the corner enough to slide my hands along under one side of the big slab. I squatted to use my legs and then put my entire mind into driving forward and upward to slide the lid half way off of the tank and sort of catty cornered. With the tank open I went back to the little house, picked up Patricia and carried her to the tank. She wore tight jeans, a button up blouse and a wide white belt.
As I carried her slim body and noticed her pretty shape, I was sorry that I hadn’t kept my head enough to take advantage of her offer and let that pretty young thing show me what she could do before I killed her. But I hadn’t set out to hurt those girls. I set out to get them away from drugs. Looking back I was always glad I hadn’t used her for sex that night. I had done what I did because I couldn’t see any other way to stop them from going down that road with drugs and turning into whores. I dropped her still fully clothed into the tank and went back to get Janice. It would have all been made wrong if I had taken the sex.
The tank had not been used in many years and the only content was a few inches of clear water darkened to the color of iced tea by the tannic acid from the leaves that covered the bottom. I went back and got Janice’s body and carried it over to the tank. When I got back to the tank and looked down I saw Patricia in the clear liquid and I couldn’t do it. Janice was family. I couldn’t just dump her in a septic tank even if it wasn’t being used. I got a pry bar from the barn and carefully closed the tank completely.