Page 35 of Kill Your Darlings

The first stab of the knife, deep into her neck, had probably killed her. Or it would have, eventually, the way that she was

bleeding out. But he ended up stabbing her two times more, some small voice in the back of his head telling him to make it

look like a crazed killer because that’s who was doing this. A crazed killer.

Before getting back into his rental car he looked down at the hunting knife in his hand.

He was still wearing gloves. The knife had blood on it and so did his glove.

There was a sidewalk grate just behind his rental and Thom bent, slotting the folded-open knife through the narrow grate, and then pushed both gloves through as well.

He stood up fast and for a moment he thought he was going to go down again.

His head felt loose on his neck, and everything was out of focus.

But he recovered and moved to the driver’s-side door.

He looked around briefly before getting inside.

There was no one else on the street, just him, and the woman’s body on the sidewalk.

He’d rolled her so that she lay up against the side of a brick building, looking as if she were sleeping there, some kind of vagrant and not a murder victim.

But that wasn’t really what she looked like.

Even on her side she looked distinctly dead. Someone would spot her very soon.

Thom drove away. Later, he couldn’t really remember how he’d done it, but he managed to wend his way out of the city of Lubbock and back onto Route 84, heading to Austin.

He had driven an hour, focusing on maintaining the exact speed limit, when the Please Refuel light went on.

He kept driving, the miles sliding by, no sign of a gas station, and began to wonder if this was the end of the story.

He’d run out of gas and that was how they’d catch him, a murderer marooned on the side of the road.

But he reached an exit that promised gas and food and pulled off the main road, eventually locating an indie gas station called Plangman’s Filling Station, which was self-service.

There was also a restroom with an outside entrance.

He worried it would be locked, but the door swung open and he stepped inside.

There was no urinal, just a sink and a toilet, all of their dried-on grime illuminated by a single tube of white fluorescence.

He locked the door behind him, and then, without even knowing he was nauseous, he bent over the toilet and threw up violently, tears streaming from his eyes.

Then he went to the cracked mirror screwed in above the sink and looked at his face.

He was pale, his eyes puffier than usual, but other than that, he looked like himself.

He was a murderer now, and would be for the rest of his life.

That was a fact that would never change.

Suddenly he remembered the blood that had been dripping from his hand in Lubbock and began to check his clothes for other evidence of the crime he’d just committed.

He stepped back so he could see himself better in the mirror.

There was nothing on his face, nothing in his hair or on his clothes.

He ran his hands down the back of his legs to see if anything felt sticky or damp, but they were clean.

How was it possible that he hadn’t gotten any blood on him at all?

Had he imagined the whole thing? Was he in the midst of a lucid dream, all logic suspended?

Then he spotted one dark spot near his hairline, a single drop of blood, and he spent a minute rubbing at it with the corner of a paper towel until it was well and truly gone.

Before leaving the bathroom he splashed cold water on his face, drinking some of it from his cupped hands. Inside the gas

station he gave a twenty-dollar bill to an old man wearing a straw cowboy hat, then he went and pumped his own gas. The trigger

on the pump turned itself off when the meter hit $20.00, and Thom replaced the nozzle. It took him a moment when he was back

in the car to remember which direction he was going in, but he managed to get back onto the quiet highway.

Twenty minutes later he began to shake. He noticed it in his mouth first, his teeth chattering if he didn’t keep them clamped

together. But then his whole body was starting to vibrate, and a deep cold was suffusing his core. He tensed all his muscles,

tightening his grip on the steering wheel, but that only made it worse. A sign indicated that there was a truck stop a mile

ahead and he told himself he could pull off there. As soon as he made that decision, his shaking got worse, his whole body

racked with involuntary movement, and he wondered if he was dying, having a heart attack or stroke. He pulled into the truck

stop, managing to maneuver the car around the back of a dimly lit restaurant into a parking space under a busted streetlamp.

He cut the engine and curled tightly into himself, still shaking rapidly. Sweat was beginning to build up on his scalp and

the back of his neck, even though he still felt impossibly cold. He clambered over the two front seats and lay down on the

backseat, curled up. He didn’t know how long it was, but he stopped shaking eventually. Maybe that was the worst of it, he

told himself, sitting up in the backseat. In the distance he watched a truck driver leaning against the rear of his vehicle,

smoking a cigarette. Thom was in a brief period of not smoking cigarettes but knew that as soon as he was back in Austin,

he would need to find an all-night convenience store to buy a pack.

He got out of the car to shake out his limbs.

No one will ever know about this , he said to himself. Wendy would know some of it, of course, but not what happened in downtown Lubbock. And not how he felt

right now. Somehow this decision calmed him, and he took a deep breath of Texas air. Before getting back into the car he looked

up at the enormous sky. That song went through his head again— big and bright, stars at night . He’d heard it recently but maybe it had only been in his head.