The Most Important Thing I'll Ever Do (2 of 3)
*Author's note: This story will dive into some fairly sensitive topics including murder and suicide. This is part 2 of 3! Click here to read part one!
In time, the head count was complete, and the lockdown ended. The guards came to take us to the recreation yard. I walked out with the other inmates, trying my best to fit in, nervously noting the guards in towers armed with rifles. I spotted Dave across the yard, sitting on top of a bench, and made my way over to him.
"Hey, man," he said, a look of pity and concern on his face. "You look like you've seen a ghost."
"I feel like I just got shot in the gut," I said, taking a seat beside him. "I found a bunch of letters to my girlfriend under my bed."
"Ahh...Trixie?"
"Yeah," I nodded. "I always felt like she was the one thing I wouldn’t lose, no matter what I did.
"Makes sense. From what you told me, you two were close." Dave sighed. "Let’s sit over there." He pointed to a quieter corner of the yard. "I can promise you’re not going to like what I have to say."
"Rip the band-aid off. What did I do to get here?" I asked as we moved to the quieter location, out of earshot of the other inmates.
"I was afraid you'd ask that first," Dave said softly, looking down as though he couldn't meet my eye. "I... don't know how to tell you this... and I don't think you'll believe me... You shot your best friend."
"WHAT!?" He was right. I didn’t believe him. "There's NO WAY."
"Yeah. I think you said his name was Nick. Right in the head. Boom. He never even saw it coming."
"Why would I even do that?"
"You never told me," Dave said very matter-of-factly, like he was trying his best to remove any of his personal feelings.
"I... killed Nick?" My voice was hollow. The question was more for the world than for Dave, but he nodded. The words hung in the air, heavy and unbelievable. My mind raced, trying to piece together how I could have done something so horrendous. Nick, my best friend—why would I shoot him? I started to cry again, tears streaming down my face even worse than when I had read the letters from Trixie. This... this nightmare kept getting worse.
Dave watched me closely, patting my back lightly and gauging my reaction. "I know it's a lot to take in," he said gently.
"Why... why should I believe you?" I asked, my grief turning to anger, causing me to lash out at the one person who’d helped me. "What could have driven me to do that?"
"Because we are friends, and like I said... you never got too much into details." Dave seemed to anticipate my reaction. "The one thing you told me is it was very important and you had to do it. As for reasoning?" Dave shrugged. "Not even as much as a breath.
I stared at him with straight poison in my eyes, so enraged... so scared. He stared back with nothing but kindness and sympathy. Finally, I exhaled, and we sat in silence for several minutes.
"So earlier... you said you were waiting for this...?" I was the first to speak.
"Yeah... you told me it would happen. Not too long after we met. You said:
'Dave, I'm going to tell you something really weird. One day, I'm going to walk into the cafeteria and I won’t have the slightest idea of what’s happening. I won’t know where I am or how I got here. You'll know for sure because I won’t recognize you, and I'll throw up. That's how you'll know.'"
Dave scratched his head. "Honestly, I never took you seriously, but you made me promise I'd tell you everything. I guess, given how our friendship has been, I shouldn’t be too surprised it actually happened."
I raised my eyebrow to him questioningly. He took my sign to continue.
"I met you about a week after I got here. You'd been here about a year or so already. You just came up to me while I was alone in the rec yard and said, 'Hey, Dave. Good to see you.' I freaked out, of course. I had no clue how you knew my name, but you just laughed and said, 'We're great friends.'"
"I guess I know how that feels," I nodded. Dave laughed.
"Yeah, that's fair I suppose. Over the next few weeks, I found out you knew things about me besides my name. You knew my birthday. You knew how I got in here. You knew where I went to school. It freaked me out, to tell you the truth, but in prison, it's lonely. It was nice to have someone."
"Yeah, I guess it is nice to have someone," I said slowly, realizing how screwed I would be if I had nobody right now. "...so... what are you in for? You said earlier we’re both lifers... did you...?" I let the sentence trail off, not wanting to say it.
"What do you mean? Kill someone?" Dave asked, looking at me like I had five heads. "Oh... right... you don't remember. No, I didn’t. I didn’t technically get life—145 years, not eligible for parole until I've served 90. Maybe it could go down with good behavior."
"Sure sounds like life to me," I said sympathetically.
"Yeah..." Dave looked down at the ground sadly. "It was my fault, I guess. This is my third time in prison. The second time I got out, I really tried, but nobody would give a convicted felon a chance." Dave breathed heavily through his nose.
"I fell back into crime to make ends meet—burglary and armed robbery. It was a hard lesson: three strikes and you're out. I didn’t believe it until I faced the maximum sentence for my offenses. Now I’m stuck here. Probably for good."
I felt bad for asking at that point and tried to steer the conversation elsewhere, my old call center training kicking in.
"So... I'd been here a year already when we met? So I’ve been in here...?" I asked, knowing the answer but not wanting to voice it.
"Almost ten years, yeah," Dave confirmed. "Your trial lasted a couple of months, I think."
"Ten years just like that..." I whispered softly. Poof. Gone. I'd felt like my life was stuck in neutral in the call center. What the hell did that make this?
The conversation turned to much lighter subjects. I don’t think either of us could talk about serious things anymore. It was a weird dynamic. Dave knew a lot about me already, including many of my embarrassing stories, like how on my first birthday, my mom tried to get me to smush my face in the cake, but I refused. She just did it herself, and I cried.
Despite the fact I’d only been in prison for a few hours as far as I could remember, talking about things like that was oddly comforting. Dave talked more about himself, and I re-learned many things he claimed I already knew about him. We discussed his favorite birthday party. I could see how myself and I had hit it off even if I terrified him in our first interaction.
I talked about Nick and our friendship that went back to school. Dave talked about his friends from school days and how he should have reconnected with them before going to prison. Maybe things would have been different...
Nick was the most fascinating subject to Dave, as he was one of the few things that the me he knew refused to discuss. He knew many things about Trixie and had a pretty solid foundation of knowledge about Sarah as well. I talked a lot about Nick and Sarah's kids. With ten years having passed, the oldest was now a junior in high school. I hoped they were doing okay since I had robbed them of a father.
As rec time ended and we were all taken back to our cells, I felt a sinking weight in my chest. I said goodbye to Dave, noting I would see him at dinner. The thought of being alone in my cell for a crime I couldn't remember committing filled me with turmoil.
"I rummaged through my cell, hoping to find something beyond the letters I'd written to Trixie. My possessions were sparse—some dollars, instant ramen, and a few well-worn books and magazines. The computer magazines stood out; they were a faint link to my old life. The magazines were all computer magazines, so I guess that part of my brain never went away.
I started paging through them. Computers had gotten cooler in the last ten years. Televisions had gotten bigger and had higher definitions. No real surprise there.
I sat on the stiff, uncomfortable bed, reading through the magazines and books. I had never read any of them before, but the pages appeared well-worn. Some even had pages marked in ways I typically did to indicate my favorite parts. The most heavily read and marked was a science fiction novel called When Points Diverge. I liked that one a lot, I guess.
I sighed, realizing my memory gaps weren’t just tied to personal memories but everything, as though someone had highlighted the last ten years of my life and hit the backspace key.
Dinner came and went without event. It was more filling than breakfast: a plain hamburger with a white bread bun, some white rice, and very runny baked beans, clearly straight from a can. It was every bit as bland as breakfast, but I scarfed it down. Portions were small, and I was left wanting more after both meals.
I spent the time talking with Dave, and he filled in more of the missing gaps from the last few years of my life. There was still not a shred of information about why I killed Nick. When we were pushed back to our cells for the final headcount, I lay down on the bed, mentally exhausted from the day’s events. I fell into a restless sleep before lights out was even officially called.
******
Nick walked through the door. I leveled my pistol and squeezed the trigger. A deafening crack filled the air, and then there was just splatter. Trixie came into the room, and when she saw what I had done, her mouth opened, letting out a high-pitched beeping wail.
"Trixie... I... let me explain!" I called to her, but she just kept screaming the same screeching noise, just like... an alarm clock.
My hand shot out, feeling around until it landed on the source of the beeping, a smartphone. Sleepily, I clicked the side to silence the alarm and closed my eyes..
"Wait..." I jolted awake, disoriented. I wasn’t in prison. I was wearing boxers, not the scratchy prison pajamas, and I was in a real bed, in a real room—no gray walls or bars. I sat up. The room around me was a stark contrast to the prison—luxurious and unfamiliar."
The bed I was in was larger, king-sized, and far more comfortable than the bed I was familiar with, let alone the bed in the prison. It felt like it might be gel-infused memory foam; it was like being on a cloud. I could never afford one of these things.
"How...?" I looked around the room. My dresser was there, but it looked a bit rough around the edges. The nightstand next to the bed appeared to be real wood. The floors were hardwood, and an ajar door showed the room had an attached bathroom. I swung my legs over the side of the bed, stood up, and peered in. The bathroom had a jacuzzi tub and a large stand-up shower.
The room looked exactly like a room I used to daydream about while working at the call center. Only one thing was missing.
"Trixie!" I yelled out. I was met with only crushing silence. At least in the prison, someone would have answered; it wouldn’t have been Trixie, but it would have been someone. I moved over to the dresser and opened a drawer, pulling out a shirt and jeans. They fit perfectly. I caught a glimpse of myself in the mirror attached to the dresser. I did not look as thin and gray as I had when I saw myself in the prison mirror. My hair had a few strands of gray, but other than that, I looked relatively normal.
I grabbed the phone from the nightstand to check the time. It was nearly noon.
The phone was locked and required a PIN to be unlocked. With a shaky hand, I punched in my code, Trixie and I’s anniversary. The phone unlocked. This was my phone. The home screen displayed the temperature outside and the date. As soon as I read the date, I pressed the phone to my chest.
The day was correct—it was the day I should have woken up—but the year was ten years in the future. My stomach turned, and I felt as though I might vomit again.
This didn’t make any sense. If it was still ten years in the future and I was in prison for life, what was I doing out? Where had all this stuff come from? Where the hell was I? By my math, it had to be the same day it was when I’d woken up in prison... what is going on?
I double-checked the phone to make sure I read it right before sliding it into my pocket. I needed answers. Maybe I’d find some in the house.
Quietly, I moved over to the bedroom door and pulled it open.
"Trixie?" I called out hopefully. More silence echoed back from the empty hallway. I had hoped that since my phone password was still our anniversary, she would be around. Maybe she was at work.
As I exited the room and headed down the hallway, my jaw dropped as I was greeted by a grand staircase leading down into an immaculate living room. The house had to be at least three times the size of my childhood home and ten times the size of Trixie’s and my apartment.
The living room was decorated with expensive-looking furniture: a wrap-around couch, several plush armchairs, a wooden coffee table, two end tables what had to be no less than a 72-inch television set with a complete sound system mounted on the wall.
"All this stuff alone has to cost my yearly salary at the call center," I muttered as I explored the room. There was a picture frame sitting face down on one of the end tables. I lifted it.
It was a picture of Trixie and me. I was wearing a tuxedo, and Trixie was in a beautiful blue dress. Sarah stood to Trixie’s left. At first glance, it didn’t look like anyone was standing on my other side, but after I looked closer, I could see a hand on my shoulder. They had been cut from the photo.
"If I were a betting man, I’d guess the person cut out of the photo is Nick," I thought as I put the picture back down on the end table. I didn’t need any guesses to know what it was a picture of, even if I hadn’t lived the event. It was Trixie’s and my wedding, but last I had known, she didn’t want anything to do with me while I was in prison.
None of this was adding up. By my estimation, it was the same day I had woke up in prison, the same day on repeat, but everything was different. I could feel a mounting panic as I struggled to piece together this new reality. I was pulled from my thoughts as the phone in my pocket started to vibrate and ring. The screen read "Dr. Fitzpatrick."
To be Concluded
Thank you for getting this far! If you enjoyed this check out some of my other stories! Part 3 is here. Subscribe and stay tuned.
Credit to Craiyon.com for images
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