Read Online Low Life by Ryan David Jahn - Free Book Online Page A

vertebrae.
    ‘I’m gonna take a leak.’
    He started for the bathroom.
    ‘No, wait!’
    Robert paused at the head of the hallway.
    ‘What?’
    ‘The toilet’s broken. It doesn’t flush.’
    ‘It’s probably just the chain. I’ll reach into the tank and pull the stopper manually. If I can fix it, I will.’
    Then he continued down the hallway.
    Simon got to his feet. He took two steps toward the hallway and then stopped. He didn’t know what to do. He couldn’t attack his friend. He could, but that might be as bad as him
finding the body. No, it wouldn’t. He had to stop him from going into the bathroom.
    ‘Robert, no,’ he said as he rushed into the hallway. ‘It’s not the—’
    But it was too late.
    ‘What the fuck?’ Robert said from the bathroom.
    Simon stopped mid-stride. He looked at Robert, who was standing in the open doorway, facing the bathtub.
    He pulled a lungful from his cigarette. He swallowed.
    ‘Robert,’ he said.
    Robert looked at him.
    ‘What the fuck?’
    ‘What?’ he said, as he walked into the bathroom.
    ‘There’s a fucking dead guy in your bathtub, man.’
    ‘I know – I put him there.’
    ‘Why?’ Robert said.
    ‘He broke into my apartment.’
    ‘I don’t care if he raped your goldfish. You don’t store a corpse in your apartment. You have to call the police.’
    Simon felt as if someone was slowly drilling a wood screw into his forehead, just above his left eye, and his left eye was leaking water as a result of this. It ran down his cheek and he wiped
it away with the back of one hand.
    ‘You have to call the police,’ Robert said again.
    Simon took off his glasses, pulled his shirts out of his waistband, used the T-shirt to wipe off the lenses, wiped at his eye again, and replaced the glasses.
    ‘I can’t,’ he said finally. ‘I can’t call the police.’
    ‘Why not?’
    ‘Because there’s a dead guy in my bathtub, Robert. A dead guy who’s been on ice for almost a full day. The police won’t just let that go.’
    ‘Well, why the fuck did you put him on ice?’
    ‘I didn’t want to call the police. I wanted to buy myself some time.’
    ‘For what?’
    Simon closed his eyes, head throbbing. He let out a sigh and tried to ignore what his mind was telling him was the easiest way to solve this problem – which was to kill Robert. Robert was
his friend, his only close friend – as close a friend as he’d ever had, anyway – and he couldn’t just kill him. He couldn’t simply steal forty or fifty years of breath
from him because he had become a problem, especially since it was Simon’s own fault. He could have found a reason to keep Robert out. And yet a disturbing voice in his head – the voice
that narrated his low life – kept insisting that murder was the simple solution: Just kill him, Simon. You’ve already killed once. It wasn’t so bad, was it? You didn’t even
lose an entire night’s sleep. So do it. Do it and get it done with. Sure, it’s your fault. You fucked up. So fix your mistake. You pay or Robert does. Kill him. Kill him and be done
with it. It’ll only take a few minutes and then it’ll be over.
    Simon opened his eyes.
    ‘What?’ he said.
    ‘You needed to buy time for what?’
    ‘He broke into my apartment to kill me,’ he said. ‘I need to find out why.’
    ‘You said yourself he attacked you because you caught him going through your record collection.’
    ‘Well, I didn’t catch him doing anything. He broke in and he tried to murder me and that’s all he tried to do. I need to know why. And look.’
    Simon reached down and started pulling the duct tape away from the corpse’s neck.
    ‘What the fuck are you doing?’ Robert said. ‘I don’t want to see this.’
    ‘Just hold on. Maybe it’ll help you understand.’
    ‘I already understand. You killed a man and now—’
    Simon pulled the plastic bag away and Robert went silent. Blood dripped from the bag, and Simon thought of times he had purchased a