What I Wish I'd Known Before I Killed My Brother

In The Gutter, there are plenty of reasons to kill a man. Reasons not to kill him may find you a little too late.

What I Wish I'd Known Before I Killed My Brother by Sophie Marie

 1.       I wish my incarcerated father had shared his experience. He punched a man who knocked his head and his life bled out. The cops were on the scene before my dad could process what happened and had him cuffed before his mouth had closed from shock. I wish he’d told me how it felt as he watched the man’s life leave his eyes. If he had told me the high you got from it, I would have killed my brother sooner.

2.      I wish I had read a ‘How to’ guide on disposing of a dead body. It took me five days to shift it and by that time, his body had expelled all of its fluids. You can imagine the smell. This was my first killing and I hadn’t perfected my technique. Blood spattered my wall from the hacksaw as it snapped against my brother’s femur. It took six blades to get him all chopped up. I wish someone had told me how tough the human body can be.

3.      In the ‘How to’ guide, I wish it would cover some tips on how not to get caught. I’m not completely stupid; I know I needed to wear gloves. What I didn’t anticipate was the sweat dripping off my forehead onto my brother’s dead face. Cutting up a body is hard work.

4.      I wish I had known not to take my mobile phone with me. The police always start with the victim’s close friends and family. When they checked our mobiles, the phone mast pinned me to where they found his body.

5.      I wish I’d known not to clean blood with bleach. When the cops came around with a warrant, they shined a UV light. There was blood smeared all over the walls. The bleach seemed to have multiplied the amount of blood by thousands. Add that to my mobile location and it’s game over for me.

6.      What I really wish – desperately – was that they found the cancer sooner. I suppose that was my fault, I kept putting off the dreaded visit to the doctor. And I’ll always hate myself that the time I wasted in going to the doctors caused me to have little time to waste before I die. I wish they’d caught the leukemia before I pierced my brother’s heart with a box-cutter knife. I wish I’d known he was a match – the only match – that could donate bone marrow to me. 

Sophie Marie is a mature student of Creative Writing. This is her first published story.