I helped him hide the body

The night it happened began quietly, too quietly for a city like ours, the rain falling in thin sharp lines that reflected the yellow streetlights and turned the asphalt into broken mirrors, I remember thinking how strange it felt to hear my own footsteps echo as I walked home, my phone dead, my jacket soaked, my head full of nothing but exhaustion and routine, until I noticed a man standing under the flickering light at the corner, not moving, not smoking, not looking at his phone, just standing there as if the world had paused around him, and when our eyes met I felt something shift inside my chest, not fear exactly, more like instinct screaming before the mind could understand why, I tried to look away and keep walking but the sound came then, a dull heavy thud followed by a wet dragging noise behind me, the kind of sound that doesn’t belong in normal life, and when I turned around against every warning in my body, I saw the man kneeling beside someone on the ground, his hands dark and shaking, the body twisted in an impossible angle, blood mixing with rain and running into the gutter like it had a destination of its own, and before I could step back or scream or run, the man looked at me again and said softly, almost politely, please don’t leave.

He told me it was an accident, that word repeating over and over as his hands trembled and his voice cracked, said the guy attacked him, said he panicked, said he didn’t mean to push him that hard, and I wanted to believe him because belief felt safer than reality, because if it was an accident then I was just a witness, not part of it, but the way he spoke, controlled yet desperate, made my skin crawl, he asked me to help him move the body, said the cameras were broken, said the police never come here on time anyway, said if I walked away he’d be ruined and if I stayed quiet I could go home and forget this night ever existed, and that was the moment I realized the real horror wasn’t the dead man at our feet but the choice forming inside me, the terrible understanding that I could actually walk away, that nothing physical was stopping me, and yet my legs wouldn’t move, my mouth stayed shut, and when I finally spoke it wasn’t to refuse, it was to ask where he wanted to move the body.

We dragged the body into an abandoned construction site two blocks away, the rain covering our tracks, my hands slipping, my stomach twisting with every step, the smell of blood and wet concrete burning itself into my memory, and the whole time he talked, about his job, his family, his fear of prison, as if making himself human would bind me to him, and maybe it worked because I listened, because I nodded, because I didn’t run, and when we finished and stood there breathing hard in the dark, he smiled at me with relief and thanked me like I had done him a favor, like we had just shared something intimate and meaningful, and then he said something that made my heart drop into my stomach, he said now you’re safe too because no one will ever believe you if you talk, and I realized then I wasn’t helping him escape, I was being trapped, the rain stopped suddenly as if the city itself was listening, and I went home shaking knowing I had crossed a line I could never uncross.

Days passed, then weeks, but the night never left me, it lived in my dreams, in the sound of footsteps behind me, in every headline about violence that made my pulse spike, and then the messages started, no words, just photos, a picture of my building entrance, my workplace, my mother’s street, proof that silence was being monitored, that my fear was justified, and I tried to go to the police twice, stood outside the station both times until my legs refused to carry me inside, because how do you explain that you helped hide a body, that you chose the easy path and now want forgiveness, and then one evening I saw his face on the news, wanted for questioning in another incident, another fight, another body found near water, and something inside me snapped, not courage but exhaustion, I realized I would never be free unless I stopped surviving and started ending this, so I walked into the station and told them everything, every detail, every lie, every selfish thought, and I waited to be arrested.

The ending didn’t come the way I expected, he was caught the same night trying to leave the city, he denied knowing me until they showed him my statement, my signature, my recorded confession, and the look he gave me through the glass was worse than any threat, not anger, not fear, but disappointment, like I had failed a test only he understood, I was charged too, obstruction, complicity, my life reduced to court dates and whispers and sleepless nights, but here’s the part that still keeps me awake, months later after the trial ended and the city moved on, I received one final letter with no return address, just a single sentence written in calm neat handwriting, you didn’t save yourself you only chose which prison you wanted to live in, and sometimes I wonder if the real horror was never that night, but the fact that he was right.