I looked around… All the blood, all the bodies. What have I done, I loved these people! It’s ok, they’re in a better place now. I didn’t want to kill them, but they all knew what I had done…

“Honey, I’m going to work.”
“Alright, see you later.” Thats my wife, Kristy. We’ve been married for five years, and have two beautiful children, Jackson and Matt.
As I walked out the door that morning, nothing seemed out of the ordinary. In fact, life felt like it was about to get a whole lot better for me and my family. Today I was about to close a huge deal at work and after I did it, I was guaranteed to get the biggest promotion of my career.
Today, I was about to make my 1,000th sale as an office chair salesman, a feat that had not been reached by anybody in our company in over 100 years!
I pulled out of my driveway, and took my usual route to work. I drove 5 miles down Fanson Road, then turned left onto Brookline, and I was there. As I was walking in to the building, Sal was walking out. Sal had been my best friend ever since we were 3 years old. He was like the brother I never had, and he was the only person at the company that was close to selling as much as me, and I had always felt like he slightly resented me for being the better salesman, and effectively stealing his thunder at the company.
“Hey Sal, where ya goin?” I said, wondering why he would be leaving the office this early in the morning. He continued to walk by, not even acknowledging me. “Yo man, what the hell?” Still no response. This was odd for Sal, but he had done his fair share of odd stuff throughout our friendship, so I let it slide.
I walked into the office and got the usual “Hey what’s up man?” and “Nice sale yesterday” from all my friends inside. I went up to my office, sat down at my computer and tried to log in, but the computer wouldn’t take my password. I assumed it was something wrong with the computer, so I reached for my phone to call the I.T. guys, but just as I was about to pick it up, it rang. It was my boss.
“My office. Now.” Those were the only words he said to me. I figured he was just putting on an act so I wouldn’t expect that this was for my promotion, but after seeing Sal this morning, and now this, I was getting a little suspicious.
I went up to next floor to see my boss, and when I walked in, there was no “Hey how ya doin?” like there normally is from him, but instead he just pointed to the chair across from him.
“Something wrong boss?” I asked, slightly jokingly.
“Don’t play dumb with me. I know what you’ve been doing. Tell me something, do you take pride in working for this company?”
“You know I do boss, it’s all I’ve been doing for the past 20 years. I would never wanna do anything else”
“Well then why the f*** did you fake more than half your sales!?”
This was the most shocking sentence I had ever heard anyone say to me, other than when my wife first told me she was pregnant.
“I-I-I-I didn’t, I don’t know what you’re talking about! I’ve worked honestly for this company ever since I-”
“BULLSHIT”
“Sir, I swear to you that I have never faked one sale in my entire career!”
“Then what the hell is this!?”
He slammed down in front of me, my log of sales for the past 10 years. It looked like all my work, I even recognized some of my clients names on the paper, but there was something different about it then when I originally filled it out. More than half the clients didn’t have valid social security numbers, they were listed under banks that didn’t exist. I was completely and utterly baffled.
My boss looked down his nose at me, as I just sat there looking like a sick little wounded puppy not knowing how to get up. “Now are you going to insult my intelligence some more or are you gonna come clean?”
“Sir I have no how this happened, but when I made those sales, those peoples information was valid, and we got the money.”
“Yea, but now the governments all over our ass about this! This could discredit the entire company! Our sales are gonna go down! Before long, we could be filing for bankruptcy! All. Because. Of. You.”
I was left speechless. I was sure that I had done all my work right, I was sure that had all the right information, but at this point, I was starting to doubt myself.
“Sir I know you aren’t gonna believe me, but I did all the protocol when working these deals. They all had the proper documentation, they all had the proper business inclination. There was nothing suspicious about them. I worked the deal properly, I made the sale. I did my job.”
I thought that I had made my speech pretty well, but he wasn’t convinced. That’s when a thought occurred to me. Someone had tampered with my reports, sabotaged my entire career, and the entire company!
“Sir, who told you about this, because whoever it was I think is trying to sabotage me!”
“I’m not at liberty to say, but I think you not knowing is a good thing, because you would never forgive this person”
My mind started racing. Who would I never forgive? Who would do this to-... Sal. It made so much sense. The way Sal had been acting this morning, just walking by me, not acknowledging me. He just wanted to make sure he was as far away from me as possible when I realized it was him, and he knew I would. Thinking back on all the past years I should have seen this coming. Sal and I had been best friends for as long as I can remember, but I had always been able to outshine him. Outranked him in sales, out-pitched him on the company softball team, even outplayed him in checkers.
Every time I had done this, I wasn’t doing it to make him look bad or show him up, I was just trying to do everything I did to the best of my ability, but he always seemed a bit depressed after any of these things happened, like he felt like he couldn’t live up to the bar I had set.
“It was Sal, wasn’t it?” I asked, giving him that look that he knew, I knew.
“Yes, it was.”
“Sir you have to believe me, he messed with my files! He-he-he was jealous! He always has been! He-”
“Let me stop you right there. He told us this a couple weeks ago. We’ve been doing a thorough investigation on these matters. We’ve been having our I.T. personel check for evidence of tampering and hacking, we’ve tried contacting some of your former clients, and all fingers still point to you. I have to say, at first I was thinking that there was no way this was you, just about to set the new record, get a huge promotion, but I have no choice but to side with Sal on this.”
My head was filling with rage, I could feel it about to burst with anger.
“So what’s gonna happen to me now?”
“I’m sorry, but I am going to have to let you go. I will have to call the cops, and you will be arrested for financial fra-”
Clunk.
It all happened so fast I didn’t even know what happened. The next thing I knew I had a lamp in my hand, and my boss was on the ground.
Dead.
I didn’t even need to think about what to do next, I grabbed a tissue, I wiped down all the fingerprints I could find, and got the hell out of that room. Thankfully my bosses secretary was on vacation so nobody saw me go in, and the real stroke of luck, the security system was down for repairs. No cameras.
I walked into the elevator, clicked the ground floor button. This seemed to be the longest elevator ride of my life, as people continuously got on and off at every single floor. The entire time in there, I was trying to plan out all of my next steps. Go home, get my wife, pull my kids out of school, but then I realized, Sal was still expecting me to get fired and f*ing arrested, and he was just gonna take over as the top salesman in the company. I couldn’t let this slide. I get out of the building, went to my car, with only one thing in mind. Make Sal pay for what he had done.
I knew Sals wife was at work and his son was at school, so this was the perfect time. I floored it to his house, ignoring all stop signs and red lights on my way. Maybe I was hoping I’d get stopped by the police, but when I didn’t, I took it as a sign that I was doing the right thing, and I just drove faster.
I pulled into Sals driveway, his car was there too. I made sure I blocked him in so he couldn’t get away. I ran up to the door, and without even knocking, just kicked it in.
“WHAT THE F***!?” I screamed. I was so furious I didn’t know how to get all the anger out.
“Wait wait wait, I can explain I can expla-”
I punched him smack in the jaw so hard my hand started to hurt, but I didn’t care. He started stumbling backwards, trying to get away. I wasn’t going to let that happen to this piece of s***. One other thing I had always been able to show him up at was my strength, and in came in handy now more than ever. I grabbed his shirt, and dragged him down to the ground and just started wailing on him.
“Please stop!!!” he kept screaming. I didn’t care. Because of him, I was going to have to completely start my life over. Pack up my family, sell my house, get a new job, all because he couldn’t deal with me being better than him. All of this had been going through my mind, and I didn’t even realize that he had gone limp beneath me. He wasn’t breathing, blinking, he was dead, and I looked at him and was happy about what I’d done.
At this point I was starting to get used to killing. Not just getting used to it, I actually liked it. I didn’t know if that made me a bad person, but I didn’t care. They deserved it. I had done everything right. I had been a good friend, I had loaned him money, always been there for him, I had babysat his kids, and he repaid me by destroying my life.
However, now wasn’t the time to be worrying about this. I called my wife, told her to pull the kids out of school right now and get home. She didn’t ask any questions, but I knew she would once she got home. In the meantime, I had to get any evidence of me out of the house. I wiped my footprint from the door, I wiped my DNA from underneath his fingernails, and wiped down all the fingerprints I could think of.
After I got in my car and drove home, I went into the bathroom to wash the blood off my hands, then I looked in the mirror. I looked into my own eyes and thought maybe I was going crazy. I had lived a practically perfect life, and then just over the course of a couple hours, it was all in shambles.
My wife pulled into the driveway, kids in the car. They got out and came into the house, and my wife looked at me and froze. I realized that my shirt was still drenched in blood.
“Kids, go to your rooms.”
They went up with no questions.
“Why the hell are you all covered in blood?”
“Honey I can explain. There was some trouble at work.” I looked at the look on her face go sheet white.
“Oh my god, what happened? Is everyone ok?”
I didn’t really know how to answer this. “No, not exactly… Honey it’s Sal.”
“Well god damnit tell me what happened!?”
I looked into my wifes eyes, knowing that this was the person I had built my life with. Built a family, beautiful children, exchanged our wedding vows. I owed it to her to tell her the truth.
“Honey, I really don’t know how to tell you this, but Sal is dead, and it was me.”
“Wh-what do you mean it was you?”
“I killed him. He messed with all of my sales records, I was going to get fired, sent to jail. I couldn’t let that happen. I couldn’t let him get away with it”
She stood up, her face mixed with anger, disbelief, and the look that she was about to be sick.
“He was your best friend! How could you do something like that to him, to anyone!?”
“Honey you don’t understand, I only did what I had to do to protect-”
“If anything all you’ve done is make it so that I can never look at you the same again! I’m calling the police!”
At that moment, I felt something take over me. It was the same feeling I got when I killed my boss, and Sal. This time, I tried holding it back. For the sake of my wife, for the sake of my kids, but there was no use. As my wife got up to make a dash for the phone, I grabbed her by the hair, and slammed her to the ground, and this time it happened quick. On the way down, her head hit the corner of the coffee table.
I looked down at her limp, lifeless body, and that was the moment I felt like my brain exploded.
What happened? What did I do? What have I done? I just killed the most important person in my life for the past 10 years! But at this point, my sanity was completely thrown out the window. There was no barrier between right and wrong anymore, it all kind of ran together. I looked over and I saw my kids looking over at what had just happened.
Matt looked over to me with terrified and tear filled eyes and said “Daddy, is mommy gonna be ok?”
“Of course she is! She’s just taking a nap! I’m gonna go get something to help her right now.”
I walked into the hall closet where we keep all of Jackson’s baseball gear, grabbed his brand new baseball bat. Ironically, it was called The Smasher.
I took the bat, and without even thinking, I took the swing. It hit Jackson square in the head. I guess you could say it was a home run. Matt screamed. He started to run but he tripped on his mother’s dead body. I looked him square in the eyes, and then without even thinking or hesitating, I said “I’m sorry.”, and I took that final swing. They were all gone.
The funny thing is, I wasn’t sorry, at least not at first. I didn’t feel anything. If anything I felt as though I had done the right thing. If I hadn’t killed them, they would’ve had to grow up without a mother or father, and the constant reminder of that every day they wake up and get out of bed to see the crappy foster parents they would be assigned.
Although, after a minute, all of my feelings and emotions started pouring back. I looked down at all of my family’s dead bodies.  I had just killed all of them. What had I done!? I thought earlier that I had lost my mind, but that was just temporary. Now, I truly went insane. I was so messed up and so scarred by what I had done, that I had an idea. I wanted so badly to be close to them again, and not just one more time, forever, that I, one by one carried their bodies into the closet. The same closet where I had gotten the bat to kill my sons. I put all of them in there, and then I got in there myself and locked the door, and broke the knob. I gathered up my wife and kids, and held them close, as blood still dripped down their faces and onto me.
I started to cry. Not tears of sadness that my loved ones were gone, but tears of joy, that I had saved them all from a terrible existence where their husband and father would be viewed by the public as a monster, and that I would be able to sit here in this closet with my family close by me forever. This was the perfect ending, to a perfect day.

“Open up, it’s the police”.