prompt: Write about a character who everyone thinks is guilty of something terrible, but isn’t….
available at Reedsy
“I’m sorry, but you’re not the right person for the position.” Her plastic smile did nothing to hide the fear in her eyes. I was used to the look. It was a look that said, “Please don’t carve me up!”
Never mind that I never did such a thing, and anyone with enough intelligence to do any research would know that. Whatever. If their HR isn’t smart enough to do that, I don’t want to work for them, anyway. I’ve told myself that lie so many times I’m starting to believe it.
If the media hadn’t gotten involved from the beginning it wouldn’t be like this. The early news cycles were full of my picture and reporting that made it sound like I carved up my girlfriend and tried to do the same to my business partner. It made for entertaining TV; experts talking about how rare it is for women to be the perpetrators of this sort of crime.
When the truth came out, and my ex-business partner was arrested and charged with murder, the news ran it as a footnote. It just didn’t have the same sort of appeal. It was all too pedestrian to grab headlines. Caroline and James had an affair. I knew about it and was okay with it. James wasn’t. He decided if he couldn’t have her to himself, no one could.
I had come home early and heard screaming. I grabbed a knife from the kitchen and ran to the back where the screaming had stopped. There was so much blood. It wasn’t clear who it was straddling Caroline’s body, slashing at it with one of our own knives. I stabbed as hard and fast as I could in his back. On the third strike it sunk to the hilt and got stuck there. He screamed and whipped around, brandishing the matching knife to the one that was stuck in his back. I ran.
I flagged down the first police car I saw. They didn’t hesitate to cuff me and put me in the back. When they sent another unit to my home, they found James bleeding out on top of Caroline, one knife stuck in his back, the other in his abdomen. He had some balls to stick himself like that. Still, didn’t look good for me.
Before the investigation was even properly underway the media was reporting on it as if I was guilty. Someone leaked the story to the local news station, and it went national from there. The consultancy business, our business, folded within the week.
When I went to trial for stabbing James, the prosecutor used the fact that I had stabbed him three times in the back as proof that it wasn’t self-defense. My attorney disagreed, in that the defense of a third party is treated the same. The jury found in my favor in less than twenty minutes of deliberation.
Still, the local media played it as a minor story, as they did with James’ trial. It just wasn’t sexy enough to maintain the spotlight. Still, it all would have died down, if not for the documentary.
I was never contacted about it and knew nothing about it until Caroline’s mother called to tell me they had been interviewed for it. The producers and director made it sound like I was jealous of Caroline and James and wanted to take his half of the business away from him. James was made to look like a victim, doing life for a crime that he didn’t commit.
Key pieces of evidence were left out of the documentary. James’ skin and blood under Caroline’s fingernails and the scratches on his neck. Her defensive wounds. The fact that I had none of Caroline’s blood on me, and my fingerprints were only on the knife in James’ back. My cell phone GPS data put me on the interstate at the time the first disturbance call about Caroline and James screaming at each other was called in. In essence, they ignored the entire body of evidence that was shown to the jurors that found James guilty of first-degree murder.
The documentary used snippets of the interviews with the prosecutor and District Attorney out of context to make it look like they had a vendetta against James from the beginning. Somehow, they got hold of my medical records and used my treatment for depression ten years prior to make me look crazy. Caroline’s older brother, who hated me, was featured prominently, while her mother, sister, and younger brother were ignored except for the “I miss her” parts — probably because they liked me and said good things about me.
With careful editing, in an entire eight-hour documentary series, they made me look guilty without saying I was. So, not enough for slander or libel charges to stick. Even if I had won in court, it wouldn’t matter. I’ll continue to be “guilty” in the eyes of everyone who hasn’t got the time or inclination to research anything for themselves.
Caroline’s younger brother, Stephan, has been wanting to do a documentary that shows all the evidence, but I advised against it. It would just feed the conspiracy crazy public into thinking that he and I had some sort of affair, never mind that I’m a lesbian. He ignored me though, and he’s been scouting for a director and trying to crowd-fund the production. If it ever happens, though, I’ll be there to tell the real story.
I’ve been staying in the cheapest one-room apartment I could find and working at a fast-food joint; the only place so far that would hire me. The manager’s convinced that it’s all part of some plot to cover up something from the consulting gig James was doing for the Department of Defense. How streamlining HR processes turns into a national security issue worthy of destroying lives is beyond me, though.
I worked the counter for half a day before I was recognized. The resulting disruption meant that I’ve been relegated to doing only the drudge work in the back. I have a master’s degree in Human Resources Management, and I flip burgers and push a mop for eight hours a day for minimum wage. At least I have work for now.
I moved away for a while. No matter how far I went though, I still got the stares and dirty looks. I figured that if I was going to be treated the same everywhere, it might as well be in a place I know.
Despite how the documentary made it sound, I did not kill my girlfriend. Of that, I am innocent. As far as trying to kill my former business partner, a jury called it defense, and found me not guilty. To be fair, though, in the moment, when I thought I could still save her, I did try. It’s given me a whole new mindset when watching these documentary series. No matter how guilty they may make a person look, I always remember they may be, like me, innocent…ish.
