It was late and I was on my way home for the night. The digital clock in my car read 12:42 A.M. and I was fighting to keep my eyes open. The radio was blasting to help keep me awake as I sped around the turns of the deserted nighttime highway. I was doing well over 70mph when I saw movement on the stretch ahead. I swerved out of the way, barely missing the figure of a young girl climbing over the railing on the side of the highway. I checked the surroundings to find no broken down vehicles or other signs of life. The highway was about 20 feet above the ground. If the girl made it to the other side of the railing, there was no place to go but down. I instantly burst into tears, wondering whether I should stop my car and go back to check on the poor girl. It was too late now, however, because I was too far from the site, thanks to my speeding. I cried all the way home, convinced I had witnessed a suicide.
     The next day at work was hard on my concentration. I wondered if the girl I saw last night was even real or not, and if she was real, I hoped she was okay. I decided to drive back out to the site later on and look around a bit, just to ease my mind.
 Without even stopping at home after work, I headed out to the highway I had been on the night before. When I got to what I thought was the correct spot, I got out of my car and slowly grasped the cold railing and leaned over it. It was an extremely long way down and I could hardly see anything on the ground. I stood perched over the railing for a good ten minutes until I came to the conclusion that my suicide girl had probably not taken the plunge, and furthermore, most likely did not exist. I slid back into my car and began driving home, but something still bothered me about the whole situation.
     About halfway home, I stopped the car. My view from the railing had not satisfied my curiosity and I decided to survey the ground onto which my suicide girl may have landed. I turned my car around and drove there.
     It took me a while to figure out where the spot was, and I nearly gave up and went home until I saw it. In the tall, uncut grass lay a body, face down, stained red, with long brown hair attached to an almost doll-like head. The arms were folded backwards onto her back and her legs were spread wide. I crept slowly closer to the body and burst into tears once again. My suicide girl was real, not a hallucination created from sleeplessness as I had first thought. And then it moved. Or rather, I thought one of her arms moved and I crept even closer to her. I stared at the bloody mess of contorted limbs and wondered what her face looked like. I shoved her limp body onto her back with my foot and her arms and legs plopped all around her uncomfortably. Her face was purple and bloody, and her nose was skinned to the bone. I stared at the poor thing through teary eyes and wondered what her name was. Then her halfway-shut eyes slowly opened and I fell back in fear. To my horror, I realized the poor girl was still alive. The gruesome, wretched mass of bloody limbs had somehow survived the fall. She moved her mouth and a little bit of blood came out of it. “Hey,” my voice quivered, “can you hear me?” The body lay motionless, but in my mind I heard her ask me something. I stood back up and stumbled into my car. I started the old thing up and pressed on the gas. Her body made a crunching noise as my car ran over it, and once again as I backed the car up. I had put her out of her misery, the poor thing, and got out of my car again.
     A mass of dark red blood pooled around her this time and her face was no longer  recognizable. I knelt beside her, my knees in her blood, and whispered, “Now you are free.” I wept beside the corpse for what seemed an eternity.
     A thought popped into my mind: What was I to do now? I couldn’t just leave her body here. What if someone was to find her with my tire tracks imprinted on her body? I had to take her with me, and so I lifted her body off the ground. Blood dripped from her like a slow leaking faucet as I carried her stiff body to the back seat of my car. Then I went back out and laid dirt and grass over the bloody mess that remained where I had run her over. I sat down in my car and drove away.
     She gave off an odor of blood, dirt, and old flesh as I drove her back to my place. Her body bobbed around on my seats as I hit bumps on the road. She made quite a mess in the back seat of my car.
     When I arrived at my house, I carefully lifted her out of the car and dragged her to my front door. She left a trail of blood and mud up my driveway and on the floors in my house. I let her fall onto my kitchen floor and scurried outside to get my water hose to clean up the mess she had created. Then I returned to my kitchen and stared at the body of my suicide girl. It didn’t look like a body now really, but more like a clumped mass of red, purple, and brown flesh resembling a person. What was I to do with her now? Suppose my friends showed up. Where would I hide her? Questions raced through my mind as I gazed at the victim.
     I decided the only logical thing to do was to cut her body into smaller pieces, and that would make for an easier disposal. I pulled my meat cleaver out of the kitchen drawer and began slicing her damaged flesh.
     Night fell once again and my suicide girl was now a large pile of sliced skin, dirt, bone, and blood on my kitchen floor. I gathered up the pieces of slimy flesh and fit them into the three largest pots I owned. After I rinsed off all of her bones and placed them into a large box, I mopped my entire kitchen floor to get rid of the mess. Exhausted, I stumbled into my living room and collapsed on the couch.
     I must have dozed off because when I woke up, the sun was blaring through the windows. I went into the bathroom, splashed water on my face, and remembered what I had left in my kitchen. I walked back into the room and waiting for me was the three pots of raw flesh and the box of bones. What was I to do with it all? I decided to make myself something to eat because I can think better on a full stomach. I checked my cupboards to find them empty, and my refrigerator contained only a jar of pickles, a container of expired milk, some cheese, and the leftover pasta from my sister’s little get-together a week ago. These things didn’t seem too appetizing, so I decided to kill two birds with one stone and broiled one of the pots of flesh from my suicide girl. When it had finished cooking, I sat down and chewed on the meat. It tasted bitter and was very stringy, yet it satisfied my hunger.
 After a few days devouring the old flesh, I acquired a taste for it, and even decided that I liked it. I had even taken the bones and hung them up artistically in odd places around my home.
     Janie stopped in to say hi last night because she hadn’t heard from me in a week and was starting to become worried. I hadn’t even realized I had not left my house since that night. Janie commented on my new bone decorations and just to shut her up I told her they were fake and I had bought them at a craft fair. She smiled nervously at me and told me that she needed to get some for her own home. I asked her to stay for dinner and she agreed, so I served her the last bit of my suicide girl and she gobbled it up. I told her it was moose-meat, and she said, “That explains why it tastes so gamy.” I guess it did taste a bit like game meat.
     We sat in my living room and talked for hours after dinner. I feel bad for Janie; her niece ran away from home about a week ago and hasn’t been found yet. Janie was very close to her niece. She once told me she felt sometimes as though she and her niece were one person, as if she was a part of her. Then a funny thought popped into my mind. There was a chance Janie’s niece might truly be a part of her now. Then Janie had to go because it was getting late. I waved good-bye and watched her drive away.