Creative Writing

In the Lake of the Woods Alternate ending

And with that, John stopped broadcasting and dropped the radio overboard.  Deep in the waters of Canada he was finally alone.  He was running from the horrors of his previous life.  The horrible acts of Vietnam, his lies, his misdeeds, his crushing defeat in the primary, his struggle and strife with Kathy.  All was behind him.  He drowned them in the Lake.  Buried deep within him, in the pits of his soul they would try to resurface, but he would chain them back down to the bottom, ignoring his past.  

As he pushed his Chris-Craft steadily Northward further into Canadian terriorty all he could be reminded of was the loss of the love of his life.  He battered his mind, struggling to come to terms with what had happened.  Kathy was gone, and soon he would be too.  How could he have allowed himself to let this happen?  Was it his troubled past that clouded his judgement? Why couldnt his deep seeded need to be loved be appeased by the devotion of Kathy?  He seemed to have had it all, thats what he told himself. He had his lover, but had lost the entire future he had dreamed of since before the war.  One was nothing without the other.  If he couldnt have both, he needn’t the other.  The attrocities of his life, his Post Dramatic Stress warped his idea of reality, to the point where he would lose himself into another man, into a different personality, one that only knew pain, one that could only inflict pain.  All he could do was think about his fuzzy remembrance of that horrible night, the night where John lost himself to a different self, and where Kathy would soon lose her self.

That man who took over was incensed with rage.  “Kill Jesus” was all he could think.  But there was no Jesus.  There was no God.  A just God would not have allowed his life to be destroyed.  In vengeance he must destroy another life.  Kathy.  Poor sweet Kathy, wrapped up in her blankets, hopefull that their life will turn around.  She was so innocent.  But he did not care.  She must pay for his pain, some one must.

After boiling the plants, he discarded the tea kettle.  He wanted to feel her death in his own hands.  Feel what it is like to inflict such pain on her, the pain her fling with the dentist inflicted on him.  He climbed onto the bed, and wrapped his calloused hands around her slender neck and strangled her.  She struggled in terror, but he was too strong. Their eyes met for a brief instant, before her life was erased, like his dreams had been.

He took the body to the boat house, chopping it up into several pieces, puting each in a weighted garbage bag.  No one would ever find her.  The Lake would hide his guilt, like he had tried for so long to hide his guilt at Thuan Yen.  Driving deep into the lake he dropped pieces, weighted with lead into the depths of the Lake of the Woods.  At the last piece he sunk the boat.  An accident people would think.  A missing person in a huge lake. It happens all the time.

With these final thoughts in his mind, John realized that he could no longer suppress so much guilt.  There was no where to run, nowhere to hide.  Try as he might they would flare, and bring him as much pain as they had before. He knew his only option.  With this, he took a length of rope from the craft and affixed it to his leg, the other end to the boat. He proceeded to flip the vessel and sink it to its doom at the bottom of the Lake of the Woods.  As he sank the coldness overtook him.  His tears were washed away by the waters of the lake.  He peered up the surface one last time and uttered out in bubbled breath. “Kathy.”