A “Still Life” by Sitcom inspired story

Ian drove for three more hours in the thick forest that covered both
sides of the road to find a rundown motel where we could spend the
night. We only had enough money for suite so we settled in the small
bedroom with cigarettes stains that burned the sheets and the ceiling
walls. The bathroom was rank with the smell of piss and bleach. I
checked my watch to see it was five minutes after six but the sun was
already setting. Ian was busy watching past horseracing events on a CRT
television while Tina sat on the bed and blankly observed her grim
surroundings. By then, we’d already come down from the high of being
“newlyweds” and were forced to come to a realization:
Tina murdered someone. I helped her hide the body. Ian was supposed
to be at his night job working. Not helping us get away. We would
never truly get away from murder. Things would never go back to
normal after this…
TINA
“We’re fucked.” I thought to myself while Ian’s eyes were glued to the
TV and Tom flipped through torn magazines that were lazily organized
on the bookshelf. This isn’t what I planned on doing with my life. I
regret everything that happened yesterday.
What I felt when I killed that man wasn’t what I had anticipated at all.
Instead of feeling powerful, I felt sick to my stomach. Visions of blood
spurring from the fat guy’s neck as he dropped to floor completely
lifeless would not escape my mind. I felt like crying but I couldn’t. I was
too stunned to even speak about it. I felt bile rising from my throat and
headed to the bathroom to throw up in the toilet that smelled like it
hadn’t been cleaned in weeks. Luckily, I could flush down my own vomit
and wash my face with some water from the pipe. I stared at my
reflection in the mirror and hated what I saw staring back at me.
Another obsession of mine was becoming a still life. One that was
buried in a graveyard and had flowers and candles surrounding it like a
holy shrine and was greeted with nothing but love and respect. I’d be
thought of as an angel that flew away to her home in heaven. Owing
nothing to no one. How about that? A satisfying ending to a depressing
life that ended in a painful death.

I open the bathroom door to find Tom staring at me. He was probably
waiting for me on the outside.
“Are you alright?”
I rolled my eyes in annoyance. Everyone wants to know if you’re alright
but they don’t want to deal with your pain when you’re not.
“I fucking killed someone, Tom. So mind me for not feeling alright
about that.”
Tom stared at the floor in shame while I walked to the bed to lay there
while staring at the ceiling until my eyes finally closed and I drifted off
to a temporary form of a still life. And one thought weighed heavy on
my mind:
There is no escape from the life we live now. We can only be found
now…