“It’s dark as shit out here,” Andy said in a hushed voice as he got out of the car.
In the pitch of night, the cypress, mangrove, and pine trees appeared like creatures, their roots like claws dipping into the inky water. The scene seemed fitting for the backdrop of Neil’s ever-growing nightmare, which had heightened over the last few months. His father’s sleepwalking issue had been keeping Neil up at all hours. And now he needed to hyper-focus to keep his own eyelids from closing.
“Deal with it, man. Don’t you think I’ve got worse problems?” Neil said to his best friend since middle school.
“You? Don’t you mean our problems? You freakin’ got me roped into this.”
“Yeah, well, it’s too late to back out now.” Neil popped the trunk. He glanced down and cringed at the sight of the lifeless face spattered with blood, the back of the skull all caved in and oozing brain matter now seared into his mind for the rest of his life. From the shoulders down, the victim appeared completely normal—like he could be asleep or passed out. But one look at the head and face, and Neil wished he had stumbled onto a slasher movie set. Guilt had become his constant tormentor, clawing at him at every turn. It was bad enough he’d struck a guy, sending him to the ground, but why had he kicked his head into the curb? The fellow college student’s utterance of Neil’s secret had somehow flipped a switch inside of him. There was a lot at stake if the information got into the wrong hands. But where had his fit of rage come from? That wasn’t him. He was a good kid. A good son. A good friend. Wasn’t he? He was starting to believe he was becoming someone else.
Neil glanced up at Andy, and a realization struck him like a whack upside his skull. It must’ve been Andy’s loose lips. A bunch of people had told Neil not to get the illegal and poisonous snake—the reptile handler himself, his father, and Andy. But Andy was the only one who knew Neil had actually purchased it and brought it home. And Andy had also been at the party. “Hey, did you run your mouth about the inland taipan?”
“Huh? What are you talking about?”
“At the party. Did you run your mouth?”
“I don’t think so.” Andy’s eyes darted all around, and he pressed his lips together. “But I was pretty trashed, so—”
“That’s what I thought. Goddamn it. This is partly your fault then.” Neil grunted, but it came out as more of a growl.
“If I did, I’m sorry, dude.”
Neil glared at him, wishing things could’ve been different.
“Seriously, how are we gonna see out here?” Andy asked.
Shaking off his frustration, Neil forced himself to redirect his attention to the present moment. “I got this. I’ve been out here loads of times.” Not only had he mined a few reptiles in the Everglades for his business, but he’d also helped catch loads of Burmese pythons in the area. He was passionate about restoring balance to the natural world—but would that be enough to atone for his recent sins? Neil almost laughed aloud at the irony. Killing pythons was an acceptable act of playing God, but accidentally murdering a human being was not.
“Okay, now what?”
Neil decided to take the bloodied end of the corpse, since this horror was all his fault. He nodded at Andy to take the feet. Once Neil reached for the underarms to lift the unnamed kid, he sensed the cool wetness of blood soaking through his shirt. The reality of the bodily fluid against his skin made it impossible to detach from the situation at hand.
“Wait. Did you search the pockets for ID? And anything else? What if someone finds something?” Andy asked.
“Isn’t it better if it’s found out here? I’m certainly not going to keep anything. And besides, what else we gonna do with it?” Neil had already thought about all the ways to avoid being linked to the dead dude. Had anyone seen them talking at the party? Would Andy run his stupid mouth about that too? Neil longed for the days before he’d had to concoct stories to cover for the reality of what happened. Would he panic at the sight of a police officer at his door or at his job?
“I don’t know. Burn it?”
“Well, we can’t burn his class ring. Or that chain around his neck. Best we take our chances this way. Makes it look more like an accidental death anyways. He came out here for a party or to get some alone time. Or whatever. Now, can we get on with it?” Neil nodded his head at the victim still half in the trunk, waiting for Andy to finally take his end and lift.
Their shoes crunched along the ground while Neil led them along the edge of the swamp to what resembled a lagoon surrounded by a covert of trees. The weight of the body strained Neil’s arm and back muscles. Distant rustling and rippling sounded all around them, then a snapping of jaws and swishing of tails. A set of red eyes flashed amid the reeds. Several forms rose from the water, making their presence known. The scaly skin reflected the scant moonlight.
“What the hell?” Andy muttered.
“You never seen them at night?”
“Dude, I don’t think I’ve seen one in real life. Ever.”
“Yeah, well, you’re about to see more than you’ll ever want to see.”
“Don’t they sleep?”
“During the day. They feed at night.”
“Well, that’s convenient, ain’t it?”
“You’re not funny.”
“Who says this is funny?”
They neared the edge of the water.
“Just shut up and let’s get this over with.” Neil adjusted his grip on the corpse before they lowered it to the earth. Thinking of how this was once a young man with his whole life ahead of him, Neil swallowed the lump in his throat as he stood up straight, as if he had an iron rod for a spine. “I’ll be right back.”
Within minutes, Neil returned from the car. The machete in his hands winked in the moonlight. He gripped it hesitantly, fighting back the memories of its prior use. The sight of slashed flesh and bone had a tendency to creep into one’s psyche and take up residence there. It didn’t matter if it was animal or not. Life was life.
“Aw, hell no. Can’t we just chuck him in there as is?”
“Actually, no.” Neil pursed his lips and tilted his head. “If you knew anything about gators, you’d know they prefer to go after things that’re smaller than them. And we want all the bones to get digested in this case.”
Andy clenched his eyes shut and stroked his forehead.
“You might wanna stand back.”
“Holy shit. This is happening.” Andy retreated a few feet. “You’re acting like you’ve done this before. But that’s nuts. Of course you’ve never done this before.” The doubt in his voice almost made him sound like he was asking a question instead of making a firm declaration.
The blade zinged through the air as Neil swung the machete. It sliced off an arm at the shoulder socket. He tried to imagine this was just a python he was chopping, but the image of the lifeless person burned into his brain, sure to be another permanent memory he’d never be able to shake. Closing his eyes, Neil severed the other arm, and then the legs. Sweat beaded his temples and his upper lip, so he swiped it away. He noticed the adrenaline helped give him a second wind. No more droopy eyelids. That was one small miracle.
“So, I hate to bring this up, but won’t someone notice the blood and the cuts on the ground? I mean, a forensics expert might figure out what happened here.”
“Okay, Mr. CSI. Would you rather they found this dude’s blood in my garage? I think not. Just keep your pie hole shut, will you?” Neil considered whacking the head from the corpse, but he decided against it. He couldn’t bear to further mutilate the dead any more than he already had, so he threw down the machete. The urge to glance away from the body gripped him. Another urge to quit this mission and run back to the car came second. But the need to cover up what he’d done won out. “Let’s do this.”
Straitening from a slouch, Andy stepped forward.
Each of them picked up an arm and hurled it. After the pieces smacked the surface of the water, a glug, glug, glug rose up as gravity took its course. Several tails thwacked as the alligators pushed their snouts in the direction of the meal in their midst. They disposed of the rest of the body, all to a symphony of jaws popping and the snapping and crushing of bones.
Andy stood fixated on the scene, suddenly no longer complaining of not being able to see.
Waving a hand at the car, Neil said, “Come on. You’re not going to watch this, are you?”
“What?” Andy looked up.
Neil had already turned his back on the splashing and what sounded like twigs cracking. Teeth clacked together.
The gruesomeness of it gave Neil the chills. Once he pulled off his blood-splattered shirt, he handed it to Andy, who’d caught up to him. “Since you wanted to burn something so bad, have at it.”
Andy’s brow furrowed.
Neil couldn’t wait to get back into the car and start the ignition. But he knew even though they’d put distance between themselves and the poor guy’s demise that he’d never be able to really put this all behind him. This wasn’t the first big sin plaguing his conscience. And tonight, apparently, it wouldn’t his last either. His mother always said things came in threes . . .
The sounds of his father stirring half-roused Neil, who’d nodded off in the armchair, his phone still in his hand. So much for his best efforts to keep watch over his father’s nocturnal mishaps. Ever since what had happened to Neil’s mom several months ago, Chris’s sleepwalking had intensified. This week alone, he’d tried to cook a meal, almost setting the entire house on fire. Then there was the incident with the chainsaw. And another involved him almost wandering out into the neighborhood stark naked. Neil wanted to padlock every door, but his old man wouldn’t allow it. It was supposedly a ‘passing phase.’ He’d be able to ‘handle it.’ Neil searched up sleep therapists, but Chris always had an excuse for not being able to make an appointment. Consequently, Neil was convinced his dad had a death wish involving the two of them. That they’d been so emotionally distraught, he thought it might be the only thing that could put them out of their misery. All of this was lost on the unconscious Neil, who was doing his best to detach from the events of just a few hours before.