Page 144 of A Dead Man's B-Side
Wolf spoke, but his words were lost in the trance he remained in, “What about the table?”
I let out a breathless, “Huh?”
He pointed to the mess King had left on the table, his blood splattered across the wood. I grabbed one of the smaller tablecloths and wiped as best as I could before throwing it on top of King and removing the furniture from on top of the carpet, preparing to roll. After a moment, I realized that I was doing it all myself, the pair I’d asked to stay behind for that very reason were standing as still as ghosts.
“Are you going to help?”
August moved slowly, blinking rapidly as he helplessly lifted and moved a chair. Wolf, on the other hand, gulped. “I need you to slap me, Sasha.”
I huffed. “This isn’t the time for your games–”
“Just do it. Hard.”
His voice was strung tight with seriousness, and it was why I walked over to him and smacked him across the face as hard as I could, just as August had done to King.
The latter gaped at us, but Wolf seemed to blink and turn back to himself, nodding resolutely. “Let’s get this over with.”
Together, we emptied out all the contents from on top of the carpet and rolled up King Kensington with ease. The hard part was lifting someone of his weight. He was built like a linebacker, and dead, he was built like what I imagined an elephant to be.
“God, he’s heavy.” August groaned from the front of our line.
Wolf, from the back, grunted. “Just lift your weight and this’ll be easy–oh god, the smell. It's like I can feel his blood in the back of my throat.”
I breathed through my mouth, but the coppery tang didn’t absolve me, I gagged, which triggered something in August, which triggered something in Wolf, and soon, we were all choking, eyes watering.
We’d barely made it to the door before we had to drop him and catch our breaths. August had the foresight to sneak a peek outside before turning to us. “The coast is clear. We should go now.”
And we did.
We carried that body all the way down the stairs and out of Fenlon Hall without a single sighting, the music still thrumming through the walls and concealing our grunts.
“There is a farm near Castle Hill. It’s far but they have pigs. If we don’t want anyone to find… him, we should get rid of him there. They’ll eat him before the sun rises,” Wolf said.
And so, we’d found our direction. On the opposite path to where Ajax ran, I was thankful for the concealment the forest provided.
For what felt like hours, we walked with the weight of a body aching against our shoulders. Every few moments, one of us had to tap out and pause. We were slow, but we were hidden, and that meant we still had time.
I tried to keep my footing against the thick roots of trees and winced at every twig we stumbled over. The stressful swoop of mystomach with every step required me to keep reminding myself that I would be in my dorm, asleep, in just about a few hours.
This night will be over soon.
Just get through this, and everything else will be okay.
Tomorrow isn’t too far away.
Finally, when we spotted the fence, relief broke through fatigue. The sweat that covered our bodies was cooled by the cold wind, and I was sure we’d all wake up sick tomorrow, but that wasn’t a priority right now.
“We’ll just throw him and jump over ourselves, okay? On three,” I said and waited for the other two to confirm.
I counted down, and on three, our groans and grunts filled the air, but he was too heavy and the fence was too high. We were tired, exhausted, and worn. Our energy was depleting quickly, and we needed to rest; we needed help. But I couldn’t imagine one of us running back and trying to find Ajax and the girls. It would be too late.
We weren’t fighting against suspicion anymore, but against time.
The grounds were too vast, and students would be returning to their dorms from the party by then. Our saving grace was how deep we’d delved into the forests that surrounded Castle Hill.
“Someone call for a hero?” A voice came from the darkest part of the forest, and panic seized us, froze us. Our heads whipped at the sound, eyes squinting in the pitch black we were basked in.
A shiver ran down my spine, and I almost died of a heart attack right there against the frozen fence.
