Kaleidoscope

“What are we going to do with the body?” Daniel asked.

“Dude, we need to get rid of it, I think I killed him,” John said.

“I’ll go back to my house to get the shovels,” Daniel said. 

“Guess I’ll stay here.”

John’s night was blurry and colorful, he felt like he was looking through a kaleidoscope. He remembered getting into a fight with Pete, the dead body in question. John looked down at his bare hands, amazed at what he could do, Pete was a big guy, after all. 

Pete Marko actually choked on his vomit just before the fight began, it was alcohol poisoning, but John and Daniel didn’t remember that. They were also drunk. 

All three of the boys lived in a small city, in the suburbs, and went to a decent school. John and Daniel never exchanged words with Pete Marko until an incident involving a girl John and Pete both liked arose. Her name was Sienna Brookefield, she had jet black hair and green eyes. 

None of them should have been drinking, but they were. To reiterate, John did not kill Pete Marko with his bare hands, it was alcohol poisoning. 

Daniel walked out of the graveyard where Pete and John decided to have their fight, yes, it was overdramatic, what more could expect from a couple of high school guys.  Daniel didn’t like getting drunk, it made him feel tired and it always gave him a headache. In secret, he did some research on the effects of alcohol on seventeen-year-old kids, and he did not like the results. Daniel looked like your average seventeen-year-old party boy; broad shoulders, brown hair he kept in a side-part and green eyes. His shirt was white with dirt and booze on it. He wanted to become a psychologist, leave the city, and never see any of his friends again. He should have figured out that Pete Marko died a natural death, but it didn’t occur to him as he was rushing to his house, wondering if the pain in his kidneys was from all the drinking or all the running. His phone started ringing, it was John.

“Bro, he’s moving.”

“How so?” Daniel asked.

“His fingers are twitching.”

“Just hold tight, I have the shovels, I’m on my way back.”

Daniel took a closer look at Pete Marko. He kneeled on the dirt, cautiously so as not to ruin his pants. He was dead, for sure, just twitching.

John looked over Daniel’s shoulder. He wondered if they should hit Pete over the head a couple of times before they buried him. John had long blonde hair that stuck up in clumps and blue eyes. He wanted to get a business degree, break into the stock exchange, and make himself a fortune. He felt hot and nauseous, ironically, he worried that he had alcohol poisoning. He remembered that Pete challenged him to a fight in the cemetery, rather dramatic, but he accepted. He looked at his opponent now, a massive guy with a mean face. Wow, way to go me, John thought. 

“How long do you think we have?” Daniel asked.

“Huh?”

“Pete invited Sienna to your fight, how long do you think we have before she shows up with all her friends?”

John shrugged. Normally he was good at math and probability, but that night he was dull as a brick.  Daniel was jealous of his friend’s natural gift with numbers, math was his worst subject. 

The boys began digging. When the hole got too deep for them to reach the bottom, they jumped in and kept digging. Something on the surface moved. The Leafs crunched under its feet like bones. 

“Something’s up there,” John said.

“Pete Marko…” Daniel suggested.

“That doesn’t make any sense, he’s dead.”

“Yeah, but what if he’s not?”

“I don’t know, science is your thing, not mine. Can you stand on your toes and see over the edge?”

John had always been jealous of his friend’s height. Daniel didn’t even need it, he didn’t play basketball, didn’t try to hit on girls, what a waste. John’s goal had always been to be content with everything in his life, a rather frustrating goal, and one that caused some anger and jealousy issues. 

“Let’s just wait until it leaves,” Daniel said.

“Dude, what about the dead body we left near the hole?”

Daniel shrugged.

The bone-crushing, supposedly reanimated Pete Marko drew closer to where the boys were standing. At first, it was a silhouette, then it leaned closer and the boys were shocked. Daniel blushed, he always blushed like that around pretty girls. It was Sienna Brookefield.

She had seen Pete’s dead body, and couldn’t help but blame herself for his death. He had gotten into that fight with John for her, after all, and John must have killed him. Not that this argument would hold up in court, but it made her feel guilty. 

She saw John, the boy who had fought for her like she was a trophy, and his friend Daniel, standing in a deep hole. Daniel blushed, she liked him a lot more than any of the other boys, but she wasn’t the type to make the first move, and neither was he. 

“We need to kill her too,” John said.

“What? No, we don’t,” Daniel said, and he was right.

“She’s a witness.”

John, stubborn as ever, took his shovel and started climbing out of the hole. Just as he was about to resurface like a corpse climbing out of the ground, he was pulled back into the hole. He turned around, furious, and hit Daniel over the head with the shovel. His friend went rigid, his nose was broken, his teeth were chipped, his eyes bruised. He fell over like a plank of wood. 

I just killed my best friend, John thought. Of course, he didn’t, Daniel just passed out. John didn’t bother checking his friend’s pulse, he was drunk out of his mind. He climbed out of the hole and faced Sienna, who was already running away.

Sienna was usually very comfortable being in the graveyard alone, weird, yes. She was a huge fan of horror, especially books and movies. Horror and math were her two favorite things in the world. It was a winning combination, she was calm and rational enough to understand that the things she watched and read weren’t real life. 

John emerged from the hole, bloody shovel in hand, as furious and determined as the grim reaper. Sienna would have loved to watch this scene play out on a TV, from the comfort of her couch, but this was too real. Daniel was dead. She was going to confess her feelings for him next year, but now he was in a hole in the ground, and if she didn’t run fast enough she would join him. 

John knew that he couldn’t let Sienna leave the graveyard. Maybe he could talk to her? No, it was either him or her. 

He caught up to Sienna, who turned around to face him. There was something black in her hand, it was pointed at John, it was pepper spray. John dropped the shovel. He saw a hazy image of Sienna as she picked it up, swung it towards his face, again and again. He fell to the ground. 

Sienna held the shovel with trembling hands. She thought about staying in the graveyard forever, she wouldn’t have to explain this to anyone, she could be with Daniel. No, it was too soon for her. 

She went back to the hole where Daniel died and used his shovel to bury the bloody one. 

What am I going to do with the bodies? She thought, also drunk out of her mind.