​Tommy Boy

Tommy had gone back to the clearing before the sun rose the next day, hood pulled up tight. Flashlight in-hand. He hoped that the events of the previous evening had all just been some terrible dream. But there it was, bone-white and rigid. Waiting for him. Tommy felt his stomach drop and he fell to his knees in horror as he sensed the tears building threateningly behind his eyes, but he held them back, knowing that it was done now and that there was nothing that could be done to fix it. The man was dead, and it was all his fault. His hands shook as he grabbed hold of the hiker under the arms and began to pull the corpse across the dirt and grass, sickened by just how complete the rigor mortis was after just a little less than twelve hours.

He held the flashlight between his teeth as he got into the longer weeds approaching the treeline, grunting as his foot slipped into a deep murky puddle. He pulled like that for over an hour, until the forest around him was thick and all but impenetrable, only then did he drop the body and allow himself to catch his breath. He’d been escaping into the woods since the night he’d failed to learn how to tie his shoes all those years ago, when his father had come in through the front door at ten PM, covered in mud and slime, shaking with rage. He knew them very well. Tommy had ran into the trees and sat there shivering atop a pile of dying leaves in the cold Autumn night until dawn broke. It was the first time he’d ever seen him hit his mother, as he’d peeked from the banister and that disgusting fist had impacted her jaw. The sounds she’d made as she laid there on the floor, broken and crying out like a wounded animal, still haunted Tommy’s dreams. But they were hardly going to be as regular a disconcerting guest as the blood and shattering bone and the empty brown eyes which he looked down at now, milky-white dead, but still somehow imploring despite their abject lifelessness.

Tommy unzipped his backpack and removed the folding shovel and started to dig into the earth. By the time he’d gone two feet down and three across, the ineffectiveness of the tool he’d chosen for the job had become more than apparent. Tommy cursed himself for his own stupidity. This was no time for failure. His shoulders and back ached, and he took a step away from the hole as he wiped the beading sweat from his brow. The morning sun shone bright through the thick branches above him as he peered towards the sky. He dropped the shovel and pulled out his dad’s old hatchet from the bag, feeling the shakes return. Tommy looked at the body, and shuddered harder as he slowly inched closer, knowing that it wouldn’t be whole for much longer.

His eyes were tensed shut when the first strike came down, and his mind had retreated somewhere safer with the shock of the impact. It was the sound; the flesh separating and making contact with the bone. When he opened them and looked, he came crashing all the way back to the present moment. The thigh was opened up in a horrendous red yawn, the muscle tissue halved open, as if asking him ‘why?’. Tommy let the trembling axe fall away from his hand as he wrenched around and felt the unyielding torrent of milk and eggs and syrupy pancakes escape from inside like how he only wished he could escape himself. But he couldn’t, and he was there. There was a job to do. So, he wiped his mouth off with his sleeve, turned, and picked up the hatchet again, doing his best to avoid looking too closely at the task in-hand as he raised the instrument of destruction high once again and brought it down with an unrestrainable scream.