A NIGHT TO REMEMBER

There was a strange tranquility in the air. The night was young, and the moon was shining. Its light was glistening on the waters, and on the white blankets of snow surrounding the road they were driving on. The road was deserted. It was a long one too. It wasn’t long until the clouds covered the moon, and the snow started to fall. The car was being driven slowly as the snow started to fall more heavily, and the wind was no longer calm. It started to get gustier. They all wanted this to be over as quickly as possible. As quietly as possible.

“Do you think anyone saw us?” Foxy asked as her voice quivered with fear.

“I don’t think so” Danny replied nervously. “I didn’t see anyone.”

“Guys, remember, this never happened.” Gully said. “As soon as this is over, remember to wash your clothes, burn them, throw them, do anything, but don’t keep them. Just act normal, and no one’s gonna suspect anything.”

Just an hour ago, Sam, Danny, Gully, and Foxy, were all standing over it. It was lying there. Motionless in the snow. The droplets of blood dripped from the knife slowly, and synchronously forming a red polka dotted curve on nature’s white canvas of snow. It was dark. Quiet. Cold. The air was chilly, gently blowing Foxy and Sam’s hair. Danny and Gully were shivering, and trembling. They all felt their heart palpitating. They were all just staring at it, thinking oh shit! What have we done?! Danny managed to clear his throat, and mustered the courage to speak a sentence very weakly ‘Is, is he-- still breathing? Is he still alive?’ His voice quivered. The others were still standing, traumatized. Especially Foxy. Danny nudged Gully and shook Foxy’s arm. ‘Yo, yo check his heartbeat!’ Gully took a quick glance at everyone’s state, gulped, and took a deep breath. He walked a little closer to where the body was and knelt. Gully placed his two fingers under the body’s nose. “Oh my god, he’s not breathing!” Danny, Gully, and Sam, all looked at Foxy who still hadn’t moved or said anything. It’s like as if she was frozen. Her hands were covered in blood. Sam grabbed Foxy by her hand and whispered “Foxy! Foxy, we have to get out of here!” “Are you listening to me?!” She asked shaking her.

“Huh?” Foxy responded, still traumatized. She still hadn’t moved, her feet placed firmly, her eyes were still fixed on the corpse lying in the snow. “Foxy please! We have to get out of here!” Sam pleaded. Danny stepped closer to Foxy, and gently took the knife from her hands drenched in blood. “Foxy, I’m just gonna take this, ok? Listen to me, it’s not your fault, it’s not our fault. This guy had it coming.

Danny had slowly taken the knife out of Foxy’s hands whose eyes were still fixed on the corpse, being cautious, and careful not to disrupt her state of shock, and threw it as far as his frat boy arms could throw.

“Why’d you throw the knife?” Sam asked a bit furiously, questioning the ridiculous event Danny had demonstrated.

“To get rid of it!”

“You idiot! That has Foxy’s fingerprints on it!”

“Yeah, and no one’s gonna find it.”

“We’re in the middle of a forest that’s right beside his apartment building! Of course, someone’s gonna find it. Where’s your brain?”

“Fine, I’ll go look for it, and I’ll put it in my pocket, or we’ll throw it somewhere else. Guys we have to leave now.” Danny said sternly.

“What do we do with the body? You can’t ignore a 6ft human just lying in the middle, with blood all over his shirt”. Gully’s statement compelled them all to do something they never wanted to do. None of them carried the means of burying a body. No shovel. No, obviously not, because that would’ve made their lives easier. So, they all approached the body and proceeded to use all their strength to pick it up and carry it to where the car was and hide it in the trunk. They were in the middle of the forest, and the parking lot was a little far. Carrying the body all the way to the car was a bit tiring, along with the cold winter winds making it tougher. Sam was exhausted, her hands were starting to freeze, and her arms were getting sore, so she let go of the arms to catch her breath. Half of the body flopped over.

“My arms are so sore now. I don’t think I can do this.” Her hands were on her waist, and she was panting.

“Wait, what if we pick the body up, like this, make it stand up, we can put one arm around one person’s neck, and the other around the other person’s neck. Two people will take turns, and then switch” Danny’s idea of making the body walk, like carrying a drunk friend, seemed normal, and had seemed to calm them a bit down, since it wasn’t as terrifying of literally carrying a body.

The wind was blowing, and the snow was snow was glistening. Suddenly, a twig snapped.

“ Was that you?” Sam asked.

“Was that who?” Danny asked.

“ Did you step on something?”

“Step on what, Sam?”

“Did you not hear that?” Sam asked.

“Hear what?” Danny asked annoyingly.

“ It sounded like someone stepped on a twig. Guys, I think someone’s following us” Sam said.

Danny quickly glanced while holding the body. “No, I don’t see anyone. Guys, we need to hurry up”.

They had finally reached the car and dumped the body into the trunk as quickly as possible. The winter winds were getting harsher, and Sam, Danny, Gully, and Foxy all rushed to sit inside Sam’s car. She turned on the heater.

“Did anyone see us?” Sam asked.

“I hope not” Gully replied.

“Ok,” she panted, “what do we do now?”

“I think we should place the body in the living room” Gully suggested.

“ You want us to carry the body from the forest back into his apartment building? How do you expect to do that, without being noticed, genius?” Danny questioned Gully.

Foxy had finally managed to compose herself and speak. “I know that there’s an abandoned cemetery nearby. We can go there and dump the body and leave”.

“How far is the cemetery?” Sam asked.

“Like, 20 minutes.” Foxy replied, trying not to tremble, with her slightly smeared mascara.

“Ok”. Sam shifted the gear and drove. As she exited out of the parking lot, Foxy proceeded to give her directions. “Turn left here, and make sure to slow down ‘cause”—

BUMP!!!—there’s speed bumps here.” The loud thump, from the body in the trunk, made everyone anxious even more. “This is a neighborhood area, so just drive slow.” The light beaming out of the streetlamps were flickering. Every speed bump made the body bump into every corner of the trunk louder. They finally arrived at a stop sign.

“Ok, from here, I think you turn left. After the second traffic light you’re supposed to turn right and then keep going straight.”

They were about to reach the first traffic light when the car behind them started honking its horn. Crap. Foxy was starting to panic. Danny was starting to sweat. Gully kept looking back at the car honking, and Sam was trying to ignore it, and concentrate on driving, so they can get to the cemetery quicker. The car continued to honk. A few seconds later they heard a voice yelling “EXCUSE ME!” The voice was of a woman.

“What in the… what does she want?” Gully asked. The woman pulled up in the lane beside them, with her passenger window down. “HELLOO, EXCUSE ME!!! I KNOW YOU CAN SEE ME! I KNOW YOU HEAR ME! HELLOOO!”

“Gully, quit looking at her!” Sam demanded, as Gully’s constant head going back and forth was disrupting Sam’s concentration, and her futile attempts to ignore a woman who was screaming at the top of her lungs in the middle of a quiet residential area.

“YOUR TRUNK!!! IT’S OPEN!!!”

CRAP!! The darn speedbumps! They all thought. Did she see something? Oh God! She knows about the body! We’re finished!

Sam sighed, and finally decided that it was futile to avoid the yelling woman, as she now knows about what’s in the trunk. She pulled over to the right and put her window down. The woman followed and parked right behind them. She stepped out of the car. Hair tied in a bun. Round glasses, and wrinkly skin. It was an old woman, with a hunched back. As she approached the driver’s window, everyone felt anxious. Their hearts started to beat faster.

“Hello dear, I’ve been trying to get your attention for a while now.”

“Uh, yes, I realized. I’m so sorry, we were actually, uh, uhm, listening to music, so uh that’s why…we couldn’t hear you. I’m so sorry once again. Were you trying to tell us something?”

“Yes dear, your trunk is open”, the woman said in her quaky grandma voice.

“What?!” Sam stepped out of the car. Ok, how would a normal person who hadn’t kill anyone react to seeing their trunk open and finding a dead body, she thought to herself. As she approached the trunk, Sam saw that the trunk wasn’t fully open like she had thought, it was a tad open, enough to let the cold breeze in.

“Oh, that, yeah I can fix that” Sam attempted to say confidently, hoping this sentence would send the woman off to her way. “Here, see”. Her attempt to close the trunk had failed. The trunk was not closing. She tried opening the trunk just a wee more, to close it properly. Sam tried again, and again, and again. But it was futile. This trunk was not going to close.

“Oh, let me help you dear. Sometimes you just have to open the trunk wide open, and then slam it with all the strength that the Almighty has given you. Here let me try.” As soon as she stepped a little closer, Sam intervened. “No, miss, really, it’s alright. Uhm, I think we’ll fix it later.”

But the old woman insisted. “Dear, you think just because I’m old, I don’t carry any strength in me?”

“No, it’s really not that. It’s just getting late, and my parents are probably getting worried about me, and my friends are tired, and we all have this test that we have to study for. So uhm, we should really get going.” Sam was starting to sound desperate, making it clear to the old woman, that they did not need her help with closing the trunk, or anything else, in the middle of the night.

“This will only take a second, dear”, the old woman insisted.

Meanwhile, Foxy, Danny, and Gully started to wonder what was taking Sam so long.

“Pay attention dear, you open the trunk wide open, and… what the—” SMACK!!!

The old woman landed straight into the snowbank beside her car.

“Gully! What the hell was that?”

“What? I took the granny out”.

Sam scoffed, “You punched an old woman in the face!”

“I saved your life. Sam, just get in the car before someone sees us”, Gully demanded.

Danny intervened. “Wait, I don’t think we should have the body in the trunk now.”

“Then where would you like to have it? On your head? In your lap?” Foxy asked sarcastically.

Danny just looked at them.

“Uhm no! We are not having a dead body with us in the backseat!” Foxy whispered angrily.

“Well, the trunk idea failed” Danny rebutted.

As much as everyone hated, they all agreed that they couldn’t risk having the body in the trunk anymore. They took the body out and proceeded to place it in the backseat. In the middle. And voila! The trunk closed perfectly.

“Ok, go straight from here, remember, second traffic light, and then the highway. And then when you exit the highway, turn left. You’re gonna see a deserted road. Continue driving, and there’s an abandoned cemetery.” Foxy said. Sam nodded and proceeded to drive.

They merged onto the highway and continued to drive. The clouds had now covered the moon. The winds were getting gustier, and snow was starting to fall. As they exited out the highway, they had now arrived at a deserted road just like Foxy had mentioned. It was a long one too.

There wasn’t much to see as they continuously drove on the deserted road. Just barren land covered in snow, surrounded by water, a few deciduous trees, and a few streetlamps that were kilometers apart. It was quite dark. The car’s dimming headlights weren’t enough to see ahead properly. The car was being driven slowly as the snow started to fall more heavily, and the winds were getting gustier.

It was still. Sitting motionless in the backseat. The cold, lifeless being was now amongst the living, making its presence known. Everyone in the car was quiet. They were all trying their best not to look at it. Sam tried her best to avoid looking in the rearview mirror as she was driving the car. The more she tried, the harder it got. She couldn’t escape its reflection in the rearview mirror.

Its eyes were gleaming. They were black. Big. Beady. Silent. Yet these eyes told the story of years gone by in search of acceptance. Years of turmoil. Or did they? Sam, Danny, Gully and Foxy couldn’t tell because they were just staring off into an empty space. What they did know is that these eyes also told the story of greed. They were the eyes of a being who was cold-hearted, and a manipulator. They were wide open, staring off into the distance, into the empty road ahead of them. Sam, Danny, Gully, and Foxy were all dead silent.

Foxy mustered the courage to say something to break the awkward silence. “Do you think anyone saw us?”

“Punching the granny, and taking the body out of the trunk and putting it in the backseat? No, I don’t think so. I didn’t see anyone.” Danny replied.

“You smacked an old woman” Sam said as she drove, concentrating on the road ahead.

“Sam! she would’ve called the police on all of us. We all would’ve gone to jail! How do you explain a dead body in the car to an old woman!? I’m pretty sure she would’ve figured it all out.”

“No, even if she did call the cops, I’m sure they all would’ve understood our situation”.

“ Sam! Are you of your mind?! Actually, no, you know what, you’re right. We should’ve told the granny, and the cops about how we broke into our professor’s office, and stole the answer sheet, so we wouldn’t fail our exams. And how he knew it was us because we were dumb enough to not realize that there were cameras in his office. And then he decides to blackmail all of us into sleeping with him because he was a lonely old man who needed a little “nurturing”. And when we refused to comply, he took out his phone, to text the principle about us, and to stop that from happening, Foxy took out her knife and stabbed him! How’s that for sympathy?” Gully asked, annoyed with Sam’s repeated concern for the old woman, instead of getting caught.

Meanwhile, Danny in the backseat started to feel even more anxious with the corpse sitting next to him, with its eyes wide open, staring off into the empty road. Danny could feel its cold hand against his. The feeling of lifelessness. The feeling of death sitting next to him made him extremely uncomfortable. He decided to try to close his eyes with his hands.

“oh my god, it’s cold”, he said.

Gully, on the other side of the corpse, leaned forward and looked at Danny. “Ew, what are you doing?”

“I’m trying to close his eyes. His eyes are wide open, and they’re scaring me”.

“Just don’t touch it. Don’t even do anything to it”. Gully replied nervously, as the corpse’s presence was making him even more anxious.

They were now getting closer, arriving at the abandoned cemetery. Sam looked over, and saw the cracked, broken, crooked tombstones. There wasn’t even a church nearby. It was an old cemetery in the middle of nowhere. The moon was now shining again, and glistened on the snow, and on the erosion of the gravestones. Sam, Danny, and Gully, were all somewhat relieved to see the cemetery, knowing this would all be over shortly. The car pulled over to the side of the road.

“Ok, guys we’re here. Danny and Gully, you guys will take the body out, and then help me and Foxy carry it and dump it” Sam said.

Foxy looked a little puzzled. “Wait, we’re just gonna leave it here? Like, like, we’re not gonna bury it?”

“Do we have a shovel to dig up his grave with? No, we don’t. All we have to do is take the body out, and just dump it anywhere. It’s an abandoned cemetery, right? “

“yeah”

“Ok, so then we don’t have to worry about his body being found”.

Danny, Gully, Foxy, and Sam all stepped out of the car, while the wind blew. The snow was glistening, there were a few trees beside the cemetery. They all took the body out and carried it until they reached the middle of the cemetery. There was a huge gravestone in the shape of a cross. It was crooked and seemed like it had been eroded for decades. The names engraved on the gravestones were faintly visible. Most of them were dated from the 1800s.

“We’ll just place it here, behind the big cross” Gully said. His arms were getting tired of carrying such a heavy body, and the heavy winds with snowfall were making it more difficult. They placed the body behind the cross, hoping that would ensure that the body stays out of sight. The wind blew, they all turned around to walk back when suddenly they heard a twig snap. They all stopped dead in their tracks.

“Did you hear that?” Sam whispered.

“Yeah, I heard that” Danny replied.

It sounded like it came from behind the trees. Their hearts started to beat faster, and they ran as fast as they could back to the car. They all opened the doors and rushed to get in the car. Sam reversed as quickly as possible and drove as fast as she could having no regard for the heavy wind and snowfall.

“Do you think someone saw us?” Foxy asked as her voice quivered with fear.

“I don’t think so” Danny replied nervously. “I didn’t see anyone.”

“Guys, remember, this never happened.” Gully said. “As soon as this is over, remember to wash your clothes, burn them, throw them, do anything, but don’t keep them. Just act normal, and no one’s gonna suspect anything.”

“Oh no!” Foxy said nervously.

“What? What happened?” Sam asked, as she drove, while looking at Foxy.

“My bracelet. It’s gone. I think it might have fell when we were dumping the body. We have to go back”.

“Are you serious? We’re not going back there. Someone might’ve been hiding behind those trees and might’ve seen something.” Danny shook his head. “It’s too risky” he replied.

“Please, if someone gets a hold of my bracelet, it’s gonna cause more problems”. Foxy pleaded.

Sam sympathized with her and turned the car around.

They reached the cemetery again. They all got out of the car, and ran to the huge, cross gravestone, where the body had been placed. When they all reached the big cross, their hearts started beating faster. Palpitating. They were sweating now after seeing what was in front of them.

“Guys, the body. It’s gone”.

THE END