How to hide a body

Uncle

It was around four in the afternoon but the curtains were all drawn in the house and no lights were on. She could only see the faint shadows of objects as she shuffled to close the door, erasing the only source of light she had, and dumped her school rucksack at the side. She quickly unbuckled her shoes and giggled as she stepped through the house, checking each corner in case her uncle would jump out from behind one of them and scare her to try and add another tally to the board on his side. She wasn't going to let that happen, of course, her uncle wasn't allowed to beat her. At any cost necessary. He was already in the lead by two points because of the time he sprayed her in water when she went to pick the strawberries in the garden and the time he sprayed her in water when they went trick or treating last year. She wasn't going to let him win another one of their competitions without a challenge. He'd already won the competition they had to steal the most grapes from the fruit bowl with either of her parents noticing and he had taken the most balls from her father's table tennis box, which wasn't fair because her father was always calling her out on everything recently and had taken to searching her room most days, even getting her mother to help him. She knew all of her hiding places from when she was younger and didn't hesitate to rat her out to him. Then she had a disaster trying to paint the most amount of daisies as she could into a piece of paper because she couldn't paint that small. Her teachers' always recommended that she should never take art, much to the disappointment of her mother. Not so much to the disappointment of her father, he always wanted her to learn a language to be his translator abroad.

She held her trusty water bottle in front of her and prepared to shoot anyone with water if they came into her view or if she heard anyone from anywhere around her. She hid herself behind a corner and laughed when she heard a floorboard creaking from down the corridor, inside the kitchen somewhere. She had him where she wanted him. She had begun running at this point and was only a few steps away from the kitchen. She composed herself and tried to keep as quiet as she could, attempting to calm her rapidly beating heart as she took a step towards the door. She breathed in. Then another. She readied herself. The final step. She reached her hand out towards the doorknob and grasped it in her tiny hands.

"Uncle Jonah. Uncle Jonah," her high-pitched voice giggled as she neared the room, "Uncle Jonahhhh. Stop playing hide and seek," she giggled again as she creaked open the door and tiptoed into the darkroom, "Uncle Jonah," she whispered playfully and stretched up to flick the light switch on, frowning at the broken cupboards and all the containers of food scattered on the floor. Her eyes widened as the light flickered on and off, "I don't want to play this game anymore uncle Jonah, it isn't fun," she complained as she edged further into the room, shivering when she realised the heating wasn't on, "Uncle Jonah, please come out. I'm scared," she wailed.

She flinched back as she heard a loud thud from somewhere in the room and dropped the water bottle onto the floor, spilling water all in that area.

She screamed quietly as she ducked under the table and crawled on her knees into the empty space. Her finger touched a sticky liquid on the floor and she lifted her hand to her face as she tried to work out what it was. Shaking her head, she put her hand down. Continuing to crawl under the table, her hands were now completely covered in the liquid as she moved the chairs out of the way at the end of the table, she slipped forward, faceplanting the ground and covering her face in the liquid. Tasting something metallic inside her mouth, she wiped her tongue with the back of her hand and coughed with her dry throat but only felt acid at the back of her throat.

She clawed her hands at her face, trying to wipe it away but instead got them caught in her hair. Shrieking, she tugged her hands out of her hair and shuffled away from the table until she bumped into something behind her. Slowly, she turned and lost her breath at the figure lying on the ground covered in the same liquid that stained her face and hands. His face was mauled and barely recognisable with clumps of his hair scattered around him and in some of the cuts. The skin on his neck was slashed apart and had paperclips stuffed inside the flesh with the ends of some sticking out. His jumper had been ripped open too and revealed his stomach which had his insides tumbling out amongst a knife that was pierced deeply into his intestines and stained in blood. She recognised the knife as the one her mother would use to carve the chicken on Sunday lunches. The handle was wrapped with the frayed edges of his skin and was bent slightly to the right.

"Uncle Jonah!" She screamed and shook him gently, "Uncle Jonah, wake up," she cried and kept shaking him, "wake up. Wake up. Please, wake up," she cried onto his shoulder, her tears leaving tracks on the red paint on her face, "please," she hiccuped, "don't leave me," she glanced around the barely lit room and ran towards the phone that was on the ground near the fridge. She pressed in the numbers and sniffled as she waited for them to answer, panicking when the battery flickered to 2%.

"911, what's your emergency."

"My uncle Jonah is not breathing."

"Could you pass the phone to your parents please."

"They're gone. They're gone. He's gone. Please help him," she croaked, "you have to help him," she wailed.

"Help will be on its way don't worry."

"Don't leave me," she shrieked as she watched the battery flicker to 1%, "no, don't leave me," she sat still as the phone started to turn off and stared at the machine with even more tears in her eyes as the screen faded in black. She gulped as she pulled herself back over to her uncle and cradled his body in her hands as she waited... all on her own as the light flickered out and everything turned pitch black. She finally let the acidic substance out from her throat and let her sick spill onto the floor next to her. She cried even more tears as the smell reached her nose and she was left there with the feeling of her uncle's skin on her fingertips and the weight of his body in her lap.