Blood, Sweat and Tears

CHAPTER 1

Still holding the blood-stained shovel in her hand, she looked at the corpse in front of her and looked away quickly, staring at anything other than the grotesque scene. She did not know what to do. There were no instructions on what to do in such situations, it wasn't like plowing the field, if only it were that simple. It was better not to keep thinking and do the first thing that came to his mind. She had a shovel, she could perfectly well dig a hole in the ground as if it were a grave, and with the blood... In the end she just had to cover it up, it wasn't that big of a deal, surely not.

She left the shovel outside the shed and, trying to make as little noise as possible, took the man's body out of there, carrying it towards the depths of the forest nearby. Her parents had never let her or any of her siblings wander around there at night. Everyone in the village said that it was not safe, that they always heard the growls of beasts that watched that nothing and no one entered it. She wasn't afraid of those things, she didn't believe in those stories of grandparents who had no other way to kill time than scaring the children. Besides, she was not a child, she was already 20 years old and soon she would have to plan which village yokel to marry.

It was a little strange that at that moment, as she walked alone with the simple sound of her footsteps and the dragging of the inert body she was carrying, she was thinking about her marriage problems. Her parents would never accept that she wanted to be free and didn't need anyone by her side to tell her what to do. For her a husband was a waste of time, and much to her regret, if no one would accept it, she would leave rather than end up in some stranger's house.

When she reached a remote place in the forest, she left the man aside and started digging in the ground. It was more difficult than she had imagined, it was not the same to see how they did it rather than to dig it yourself, in the end you had to make a lot of effort with your whole body, and she was not exactly the strongest of the place. Her arms were quite thin and, although sometimes she did carry quite heavy sacks of flour, it wasn't the same thing at the end of the day. She had always been told that she was quite a beautiful girl, her long brown hair fell down her back like a silky smooth waterfall, her body was neither too thin nor too thick which made her an attractive figure for anyone. Added to that was the fact that being tall, her legs were long and slender so in the end, anyone looking at her could see a beautiful honey-eyed girl. Only with the small problem that she had just become a murderer, but nothing major.

When she finished digging the hole, which she thought would be enough, she went over to the corpse and dragged it until she could throw it over there and picked up the shovel again to cover the hole little by little with the earth she had removed from there. She ended up soon after, sweaty and full of dirt, but at least she only had one problem left: the blood in the shed.

She tried to erase her footprints with the shovel and went back to the shed so she could cover that blood with some dirt, if she was lucky it wouldn't show and no one would notice it. She left the shovel in place and picked up a bit over there before going home so she could take a bath and get all that dirt and grime off. Luckily his sister was sleeping in her room so she wasn't going to hear her unless she made a lot of noise. When she got to the bathroom, she prepared the water in the basin they used, it wasn't very hot but she didn't care either, what she wanted was to get the dirt off.

She stayed for a long time until all traces of dirt and blood were removed from her body. She dried herself and put on the clothes she had previously prepared before she took the dirty ones and went to clean them. Luckily they had a stream nearby, so she went with her slab and some soap. It took her a while to completely clean the clothes and then she went back to hang them on the clothesline they had with ropes. She sighed in relief, although her heart was still beating like crazy, it was annoying because she could feel every beat in her head and she just wanted to make it stop but she didn't know how.