After Dark

Chapter 2: Double-spread

The newspaper in Falridge has never been so inconsistent as it has been, this past week. It has changed from a chocolate advertisement to one for a murder, and then a full double-paged spread featuring a double murder: the throat-slashing killings of both Hillary Limon and Felicity Greaves.

The police had to enlist the help of the school's groundskeeper to get Felicity down from the basketball hoop. It was quite a spectacle, and it drew more than a few eyes. The phone of almost every person in the school was put to use, and not only those of the students, but the teachers, too. They were calling and texting, and a few of the more morbid students even took a photo. When Sady saw the flash go off on someone's smart phone, she grabbed it and threw it somewhere into the forest. The owner of the phone took one look at her tear-streaked, defiant face, and at Adam behind her, and abandoned any attempt at yelling at her, instead deciding to search for their phone in the forest.

The policeman who climbed the ladder to get Felicity's body was young, maybe only a few years older than the teenagers below. His hair was cropped to the scalp, because he thought it made him look like he'd been in the army. Really, he was terrified to touch the girl, and ended up having to climb back down the ladder. He was sick when he reached the bottom, and he called for backup, but Adam's father was on the other side of town, taking another look at the alleyway where Hillary was found.

The news had spread, and the teachers were doing nothing to disperse the crowd; they were a part of it. The smell of the body was making people sick, along with the sight of it, and the knowledge of the death. The loud sound of unrestrained crying echoed, bouncing off the school building and into the forest.

In the end, it was Hunter who climbed the ladder, his face pale white and set. The policeman, closer to a boy than a man, gave him a pair of gloves and held the ladder, looking like he was going to be sick again.

Sady walked to him and held one side of the shaking ladder, resting a hand on his shoulder for a moment before transferring her grip to the ladder so she held it with both hands while Hunter climbed. Adam stood at a distance; no matter how much he poured over the details of death, he was unable to be near it, not wanting to see the red smile on Felicity's throat as much as he enjoyed talking about the one on Hillary's.

Once at the top of the ladder, Hunter takes breaths that are shallow and infrequent, through the neck of his t-shirt. He steadies himself, leaning forwards, his hip at the same height as the basketball ring. Cringing inside, he hesitates for a moment. But, for some reason, this is something he needs to do. So he steels himself, and he reaches out, and puts his hands on Felicity's hips. Through the gloves, he can feel the soft give of her flesh, and he can smell the decay, taste it on his tongue, feel the cloying nature of it in his throat. He gags, but forces himself to keep going. To pull up her stiff body, lift her over the ring. He is not high enough on the ladder, so he takes another step up, and then she is free.

His eyes are stinging from the smell, and her blood flakes onto his clothing as he carefully puts her over his shoulder. Her body is already in the right position to carry, stiffened that way, and he feels something rise in his throat at the thought. He holds his breath, and starts to climb down, but there is a tug on the body. He looks up: her hair is stuck on the hoop. He swallows his nausea and breathes, and in the process gets a mouthful of the rotting smell of Felicity. He gags and reaches up, blindly pulling at the hair, tangled and clotted with blood, sticks and dirt throughout as if she has been dragged through the forest. He pulls til it tears free, and then he climbs down, and lays the body on the sheet the policeman has laid out. He stumbles away, and Sady is at his side, a hand on his shoulder, and he is staring at the shape of her body on the plastic sheet, white as her skin, the red smile on her throat a stark contrast. She is bent, her arms reaching out to nothing, and he can see inside of her throat, inside of her. He feels sick.