The world is ashamed of what it's done, and so, in the morning the body is finally found, it releases a dense fog to hide its face away. It spreads like the news all over town.
On the screen of an old junkyard TV, images of police cutting through the woods show up on a loop, and sitting cross-legged at the kitchen table, a woman in her thirties cries and ashes her cigarette on the newspaper abandoned next to her store-bought dinner.
The headline: Student found dead after weeks missing.
But she isn't the only one paying attention. On the radio of a car heading downtown, the host reports:
"... police have revealed that the seventeen-year-old victim died as a result of severe blood loss from a head trauma thought to be caused by a violent blow to the skull. Experts suggest the body has been buried in the woods for a few weeks now."
The man behind the wheel turns the sound up and reaches in the passenger's seat for a pen and paper. He has dark circles under his eyes and a months old beard. Like the woman, he's been waiting to hear these words for a while.
In the suburbs, it's all anyone cares about. The breaking news lures them closer to the TV screen, its neon lights shining on their faces in the dark of the night, the news anchor's words a spell of entrancement.
"Everything indicates that the body was dug up before it could be found by joggers this morning," the reporter continues from screens all around town.
There is only one house in the neighborhood where the spell doesn't seem to have worked. The TV abandoned, the couch empty, the coffee table covered in days-old boxes of greasy takeout food, used napkins, and newspapers with headlines about the missing case. No one is home, and still the reporter goes on.
"This much we know, someone wanted the body to be found."
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One for the Team
Mistero / ThrillerThe body of a missing student is buried in the woods. But only a few know this. At first, it was just a running joke in the hallways of Northwoods High, a lowbrow school in a lower brow town. Finn Sexton never really thought the joke was funny, but...
