They talked about it. Geo said maybe they should let it go. Let sleeping dogs lie, or in this case, old perverts. Eff was more practical. "The guy thinks the body should be reported. His friend told him he'd be in trouble if he did. So, he'll think about it—you could tell he was all bothered—and then he'll realize that an anonymous note would solve his problem. He'll figure that out and then notify the cops, and they'll come out and find the body. Then, somehow, they'll figure out you shot him. We have to prevent that. I think we have to move your body."

So, the boys were back in the woods soon thereafter. They found it a difficult business. They couldn't get near the body without fighting not to barf. The smell was that bad. When they got close enough to see, they saw the body had attracted carnivores. They could see where one leg at the upper thigh, bare because of the arrangement of the man's pants, had been chewed enough that they could see down to the bone. Worse, some of the soft parts of the face were torn up, too. Disgusting was way too mild a word. Eff had a problem even looking at it. Smelling it just made it worse.

"I can't do this," Eff said, pinching his nose with his thumb and pointer finger.

Geo was thinking hard, considering and not speaking. Finally, he said, "It was your idea. But we don't really need to do anything but take away the head." Geo was being logical instead of emotional and looked pleased with himself. Obviously, he wasn't having as hard a time with the smell as Eff. When Eff asked why that was, Geo said, "I know bad smells; I share a bedroom with Ken. Takes away my sensitivity. Anyway, you're the brains here. Why didn't you bring some Vicks? That's what they do on TV. Spread some Vicks on their upper lips. I expect you to get with the program a little more than you are. Think about things like that."

Eff walked farther away, moving so he was upwind of the grave and out of the stench so the light breeze that was blowing would take it away from him. "If you want the head, go get it. It would be ghoulish, but think about it. How are you going to remove the head? You'll need to separate it from the body. Ugh! Why do you want to do that, anyway?"

"Eff, Eff, Eff. What's with you? Don't you watch any cop shows? First off, killers like to do their work with a .22 because the bullet will bounce around in the head rather than exiting it. A .22 isn't powerful enough to both penetrate the skull and then depenetrate it."

"How would you know? You didn't even know about the Vicks! Anyway, if the bullet didn't depenetrate, the cops can recover it and compare it to one from a .22. They do that and they'll see it's a match with a bullet from Ken's gun. We don't want that to happen. Ken being convicted would be sad, but mostly, I don't want anyone finding out we borrowed his gun. I'd be in deep shit with my parents as well as Ken when he got out."

"They go around asking everybody who has one that goes in those woods. Not that many people do, and someone will say Ken's name. Then they'd come calling."

"Ken would be okay. I know you, Geo. You'd end up admitting you had the gun, not Ken. Then they'd all know that you were the murderer. You'd beg for mercy, saying it was an accident. All you have to do is swear you were just shooting at him to scare him; you were aiming at his dick but your aim was bad and you got him in the head. You're young and cute and you'll say it wasn't intentional. Juries hate to convict cute boys. You'd probably only get ten years, fifteen at the most."

"Hey, you keep saying I'm cute. You know what happens to boys who are cute in the jug? They become some fat, smelly guy's mistress; that's what happens. I'm not gonna be anyone's mistress! I'll let Ken fight his own battles. He's not as cute as I am."

"Well, if you're serious and want the head, Geo, there it is. Go fetch. Your murder, your head. I'm not doing this."

"But I need your help with this, Eff. The head is in the grave. With all that slimy stuff that's seeped out of the guy that stinks to high heaven. I wish the coyotes or foxes or bears had bitten through his neck, but they didn't. Looks like that head is still attached pretty good. You might have missed on the Vicks, but you can figure out how to get the head off better than I can. Help me out here."

Eff took a step closer so he could see in the grave, then stepped back again. "There are several things to consider here. We'd need something to separate the head from the neck. Maybe an axe. Or a hatchet. Your dad has a hatchet. I've seen it hanging abve his tool bench. You need to get that, step into the grave, and then whack his neck enough times so the head will come loose.

"But that isn't all. There's the slimy mess in the grave to think about. It'll be slippery to walk on, and you'll need a firm surface to stand on, swinging that hatchet. You really don't want to slip and fall onto the body. Or maybe into it if it's rotten enough, and it smells like it probably is. So, we have to figure out how to keep you from slipping. And we can bring some Vicks if you insist. We don't have any at home. If you don't have some, we'll have to buy it. Maybe put some sort of costume on so we wouldn't be recognized if the cops check to see who bought Vicks recently.

"And another thing to think about. Just being in that grave, some of that stink will be on your clothes. I'd imagine that with you whacking away with the hatchet, there'll be all sorts of splatter, and it'll get all over you. So, you need to wear an apron or overalls or old clothes we could bury. Then we should go in the lake to wash the smell off you."

"I should have brought pencil and paper to make a list," Geo said. "This is a lot to remember."

"There's more still. What are you going to do with the head once you've got it? And that makes me realize another item for your list. Unless you want to carry it around, we need to bring a bag to carry it in."

"How heavy is a head? Maybe we need a shopping bag, you know, the kind with two handles."

Eff ignored the question, still working it out. "I think there'll be blood or some other liquid that'd cause the bottom of a paper bag to fall out. So would the head; then you'd have to carry it somehow. Makes for an ugly picture. I think a plastic bag would be best, like a large garbage bag. But it needs to be a colored one so people can't see what's inside it if we end up carrying it into town, and we need to hope a trail of dogs doesn't start following us.

"Anyway, that comes next: what you're going to do with it after chopping it off?"

Geo shook his head and frowned. "Eff, it's not, 'you going to do with it.' It's we. What are we going to do with it. And stop saying it was my murder. We have to agree it was our murder. Okay?"

Eff gave him a huge sigh, then said, "Okay, okay. Our murder. So, what are we going to do with the head?"

"What we should do," Geo said, "is something I can't tell you because you'd accuse me of being ghoulish again. The easiest thing, I guess, would be to bury it somewhere else."

"That means more shovels and dirt and I have blisters from all the digging we already did."

Eff thought. And thought. Eff took a step closer so he could see in the grave, then stepped back again. Then he told Geo to sit down. He needed to talk to him.

"This business isn't for me, Geo, and it shouldn't be for you, either. Look, we don't even know who killed him, but whichever of us it was, it was a pure accident. Now if we got messing with the body, removing the head and all, that's not an accident. That would be intentional. How could we ever explain it? Say we were trying to keep the bullet hidden? That implies we feel guilty for the murder. And we don't! We feel sad, but it was an accident. No, I don't think we should do anything with the head."

Sounding more sure of himself as he continued talking, he finished with, "We buried him, and we can do that again, but that's because we felt bad, just leaving him out here. We thought a burial was right and proper behavior. If we're asked, that's what we're going to say."

Geo wasn't buying it and shook his head. "But the bullet's in there, and it's incriminating! They'll find it, match it to Ken's gun, and wham-bam-thank-you-ma'am, they'll know it was Ken, and Ken'll say it was us, and you know I don't lie worth a damn."

Eff scratched his ear, looked away so as not to meet Geo's eyes, and said, "We've got to get rid of the gun."

"You won't be doing much hunting in your jail cell with your fat, smelly buddy. And I'm not messing with this head. So, the gun's all that's left. No, we should lose the gun, not the severed head." Geo didn't agree but stopped arguing. He did that whenever Eff put his foot down, and right now, Eff had both feet on the ground.

There was more to do, of course. Eff liked solving problems, and this mess was certainly one of those.

"Okay, what we're dealing with, then, is reburying the body, and it needs to be in a different grave, no matter how much work that is, then ditching the gun and getting our stories straight. We'll be asked where the gun is, and we have to decide what to tell them. They'll probably separate us, so we have to say the same thing. If I say someone stole it from us and you say you dropped it when a bear showed up and we started running, they'll know something's screwy.

"We have a lot to deal with here, and I think the important thing is to get busy now rather than delaying. We don't know when the man will report the body, but we need to assume it'll be sooner, not later. So, let's go get what we need, and I'll figure it all out as we're working."

They were going with Plan B. Geo was standing in the shallow grave. He had a large smear of Vicks VapoRub under his nose. He was wearing a long apron he'd stolen from his kitchen. He was shirtless. Under the apron all he had on was a pair of shorts. Old ones he didn't mind getting rid of. His legs were bare down to his shoes. Instead of his normal sneakers, he was wearing baseball spikes. He had on a COVID mask and a pair of goggles.

They were moving the body to a different grave. Maybe the man would show the police this one, and they'd find it empty. They might think animals had dragged off the body, but no matter what they thought, it would be better if there was no body for them to be suspicious about. No body, and they might think the informer had been drunk.

Geo was dressed as he was because they weren't sure of the state the body would be in. Would it fall apart if they lifted it? All they knew was it smelled worse than anything they'd ever encountered before, even fresh-from-the-source vomit.

They'd laid a plastic drop cloth on the ground, and Geo was in the grave trying to get a good purchase on the man's body. To do that he had to get right up close to him, and he was afraid the smell would knock him out. Even the Vicks wasn't enough. To pick the thing up, Geo needed to grab him and slide him up along his body. He didn't have the strength to lift him with his arms extended. That was why he was dressed as he was.

The body held together, and Geo, straining, bit by bit got it out of the grave and onto the drop cloth. "Whew," he said, trying to keep from puking. It threatened to erupt, and it was a task keeping it settled. He sank down onto a nearby stump to rest. "That's one job I hope I'll never have to do again."

The drop cloth was heavy to drag, and the forest floor was covered with small impediments that just made it harder. They dragged it as far as they thought they could, which wasn't all that far, then stopped, rested, and started digging again.

The new grave ended up even shallower than the old one. Their muscles were done, and so were they. In went the body. They smeared all the remaining Vicks over it, thinking if sniffing dogs were used, the Vicks might deter them. Then they went to their second level of defense: they'd collected some pig manure from a neighboring farm and poured it over the Vicks'-covered body. Then came the dirt and a layer of rocks on top of that. They looked for dead leaves and any sticks or twigs they could put over the rocks and came upon a small sapling that had been uprooted somehow. They managed to haul it to the grave and drape it artfully over the leaf covering. When done, it all looked very natural and nothing at all like a grave.

They had to hope no scavenger would work its way through the pig shit, rocks and Vicks and that any police dogs wouldn't be attracted to it, either.

This was Plan B. Plan A, Geo's, had involved leaving the head attached but working a hand into the brain and feeling around for the bullet. The details of that were such that Eff had turned around and walked away and said he'd see him next week some time if he wasn't incarcerated. They'd gone with Plan B: more work, less ghoulishness.

Now the body was reburied. A long way away from where it had been before, too, and where they were sure no one would find it. They still had to dispose of the filthy apron, mask and goggles—everything Geo had been wearing. Even the spikes, which were now hideous and nothing they wanted to try to clean; they didn't even want to touch them. They would be too small for Geo next year anyway, so he didn't mind getting rid of them.

They had brought a garbage bag where the spikes, mask, goggles, and gloves and shorts all went after removing Geo's sneakers, shirt and socks from it for him to wear when going home. Eff's plan had been pretty comprehensive.

Now they made their way to the lake, carrying the garbage bag they planned to toss into one of the dumpsters in town. Eff carried the bag. Geo carried the .22 rifle they'd brought, along with the shovels.

Geo really needed that lake. As he was wearing almost nothing, he was stripped long before Eff was. Eff took his time. He loved watching the excited anticipation on Geo's face as he undressed.

They'd argued about the rifle. Eff said it needed to go into the lake. Geo should toss it as far into the lake as he could. Geo had insisted they didn't need to do that. He said the ground around the lake was soft. They could wrap the gun in plastic and bury it there; no one could ever find it, and they could recover it when the dead man was long forgotten, maybe in a couple of weeks.

Eff had been tired of arguing, so they'd buried the gun. Then they swam, and both used the lilac-scented shampoo they'd brought to clean all the stink they could off themselves. They paid special attention to Geo's hair; Eff had to accept Geo's whining about not having a hat to wear being included as part of Plan B. They washed each other. All of each other, which provided a much greater advance in their relationship, going where they'd never even thought of going before. They'd both gotten hard, and both giggled at that.

"Easy! I'll use my hands to brush off as much water from you as I can, you'll return the favor, and then we'll just wait for the little that's left to dry."

They were involved in doing the something Geo had mentioned, doing it shyly and reservedly, when they heard voices. People were approaching! They grabbed their clothes and the bag and shovels—a lot to carry considering the rush they were in—and hurried into the woods along the shore, away from the direction from which the voices were coming. When they were sure they were not going to be seen, they quickly dressed. Then they waited.

As far away as they were, they could only catch intermittent snippets of the conversations that were going on. It was several men, and the boys were pretty sure they were policemen. The original grave was discovered. They hadn't taken the time to try to hide it.

From what the boys heard, the informer insisted a body had been in it. It was decided that the next day, a team would come and see if they could find the body.

But one man pointed out an area that showed something had been dragged. They followed the trail of the drag and came to where the boys had dug the second one. There were footprints there, and a fallen tree looked like it had been dragged there, too. At that point, they heard the words 'crime scene' and 'forensics' as the men were leaving. Had they left someone behind to protect the grave? The boys didn't know. They waited till there were no more noises, no voices, no movements, and Geo whispered in Eff's ear, "I'll go check. Stay here."

He was only gone a few minutes, then came back and said, "No one's around. We should move the guy again, but I can't. I'm done. Let's get out of here."

"Okay," Eff said, "but let's take the route we used when you were trying to make me think we were lost. It's a roundabout- enough route that we shouldn't meet anyone coming back if they decide to do that today."

That was what they did. They got home unseen, stashed the tools, which they'd cleaned in the lake, then rode their bikes into town, carrying the bag of stolen evidence with them. They knew where an out-of-the-way dumpster was, out of sight and a perfect place for their bag. Geo dropped the bag in, and Eff pulled loose cardboard that was already in the dumpster over it, covering it from view. Then it was back home, where they started a video game. If anyone asked, they'd say they'd been there all day.

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Two Boys and the Pervert

by Cole Parker

Chapter 3