Chevy Stevens - Still Missing

My legs tense in case I had to break into a run, I snuck up on him. Every couple of steps I paused and strained my eyes and ears for any sounds or the slightest movement. When I finally got up to him, his body looked awkward with his arms under him, and the position made him seem smaller.

Holding my breath, I reached around his neck, on the opposite side of the blood river, and checked for a pulse. He was dead.

I backed away slowly, then sat on the porch in one of the rocking chairs and tried to figure out my next step. Keeping beat with every creak of the chair, my mind repeated the words, He’s dead. He’s dead. He’s dead. He’s dead. He’s dead.

In the hot summer afternoon the clearing was idyllic. The river, calm without spring’s heavy rains, was a soft hum, and the occasional robin, swallow, or blue jay warbled. The only sign of violence was the buzz of the rapidly growing mass of flies that coated his wound and the pool of blood. His words tripped through my reverie: Nature has a plan.

I was free but I didn’t feel free. As long as I could see him, he still existed. I had to do something with the body. But what?

The temptation to set the son of a bitch on fire was huge, but it was summer, the clearing was dry, and I didn’t want to start a forest fire. Digging through the dry, compact ground to bury him would be next to impossible. But I couldn’t just leave him there. Even though I’d confirmed he was well and truly dead, my mind refused to accept that he couldn’t hurt me anymore.

The shed. I could lock him in the shed.

Back at his body, I tilted him slightly to the side and searched his front pockets for the keys. With my teeth clamped over the ring, I gripped both of his ankles—then dropped them quickly when I felt his warm skin. I don’t know how long it takes a body to cool down, and he was lying in the sun, but it scared me enough that I checked his pulse a second time.

Grabbing hold of his ankles again and ignoring their warmth, I tried to drag him backward, but I was only able to move him enough that his body slid off the log round, and when it hit the ground, the axe handle in his head wobbled. I fought the bile rising in my throat, turned my back to him, and tried to pull him that way. I was only able to move him a foot before I had to stop and take a breath—my dress was already damp, and sweat dripped into my eyes. Even though the shed wasn’t far away, it might as well have been on the other side of the clearing. Casting my eye around for an alternative, I spied the wheelbarrow.

I rolled it over to his body and braced myself for the sensation of his skin touching mine. With my eyes averted from the axe, I gripped him by his upper arms and managed to pull them out from under his body. Eyes still averted, I grasped him under the armpits and with my heels dug into the ground threw my whole body into trying to haul him up—I could only move him a few inches. I straddled his back and tried to pick him up from around the waist, but I was only able to get him up a foot before my arms began to shake from the exertion. The only way he was getting in that wheelbarrow was if he came back to life and climbed into it himself.

Wait. If I had something to roll his body onto, something that would slide across the ground, I might be able to drag him. The rug under the bed wasn’t smooth enough. I hadn’t noticed a tarp near the woodpile, but he had to have one somewhere, maybe in the shed.

After trying five keys on his monster key chain, I was able to open the padlock. It took a while because my hands were shaking like a burglar’s on his first job.

I half expected to see the deer still hanging from the ceiling, but there was no sign of it, and on a shelf above the freezer I found an orange tarp. Unfolding it near his body, I considered how I was going to roll him over onto the tarp with the axe in his head.

Damn. It was going to have to come out.

With my hands wrapped around the handle, I closed my eyes and pulled, but it wouldn’t budge. I tried a bit more force, and the sensation of flesh and bone resisting as they let go of their prize had me gagging. It had to be done fast. With my foot braced against the base of his neck, I shut my eyes tight, took a deep breath, and wrenched the axe out. I dropped it, bent over, and dry-heaved.

Once my stomach settled down, I knelt beside his body, on the opposite side of the blood, and rolled him onto the tarp. He fell onto his back, glassy blue eyes staring up at the sky, a smear of blood on the orange tarp arcing out from his head. His face had already paled and his mouth was slack.

With quick fingers I closed his eyelids—not out of respect for the dead but because I thought of all the times I’d had to force myself to look at them. Now, in a few seconds, I’d fixed it so I’d never have to see those eyes again.

My back to him, I grasped the edge of the tarp, leaned forward like an ox with a gruesome cargo, and pulled him over to the shed. Getting him over the lip of the doorway was tricky, because he kept sliding farther down the tarp. Eventually I had to drag it out again, move him up it, and fold the end over him like a napkin. Then with both ends in my hands I wiggled, dragged, shoved, and pulled him inside. At one point his hand fell out and touched my knee. I dropped the tarp, leapt backward, and hit my head on a post. It hurt like a son of a bitch, but I was too focused to pay the pounding any attention.

I stuffed his arm back in the tarp and tucked it all around him. I found some bungee cords, wound them tight around his legs and upper body. As I wrapped him up like a mummy I kept telling myself he couldn’t hurt me anymore. Not one part of me believed it.

Dehydrated, sweat-soaked, head pounding, and aching all over from the physical exertion, I locked the shed and made my way back to the cabin for some water. Once I’d slaked my thirst, I lay on the bed clutching the keys and stared at his key-chain pocket watch. It was five o’clock—the first time I knew the hour myself in almost a year.

At first I didn’t think, I just listened to the ticking of the second hand until the pounding headache calmed down, then I thought, I’m free. I’m finally fucking free . But why didn’t I feel like I was? I killed a man. I’m a murderer. I’m just like him.

All I’d gotten rid of was a body.

During one of the first press conferences I held after I came home—I stupidly thought if I got it all over with at once, they might actually stop calling and lurking outside the trailer—a bald guy in the audience holding a Bible up in the air chanted, “ Thou shall not kill. You’re going to hell. Thou shall not kill. You’re going to hell!” The crowd let out a collective gasp as he was dragged off by bystanders, then turned back to me. Camera bulbs flashed, and somebody shoved a microphone in my face.

“How would you respond to what he said, Annie?”

As I looked out at the crowd and the back of the bald-headed guy, who was still chanting, I thought, I’m already in hell, asshole.

I wish sometimes that I could talk to my mom about these things, Doc, about guilt and regret and shame, but as much as I have a talent for shouldering all the blame, Mom has one for ducking it. Which is one of the reasons I still haven’t talked to her since our fight, not that she’s tried either. That doesn’t surprise me, but I thought for sure Wayne would have called by now.

Shit, I’m getting so damn lonely these days I might even have to give one of your meet-your-fears-head-on experiments the old college try. But it’s just so stupid that I still feel like I’m in danger. The Freak is dead. I’m as safe as safe can be. Now, can someone please tell my psyche that?