Total pages in book: 84
Estimated words: 80471 (not accurate)
Estimated Reading Time in minutes: 402(@200wpm)___ 322(@250wpm)___ 268(@300wpm)
Estimated words: 80471 (not accurate)
Estimated Reading Time in minutes: 402(@200wpm)___ 322(@250wpm)___ 268(@300wpm)
Dav was as chipper as ever, though, as he took the weights, then began tying them to the arms and legs of the corpse.
“What in the Boy Scouts?” I asked at his effortless rope tying.
“Handy skill to learn,” he said, shrugging it off. “So, what do you think? Weights good enough, or should we slice open the stomach, so it doesn’t bloat up? What?” he asked, looking up at me from his squatted position, head cocked to the side.
“Just… every once in a while, one of us will say something that reminds me how fucking insane our lives are,” I admitted. “This is one of those moments. But, ah, I think he might have enough holes in him.”
“Fair enough,” Dav said, looking at the body. “Alright. If you can carry two of the weights down the dock, I can take him and the other two.”
So that’s what we did, grunting and grumbling and sweating through our coats and gloves.
In the end, the body flew over. Half a second later, all the weights were in too, and we stood there at the end of the dock, panting for breath and watching him disappear.
Dav lowered down onto the dock, exhaling hard.
“Fuck,” he sighed, slipping off his rubber gloves, and shoving them into his coat jacket, then taking off said jacket to rest it on the dock and lay back on top of it.
“What are you doing?”
“It’s a nice night. Trees. Sky. Fresh air.”
“Pesky, rotting corpse just underneath us…”
“Get your pretty ass down here and enjoy it for five minutes,” he demanded. When I didn’t immediately move to do just that, he reached up, snagged my wrist, and pulled me down next to him.
I shrugged out of my jacket, spreading it beside Dav, then moved to lie flat as well, reminding myself that I was allowed to have this one last night before I pushed him away again.
“Okay. It is pretty. Corpse aside,” I agreed, looking up at the moody night sky, the clouds moving across the moon, giving it a spooky look as the wind kicked up, surrounding us with scents of dirt and leaves and water. Things the city didn’t really have to offer.
“Ever want to move out of the city?” he asked.
“No,” I said immediately. “But to be fair, I’ve spent almost no time outside of it.”
“I don’t really ever either. But that one summer in rural Pennsylvania had me wishing for a change of pace for a while. Sun, long days out by the pond, riding bikes, four-wheelers, local wildlife that wasn’t rats the size of your average cat…”
“When you were a teen, right?” I asked, remembering his story about his cousins and the porn.
“Yeah. Just the one summer.”
“Why?”
“Because my old man was locked up for knocking around my mom. And my mom was in the mental institution for trying to kill herself for the third time. Either my aunt had to step up, or I was going to go into foster care. And since next to no one wants a teenage boy, I would have been in a group home.”
“I didn’t realize your mom…”
“Had a habit of taking handfuls of pills to escape reality?” he filled in. “Yeah, no one does.”
“Did you get to go back with her?”
“Fucked up part is my ma was locked away longer than my father was,” he said, shaking his head. “He came to get me, dragged me back to the city, then beat on me while he waited for my mom to be released.”
“I’m sorry.”
“Figure you have a similar story,” he said, shrugging it off.
“I didn’t have a dad,” I admitted, surprised the words were coming out of me. “I mean, there was a man who fucked my mom and made me, but he was never in the picture. No name on the birth certificate either. Figure my mom didn’t even know who it was.
“She was always too strung out to pay attention to pesky details like someone’s name. Or what they were trying to do to her daughter…”
“Cin…” Dav said, voice horrified as he reached for my hand, fingers slipping between mine, and squeezing hard.
“I was good at hiding when I was little. Then better at sleeping with a knife when I was older.”
“I’m sorry,” he said, pulling my hand to his lips and pressing a kiss to the back of it.
“I survived.”
“You shouldn’t have needed to survive that.”
“I made it,” I said, shrugging. “Though I think you came out of your shitty childhood better than I did.”
“Don’t say that,” he said, his voice soft. “I like how you turned out.”
“Yeah, okay,” I said, rolling my eyes as I looked back at the moon.
“Hey,” he said, voice demanding my attention, so I turned. “I have no reason to lie about that.”
“Except for to get in my pants again,” I said, trying to brush it away.