Draging Bodies, Leaving Burdens

Dragging Bodies, Leaving Burdens

It is a lonely existence, dumping bodies at night. Killing has a thrill, a rush, but afterward is only cold emptiness and solitary work. The whole thing is solitary really, but the thrill of the hunt and the kill keep it from being lonely. This part is grim, cleaning the mess and disposing of all that came from your work, your hunt. There is nothing to look forward to in this.

I drag the tarp, wrapped tightly around the remains, through the underbrush. It is heavy, but I am used to the weight. My first time out the tarp had snagged on every rock and branch, tearing and leaking a trail of evidence to mark my passing. Amateur mistakes, but we all start somewhere.

Now I could drag a body through a cactus farm without a snag. The weight is still heavy, but it weighs on my body alone instead of on my mind. After all, that is what I am trained for, what I do. The unseen hand, the bogeyman used to scare normal people into line. Normal people don't need to fear me though. They are nothing to me and I am nothing to them.

The monsters in human skin, they are the ones who should fear. They are the ones I was trained to hunt, to kill. The body I drag now was one of them. The world thought he was just another human, another of their kind living another mundane life. He wasn't. He was a monster in human skin. Not stronger, not faster, but cruel and unfeeling. His body was built the same at theirs but his mind harbored no human soul.

I had once been told I was the same as them, that hunting them made me the same. She was a sweet thing that told me this, but those words ran sour. She rejected me because of my training, because of my duty. I hadn't chosen to kill or to enjoy the hunt. Both I had been trained for, had been trained into my mind and soul. The sweet girl couldn't accept that, so I had let her go. I had let everything go, except for my job and my duty.

I could forget that loss, letting myself be filled with the purpose of my task. I could forget until that purpose was filled. Like now, as I disposed of what was left. It was a morbid task that filled my mind with morbid thoughts. Lonely thoughts. Hollow thoughts. I would be like this until I was given a purpose again, my next hunt.

I reached the area I had set out for, a small clearing of soft soil, just inside the forest marking the border of the badlands. Law didn't exist here and no one reputable traveled there. Even if a body should be discovered it would be ignored by the finder to avoid drawing attention to their own dealings.

I released the body and unslung my shovel, the folding type with a carry strap that had been across my shoulder. With a practiced movement, I unfolded the shovel and locked it into place, then extended the handle so I wouldn't have to crouch. The shovel had been such a simple investment and was entirely worth it. It took easily thirty minutes off of each disposal, maybe more if they were heavy and needed to be dragged with two hands.

I dug in silence, listening to the night around me and the sounds of the forest. The badlands were far from safe, but I wasn't worried. That lack of safety was what made them ideal for dumping whatever you didn't want to be found. I had a shovel and a weapon, anything I couldn't handle I could outrun. If that meant the body went unburied then so be it. The blasted creatures could eat it and save me the trouble.

Leaving them like that all the time though was unwise. Such easy pickings would draw in creatures to the area, making future drops even more dangerous. So in the long run burial was best.

I had reached the halfway point in my digging when a sound cut through the nights quiet. A branch snapped off to my left and there was a sound of something tearing. I froze, standing with my shovel in the hole I had dug.

My first instinctual fear was that some sort of hungry creature approached me in the night. My muscles tensed in an instant prepared to run. Then my brain caught up and recognition dawned. The sound of the tear drew on my memory of years ago, the tear of a tarp caught on a branch.