Shovel – #freewrite 39, Day 1191

“You only brought one shovel?!” Frank slammed the tailgate open on the truck.

Patrick hung his head. The orange light of setting sun cut across his face, made his shadow grow huge across the forest floor.

“Well, goddamn it, I guess you made some work for yourself,” Frank growled. “I decapitated them; you can bury them.”

Patrick looked at the two bodies, former men, in the truck. He didnʼt feel like digging two graves. He reckoned one would do.

Frank grabbed the one shovel and threw it at him. Patrick caught it, just barely caught it, before it smacked him in the face.

Maybe it was the blood running out of the torn necks of the two already dead guys in the truck bed. Maybe it was almost getting smacked in the face. Patrick would never know. He gripped the shovel like a baseball bat in his hands.

Whack.

Frank collapsed to the forest floor. There, Patrick thought, now there are three bodies. And then he realized the extra work he had made for himself.

But, no. I donʼt have to bury them now. The two corpses in the truck were business rivals of Frankʼs; the police would know who had killed them, that it wasnʼt Patrick.

Patrick pulled the two bodies out of the truck bed. The three men scattered on the ground looked like the rag dolls in his sisterʼs room.

Patrick climbed into the truck and started it up. I can leave town now, he realized. His sister was safe. Frank wouldnʼt rape her anymore.

Patrick tore back to the forest road, music blaring, and drove away into a long night.

Image by bertvthul, from Pixabay: https://pixabay.com/users/bertvthul-1134851/

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Sometimes, with the best ones, the five-minute freewrite takes shape completely in my head before I reach the computer. Then itʼs just a matter of typing fast enough to beat five minutes.

I didnʼt quite make it with this one. Itʼs more like a five-minute-thirty-second freewrite. Then about twenty minutes later I saw a tweak that really brought out Patrickʼs frame of mind, so I had to make that change.

Thanks for reading.