Random Story :
Revival
Author: Mikhail Gladkikh First, there were thoughts. I acknowledged my …
The Dead Man
Author: Alzo David-West
“Inside this suitcase is the dismembered body of a man and one of the tools you used to kill him. Your fingerprints are on it. You must dispose of the suitcase in the Miyamae River in 24 hours, or I will inform the police.”
Hosokawa was hyperventilating. Komatsu was limping in a circle. Morioka was staring. They knew what they had done, but how did someone find out? They had planned everything so meticulously when they chose the man. The ambush was simple. He was a quiet man from another place, on a limited-term contract. He worked late, passed through the bicycle shelter behind their office building, and went into an unlit street, where he always walked alone. He was perfect. His disappearance would mean nothing to anyone.
The time was 1:15 a.m. Everyone had long gone home. The two elderly men in the campus security booth were snoozing, and the little town was sleeping. The three simply had to be sure the man did not scream.
He put on his down jacket, ear warmers, and newsy cap, turned off the lights, locked the office door, and walked to the empty café downstairs. He exited the side glass door, locked it with his ID card, and went to the back of the building, not seeing the shadows of the short broad-shouldered woman, the long thin man, and the burly fat woman. He walked and turned into the unlit street where there was only forest, a small statue, two dilapidated houses, and memorial stones.
Komatsu struck the back of the man’s exposed head with a mallet. He collapsed. Hosokawa arrived with the van. She smothered chloroform over his nose and mouth. Morioka zip-tied a bag over his head. They carried the body into the van, and they drove deep into the thick bamboo forest in the small mountain nearby that no one visited, and there, they performed wildly and lustfully with axe, knife, and saw.
They finished, breathing heavily, heaving the weighted breaths of passion, breathing, breathing, breathing. They were quiet now. There were no words. They buried the tools and left the body for the hungry foxes and badger dogs, and the only thing anyone knew the next day was a brief story in the evening news of a burned van on an old woman’s orange field.
So receiving the threat, Hosokawa, Komatsu, and Morioka were deeply troubled. They text-messaged each other.
In Komatsu’s office, they whispered what to do. Hosokawa and Morioka agreed to heed the warning — dispose of the suitcases in the river or spend the rest of their days trapped with the thieves, rapists, and sociopaths. The thought terrified them. They liked their comfortable tenured lives, and they were not willing to give everything away simply because they had realized their dream to murder a man.
In the frigid night, they drove, brought the suitcases to the Miyamae River, and anxiously threw them into the fast rushing water, where the luggage traveled and was swallowed into the mouths of the storm drains.
A week passed, but then, there were three more suitcases with the same note and, the next week, the same thing again. The paranoia and madness came, the three declaring and denying that one of them had disclosed their secret. They were sure the little street and mountain road were unlit and unmonitored. They had carefully studied the municipal and crowdsourced maps online. So, they concluded, there must have been a camera in the bicycle shelter, from where they had followed the man before entering the van.
They chose a night three days after they had disposed of the third set of suitcases. They went to the dark space, and each of them, with anguished suspicion and unreason, drew out concealed knives — striking, slashing, and stabbing at one another in a bipolar manic orgy of fear, joy, and hate, the three collapsing onto the cold ground, bleeding until they bled no more.
From the second-floor window of an empty office above, the man they had killed observed quietly.