Waking Up Next To A Dead Body

• Jordan Harvey, Grade 6
• Short Story
• 2017

It’s kind of a toss-up when you wake up lying next to a dead body.
“What do I do?!” kept replaying in her mind. She didn’t know what she was feeling.
Shock.
Terror.
Disgust.
What she didn’t realise was that her brother was the one lying there . . . dead.
She began pacing up and down her large bedroom, taking deep breaths, trying not to break down. Charlie slowly slipped her hand under her pillow and grabbed her phone. Her mind was that full, she didn’t even know who to call. The first person that came to her mind was her brother.
After the first ring, a buzzing noise vibrated from the dead boy’s pocket. Charlie shuddered and slowly approached the boy. She curiously examined the familiar face of the stranger, but still couldn’t recognise where she’d seen it before. He appeared to be an average person. He was short with hazel eyes, freckled cheeks, light brown hair, a short-trimmed beard and wore a fancy tuxedo.
She rang her brother a second time, and again after the first ring, the boy’s phone rang.
It clicked. She finally realised it was her brother. Her phone hit the ground and she fell to her knees. She cried . . . and cried . . . and cried.
Charlie had no idea what to do.
She was undecided. Should she call the police or hide the body?

This was the hardest decision Charlie had ever faced.
As much as she loved her annoying brother, she chose to hide his body. Charlie wasn’t a cruel person neither was she a mean person. She just didn’t want to go to the police and have her family put through the torture of a lengthy investigation. So, in her mind, this unquestionably justified her choice to hide his body.
Charlie gently stroked her skinny fingers through her brother’s hair then gently kissed him on the forehead one last time before she took him to her car.

It wasn’t an exactly pleasant day outside, it was rather cold and gloomy; but this did not stop her from finding somewhere to hide the body.
Thunder roared viciously and drops of rain drizzled down to earth as dark grey clouds rapidly rolled into the small town.

Wearing a long, black, leather, matrix coat, she stood, between two large decrepit gravestones in the abandoned graveyard of the town.
Holding a rusty shovel in her hand and her dead brother lying on the ground, she was just about ready to dig when something stopped her… It was reality. She couldn’t do it. Her heart was broken in two. She couldn’t just stand there and bury her brother. It was too painful. Tears streamed down her cheeks like little waterfalls, as her face shone bright red.

She dragged his heavy body back to her petite car and sped off sadly.