Cold Hearted, Cold Blooded

The Late-Night Visit to the Lake

Prompt: The lake

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Lugging the heavy body all the way to the lake was no easy task, but somehow I managed it. I glanced behind me to see the bulging unseeing eyes of my neighbour, Mr. Andrews. I could see the fresh purple bruises stark against his pale neck from where I had strangled him to death. In my defence, it was self-defence. He had attacked me and I had defended myself and attacked him back. I hadn't meant to kill him, but I sure was glad that he could no longer torment me or anyone else now.

Finally arriving at the shore, I dropped the leg that I had been dragging to pull the body all the way here and began looking for a rock—heavy enough to weigh down a body but light enough for me to lift. I had thought ahead and brought some rope I found in one of Mr. Andrews' drawers (God knows what he used it for). Finding a rock that was probably half my weight, I proceeded to tie one end of the rope around the rock several times and the other around my deceased neighbour's body. I wasn't stupid, I knew how drowning corpses worked. If you dropped a corpse into the water, the body will sink due to the water filling into the body. Once it has sunk, the bacteria in the body will begin decomposing it, which will release gases like ammonia and carbon dioxide. Those gases will be trapped in the body's various cavities and will cause the corpse to become buoyant and float back to the surface. Now, I couldn't let the villagers discover Mr. Andrew's murder, so I tied a weight on him so that his body wouldn't float back to the surface and uncover my crime. Burning the body would make it far less likely for the crime to be discovered, but there was no way I could do that since I didn't have the time to do it—the average human body takes two to three hours to burn, and I had approximately one more hour before the rest of the villagers started to wake up—so I had to make do.

Once my task was finished, I lugged the body and rock onto one of the many boats floating at the docks and then got in. I untied the rope tethering the boat to the docks and rowed to the centre of the lake. There, I heaved both body and rock over the side of the boat into the water. The body landed with a small splash while the rock plunked gently into the murky green water. I sat there quietly, watching the body sink like a giant sack of potatoes, deeper and deeper beneath the lake's surface until I could no longer see it past the murky lake-water. After that, I rowed back to the shore and quickly retied the boat to the docks, making sure to cover up my tracks.

Before leaving, I glanced back at the murky lake which held my deepest, darkest, most incriminating secret. I wondered what other secrets it hid beneath its cloudy waters, and whose. A morbid thought came to me. If anyone decided to go swimming or scuba diving, they'll be treated to a truly unforgettable sight: the bloated corpse of the soon-to-be-declared missing Sandy Andrews.

With that thought, I smirked like the Cheshire Cat, turned on my heel and headed back home, a spring in my step.

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