A Stunt Gone Wrong

This one was written for an assignment in Creative Writing, based off a short little script I wrote for a high school writing class. It might be one of the funnier things I've written to be honest.

It’s really quite amazing how quickly some days go completely fuck-up. One moment you’re hanging out drinking beers with your bros in the backyard of your mate’s house, just hanging out being all chill and stuff, and then suddenly one of your friends dies.

I’m not being figurative. Trust me, I wish I were. But I’m not.

Sam was dead. Very dead.

I looked down at his body – which was far from a pretty sight – trying to figure out what to do next. Some part of me was hoping that I was wrong, that Sam would sit up and shout an obscenity at us with a laugh, but you didn’t need to be a medical practitioner to tell that he was dead. There was far too much blood for that to be the case, for start.

Next to me Jerry was in a state of panic, muttering the phrase “oh my God” over and over again to himself as he tried his best not to totally lose his mind. I have to admit I was on the verge of panic too, but losing it now would have been the worst thing for either of us to do. We had to stay level headed. We had to figure out a way out of this.

“This is bad,” Jerry said, “this is really bad.”

I totally agreed with Jerry on that one, but I figured we had to stay calm. “It’s OK, man,” I said in an attempt to soothe my friend, “it’s going to be fine.”

Jerry looked at me in total shock. Clearly, I had not calmed him at all. “Fine?” he cried, “He’s dead, man! Dead!”

“Yeah, I know. Just… calm down.”

Jerry let out a nervous laugh. “Calm down? Calm down? Don’t tell me to calm down! What are we going to do? We’re so screwed! Oh God!”

Jerry was now getting hysterical, so I turned and grabbed him by the shirt collars, shaking him to emphasize my point. “Shut up!” I hissed, “The more noise you make the more attention you’re gonna attract to us. The last thing we need is some dickhead coming around here and finding us standing over a dead body. You got it?”

Jerry nodded, and I let him go, feeling I had made my point. We both turned to look down at Sam, and I resisted the urge to throw up. I wasn’t sure which was making me more nauseous – the alcohol I had been drinking or the sight of Sam – but that didn’t really matter.

“We gotta call the police,” Jerry said after a moment of silence, “Like, right now.”

I shook my head. “No. No police.”

Jerry looked at me in shock, and I could feel his panic surging again. “Why not?”

“Think about it, dude!” I replied, “We can’t fess up to this! We’d get jail time for manslaughter or some shit!"

“He did that stunt all by himself! Why would we get charged?”

“We cheered him on,” I pointed out, “That could count. Besides, us being here at all is definitely gonna look suspicious.”

Jerry shook his head. “Oh, God. Why did he even do that? Why did we cheer him on? Why did any of this happen?”

I shook my head too. “I dunno man. I… I just don’t know.”

We stood in silence for a moment, the shock of what had just happened still catching up to us. It’s not like Sam and I had been the best of friends, but this still sucked big time.

“There’s so much blood,” whispered Jerry.

A thought suddenly occurred to me as Jerry said this. “We gotta do something about the body.”

Jerry nodded. “But what? How are we gonna clean this up?”

“I don’t know yet. Let me think.”

Jerry’s eyes widened – he’d clearly just had an idea. “We could throw him in the river.”

Immediately I could see a flaw in this plan. “That’s like, ages away!”

Jerry seemed to have thought of that. ”I know, but we could stuff him in the trunk of your car!”

“No!” I was not a fan of this plan. “No way man! I’m not messing up my car like that! The blood will ruin my interior!”

“No no!” Jerry was now really sure of his plan. “We wrap him in a tarp and stuff him in the trunk! Then we get to the river, chuck him in and that’s that!"

“We’re not dumping him in the river!”

“Fine!”

We lapsed into silence again, as we both tried to think what to do next. After a moment Jerry piped up, asking a truly important question.

“Can I drink his beer?”

“No.”

Jerry nodded, then groaned as another thought occurred to him. “Jeez, what are we gonna tell Sarah?”

Sarah! I had completely forgotten about Sam’s girlfriend through all of this mess. “I hadn’t thought of that,” I groaned, “What are we gonna tell her?”

“I mean, we could tell her the truth,” suggested Jerry.

I rolled my eyes at this suggestion. “What, that her boyfriend killed himself doing something stupid? She’s gonna love that.”

“Well what else do you suggest?”

“I don’t know! Just let me think!”

Jerry shook his head. “I dunno. Maybe we should just leave him here.”

This suggestion was even worse than Jerry’s last one, and I let out a humourless laugh. “Yeah, let’s just leave his mangled body here for Sarah to see. That’s fucking genius, man!”

Jerry raised his hands in surrender. “Sorry!”

I looked back down at Sam and shook my head. “No. We gotta clean this up before she gets back, then we figure out what to tell her.”

“Maybe we could say he got hit by a bus,” Jerry said, “I mean, he kinda looks like he got run over, doesn’t he?”

I tilted my head as I looked down at Sam, then nodded. “He kinda does, yeah.”

As I said this I became aware of a wailing sound in the distance, one that appeared to be getting closer with every second. I looked over to Jerry, and realized that we had come to the same realization simultaneously.

“The cops,” breathed Jerry.

“Shit,” I muttered.

“Maybe they’re not coming this way?” asked Jerry hopefully.

I shook my head. “No, they’re definitely headed this way. Oh, dear God.”

Jerry was beginning to work his way back up to panic. “How do they know what happened?”

“The neighbours must have heard everything. We are in deep shit.”

Jerry began pacing up and down, repeatedly muttering the F word under his breath as he did. “What do we do?” he said after a moment, “What the f**k do we do?”

I thought about this for a moment, then I realized what we had to do. “Run. We just run. They’ll find the body and hopefully figure out what happened. Then they can tell Sarah, and nobody ever need know that we were here.”

Jerry nodded. “Works for me. Over the back fence?”

I nodded. “I’m right behind you.”

With that he ran for Sam’s back fence, scrambling over it and landing on the other side as the first cop car pulled up in front of his house.