What Now? Prologue

 ‘’What now?’’ I said through short anxious breaths.  Tom’s face was blank.  It was a warm summer morning in June.  The sun was shining, the birds were singing, and Tom and I were stood at the rear of the Ferdelly Pub, holding a dead body.  It’s at times like these that I regret ever introducing myself to Tom that first day of High School.  I stared at his stupid blank face, half hating him and half wanting to laugh at him hysterically.  He was wearing only one shoe and his tie was wrapped around his head like a ninja.  If it weren’t for the fact that we were clutching a dead man, I’d say the scene seemed rather comical, Tom gripping the feet and me the hands. We’d been stood in this position for five minutes now. I could feel the sweat running down my nose and my shirt was beginning to stick to my chest.  Finally it seemed Tom had hatched a decisive plan and I couldn’t help but admire his quick thinking and superior intellect. ‘’We should put him down, my arms are aching’’.  I rolled my eyes. Tom let the dead man’s legs flop to the floor, leaving me clutching the arms.  ‘’You can’t just throw him to the ground like a geography book!’’ I shouted, gently placing the body on the tarmac.
 ‘’Why not?’’ he replied flatly. 
I punched him in the arm ‘’Ever heard of a little thing called ‘respect for the dead’?’  We both knew I was talking out of my arse.  Tom returned the punch; his was harder and made my eyes water a little.
‘’You weren’t saying that at two o clock this morning when you let his face slop in the mud because you needed to scratch your butt’’. 
I looked at him blankly, rubbing my arm where he’d punched it. ‘’I wasn’t scratching my butt’’ I muttered. ‘’I had a wedgy.’’.  
For a moment we just stood there, staring at the body on the ground, its arms stretched out by his head and stinking of beer. ‘’And anyway’’ I continued ‘’what if his legs fall off, rigor mortis might already be setting in’’. Tom’s forehead creased and his face held a vacant expression I knew all too well.  I sighed.  ‘’Rigor mortis is when a dead body starts to stiffen up’’.  His face relaxed and he began to nod
‘’I know what rigon mortis is, Rob’’.
I rolled my eyes again. ‘‘Rigor mortis’’ I corrected him. 
‘’It’s like in those American slasher films...’’
 I couldn’t believe how casual he was acting; it was like he didn’t even have a grasp of reality.  ‘’When the detectives come in and they’re all like’’ Tom began to put on an American accent ‘’so where’s the stiff’’.
 I stared at him in bewilderment.  The more he talked, the more I dug my nails into my palms trying to resist the urge to plant him one in the nose.
‘’Hey, remember that time when we went to see The Hills Run Red and we had to...’’
Tom’s useless ramblings were cut off by a sound we really didn’t want to hear.   My heart began to beat wildly.
‘’is that a police siren? Can you hear that...Tom? Tom is that a police siren?’’.I looked frantically from Tom to the dead body lying on the ground.  ‘’Oh my god, it is, it’s a police siren, Tom help me’’. 

We quickly grabbed the body and looked anxiously for a place to go. I could hear voices coming from the front of the pub and I looked at my watch.  ‘’It’s almost eight’’. 
For the first time that morning the clogs in Tom’s tiny brain began to turn ‘’Oh my God, Ferdelly’s Five Pound Full English!’’.
  Every day between eight and eleven in the morning, Ferdelly’s pub had a Full English special where you could get two rashers of bacon, two sausages, a portion of baked beans, a fried egg, a hash brown and a slice of fried bread for a fiver. And unfortunately for us, the locals loved it. 

At this point we had returned to the same ridiculous position we were in ten minutes ago.  Tom clutching his feet, me the hands, panic painted on our faces. 
‘’Wait, what about that skip’’ Tom motioned with his head to a yellow skip filled with cardboard that stood near the pub’s back entrance.  ‘’We could put him in there and come back for him tonight when it’s dark’’.
I had to admit, it was a decent plan, and I couldn’t think of a better one.  ‘’Okay’’ I said. ‘’But this is a pub, you know, people will still be here tonight’’.  Tom looked thoughtfully for a moment.
‘’But the sort of people who are still at a place like this at 1 in the morning are probably going to be pissed out of their brains anyway’’. 
He had a point.  Holding the body as we had done since half 1 this morning, Tom and I struggled over to the skip. 
I looked inside. ‘’We need to take out some of these cardboard boxes so he won’t be seen’’
We placed the body on the floor again, gently this time, and began pulling boxes out of the skip.  Once we had decided we had made enough space for the body to be sufficiently covered, we picked it up again. 

‘’This guy weighs a ton’’ Tom groaned as we hoisted him into the skip.  

As I peered in at his crooked body I felt kind of relieved, which sort of made me feel guilty. 
Tom started to chuck the boxes in again. ‘’Quick, put the cardboard back in before somebody sees us’’. 
The police sirens had faded and I began to calm down a bit.  We both stepped back from the skip.  Tom looked at me ‘’what now?’’ he asked.
 It was almost quarter past eight on a warm summer morning in June.  The sun was shining, the birds were singing and Tom and I had just buried a dead body in a skip. I looked wearily at Tom ‘’I’m going home for a shower.’’