Chipped Fingernails

"Some lines you cross and can never uncross—standing over a corpse you're about to hide is definitely one of them."

I stood on the bank of the lagoon, my expression clouded with unease. The young man's body lay on the other side, an inert reminder of the unpleasant task at hand. From here, I could see him clearly — face-up now, the wound on his throat a dark accusation against the peaceful water. Joel. Jamie's son. A person who had been alive and breathing and full of whatever dreams young men carry, now reduced to cargo that needed disposing.

The mouth of the lagoon stretched before me, no more than five metres across, yet the thought of crossing it filled me with an overwhelming sense of dread. It wasn't just the physical distance; it was the emotional chasm that seemed to widen with every second. Five metres of water between me and a corpse. Five metres between my current self and the version of me who would have touched a dead man, pushed him into a current, watched him float away to God knows where.

I glanced across to the right, seeking a sliver of distraction. It seemed Luke had managed to catch Jamie just in time. They stood together on the far bank, Luke's hand on Jamie's shoulder in what might have been comfort or might have been restraint. Duke was weaving playfully around their feet, oblivious to the sombre undercurrents of our gathering. For a fleeting moment, I envied Duke's ignorance. To be a dog, to not understand death, to not know that the body in the water was someone's child, someone's brother, someone's everything.

The sun's relentless pursuit had almost succeeded in drying my clothes, a minor victory in the grand scheme of things. My shirt still clung in places, the fabric stiff with river water and whatever else had contaminated it during my earlier plunge. With a heavy heart, I began to remove my shoes, socks, and jeans, the fabric feeling cumbersome and heavy, much like the burden we were shouldering. Each piece of clothing I set aside felt like stripping away another layer of denial about the reality we were facing.

I was going to wade into a lagoon. I was going to approach a murdered man. I was going to push his body into a current so that his father wouldn't have to see him. The absurdity of it — the sheer, impossible wrongness of it — settled over me like a shroud.

My heart pounded against my ribcage, a frenetic drumbeat echoing the turmoil within. I stared at the water's surface, which glimmered deceptively calm under the sun's gaze. The lagoon had been beautiful the first time I'd seen it — that impossible turquoise, that sense of peace in an alien landscape. Now it looked like a trap, like something waiting to swallow me whole.

The terror of what lay beneath, of what crossing that water symbolised, gnawed at me.

It's only a few metres away.

I tried to convince myself, a mantra that felt as hollow as it was intended to be comforting. Five metres. I could swim five metres in a pool without thinking twice. But this wasn't a pool. This was a lagoon with a corpse floating in it, and every instinct I possessed screamed at me to turn around and walk away.

With a deep breath, I attempted to steel my resolve. Carefully, I extended my foot towards the cool embrace of the water. The moment my skin made contact, a shiver ran up my spine, and the familiar zing of sexual pleasure raced up my leg.

I gasped.

My groin pulsated with an intensity I'd never experienced before. The sensation was overwhelming, inappropriate, horrifying in its context — my body responding to pleasure while my mind was fixed on death. My eyes closed tightly as I fought the sexual urges roaring through my entire body. What kind of place was this? What kind of water could provoke such a response? The wrongness of it — experiencing arousal while approaching a corpse — made me want to tear my own skin off.

The lagoon, with its serene appearance, was a stark contrast to the tumult of emotions raging within me. Each step I took into the water felt like a descent into a realm where the lines between right and wrong, between duty and despair, blurred. The coolness of the water enveloped my feet, a chilling reminder of the task that lay ahead, even as that other sensation — that unwanted, shameful pleasure — continued to pulse through my nerve endings.

As I waded through the lagoon, the weight of the situation settled heavily upon me. This wasn't just a physical crossing; it was a passage through the murky waters of moral ambiguity, of decisions made in the shadow of desperation. With each step, I felt the water's resistance, as if it were questioning my resolve, testing my willingness to proceed despite the uncertainty that lay on the other side.

The water rose to my thighs, then my waist. The sexual sensation intensified and then, mercifully, began to fade as I grew accustomed to the water's strange properties. My mind reasserted itself, pushing aside the physical confusion to focus on the grim purpose that had brought me here.

The distance might have been mere metres, but with every step, the journey felt longer, weighted down by the gravity of my actions and the potential consequences they harboured. As I moved closer to the young man's body, the reality of what I was about to do became ever more tangible. This was more than just freeing a body; it was about confronting the fragile thread that ties us to life and the unpredictable nature of the choices we make.

Planting my feet firmly into the submerged dune, I found myself standing over the body, a surreal and haunting tableau that seemed more like a scene from a grim narrative than reality. The head, its slackness a silent testament to the violence inflicted upon it, was resting against the bank of the lagoon, almost as if seeking solace in its final resting place. A deep gash marred the throat, a wound so severe it seemed to speak volumes of the story leading to this moment. The edges of the cut were ragged, the flesh parted in a way that revealed depths I didn't want to contemplate.

I reached down, my hands hovering momentarily before grasping the shoulders with an uncertainty that belied my resolve. The fabric of his shirt was cold and wet beneath my fingers, the body beneath it unnaturally still. Giving them a timid yank, I hoped for movement, but the body remained stubbornly in place, as immovable as the heavy guilt that weighed on my heart. I sighed, a sound that seemed to dissipate into the still air, carrying with it the burden of the task at hand.

I'm going to have to get closer and throw more strength at my efforts if I'm going to get this body back into the river so it can disappear downstream. I thought, a burdened determination setting in.

The very notion of making a body "disappear" was something I had never imagined I would contemplate, let alone act upon. Paul Smith, businessman, husband, father — now body-disposer. The trajectory of my life had taken turns I couldn't have predicted even in my darkest imaginings. Yet, here I was, caught in the throes of a situation that demanded actions far removed from the realm of what I considered moral and just.

Staring down at the blank face, a visage now devoid of the life and stories it once held, I took a deep breath. The face, unseeing yet accusing in its silent repose, seemed to pierce through the veil of my intentions, questioning the very essence of what I was about to do. He was young — younger than I'd realised from a distance. Early twenties, perhaps. A whole life cut short, and here I was, preparing to shove him into a current like rubbish.

Alright, let's try that again. I resolved, trying to muster a courage I wasn't sure I possessed. I adjusted my grip on his shoulders, bent my knees for leverage, and —

A clammy hand, unexpectedly animate, shot up from the water and clasped my forearm with an eerie tightness.

The world stopped.

The chipped fingernails, like the remnants of a life once lived, dug into my flesh with an urgency that belied their owner's deathly state. The grip was impossibly strong — stronger than any living person's grip should be, let alone a corpse's. Ice flooded my veins, my heart seizing in my chest.

In that moment, as the young man's eyes snapped open, staring into mine with an impossible vitality, the boundary between life and death seemed to blur.

His eyes. God, his eyes. They were open and they were looking at me — not through me, not past me, but directly at me with a focus that defied everything I understood about death. The throat was cut. The throat was cut and he was looking at me.

My face contorted in sheer terror, an instinctive reaction to the surreal horror unfolding before me.

"Luke!" I screamed, my voice piercing the stillness of the lagoon, a desperate plea for help in a situation that defied all logic. The sound that came out of me was barely human — a shriek of pure, primal terror that I wouldn't have believed myself capable of producing.

Frantically, I brushed at the hand gripping my arm, but it clung to me with a supernatural strength. The fingers were cold — so cold — and yet they moved with purpose, with intention. I winced in pain as the sharp, broken fingernails carved into my skin, sending a trail of deep red blood trickling down my forearm, staining the lagoon's clear waters with an ominous tint.

The fingers felt unnaturally cold and rigid against my skin, like the touch of death itself. This wasn't possible. This wasn't happening. Dead men didn't grab you. Dead men didn't open their eyes. Dead men with their throats cut didn't have the strength to dig their nails into your flesh while you screamed and screamed and screamed.

In a frantic bid for freedom, I tore at them, each movement fuelled by a primal urge to escape. Grasping the middle finger, I yanked it backwards with all the force I could muster. The sound of bone snapping echoed eerily, a grotesque testament to the desperation of my actions. I felt the joint give way, felt the finger bend at an angle that nature never intended, and still the grip didn't fully release.

A ghostly gasp, seemingly exhaled from the dead lips, filled the air, a sound so chilling it seemed to freeze the very atmosphere around us. The mouth moved. The cut throat moved. Air escaped from somewhere it shouldn't have been able to escape from, carrying with it the stench of rotting flesh that assaulted my senses, a nauseating reminder of the macabre reality I was grappling with.

Mercifully, the hand released its grip, and the arm fell back into the water with a splash, retreating to the depths from whence it came. The relief was instantaneous and overwhelming — and immediately replaced by the desperate need to get away, to put distance between myself and this nightmare.

In my panic to distance myself from the horror, my movements were hasty and uncoordinated. My feet, seeking purchase on the slippery pebbled bottom of the lagoon, betrayed me. I lost my footing, the stability of the ground beneath me as elusive as the peace I had hoped to find in this grim task. Floundering backwards, I plunged into the water with a great splash.

The cold embrace of the lagoon enveloped me, a stark contrast to the fevered chaos of my thoughts. Water filled my nose, my mouth, my ears. For a terrifying moment, I didn't know which way was up, didn't know if I was swimming toward the surface or deeper into the depths. Every rational part of my being screamed that what had just transpired was impossible, yet the marks on my arm, the lingering pain, and the blood mingling with the water were evidence of a terrifying reality.

As I struggled to regain my footing, to surface from the literal and metaphorical depths into which I had been plunged, the isolation of my position struck me with full force. Out here, in the midst of this desolate beauty, we were confronted not just with the consequences of our actions, but with the fragile line between life and death, and the haunting possibility of what lies beyond.