She waved them under his nostrils, we waited and watched, and then suddenly…he jerked to life, and her arm and head fell back to the ground in position, the salts spilling off somewhere as she closed her eyes and hung her mouth open, playing dead.
A laugh rumbled in my chest.
He moved, trying to lift his head, but it just bobbed as he groaned.
He shifted on top of her body, and then hissed, putting his hand to his temple and feeling the ache of Kai’s kick.
“Ah, what the hell?” he said in a raspy voice, rubbing his head.
But then he slowly came to, lifted his body up, and blinked his eyes open, finally seeing what was underneath him.
The body of a dead girl, covered in blood, and his fingers wrapped around the hilt of the prop knife buried in Alex’s chest.
He just sat there, looking down at her, unsure if he truly knew what he was seeing.
Removing his hand from the knife, he nudged her on the jaw, sending her head flopping side to side, and then let out a shocked cry, falling over, and scrambling to get away and making us all struggle to hold in our laughter.
“Ah!” He crawled backward, just staring at her in utter horror.
Snorts went off around us, and I shook my head.
It was a prank you were never really too old for. I always dreamed of having this room in my house someday with splatters of red paint all over the walls and sheets, so I could dump drunk friends in there who would wake up in the light of day the next morning, shitting their pants at the massacre on the walls.
The small delights in life.
He stood up, pawing at the evidence all over his clothes and took in the blood spilling off the butcher knife buried in the chest of a young girl. He quickly looked around for anyone who might’ve seen, and we dove behind the trunks, making sure we weren’t detected.
He was starting to freak out, his fear vibrating off him, and I could only imagine the thoughts racing through his mind right now.
“Oh, my God,” he panted. “Oh, my God. What the fuck?”
Aw. Poor baby.
We peered back around to see him start running at top speed away from the body, whipping off his pullover and trying to wipe himself clean as he bolted back into the far-off crowd before he could be caught.
“Holy shit,” Will chuckled, not holding back as we all came out from behind the trees and watched him disappear. “He didn’t even try to take his murder weapon. What a pinhead.”
Banks’ head fell back as she and Kai laughed, and Michael couldn’t help grinning as he dipped down, helping Alex up.
“I don’t think he’ll be at school on Monday,” he remarked.
“Yeah, he should be three states over by then,” Kai added.
“Or confessing to the police,” Will snickered.
No one could stop laughing, all of us shaking with the amusement at the painful ride home he was going to have tonight and the sleep he wasn’t gonna get for a few days until he realized it was a prank.
“And if he does it again,” Alex snapped, aggravated with the mess all over her as she shot a look to Will, “we’ll put him in a bed between your legs, surrounded by dildos and lube next time.”
“Now that was an idea,” Will chimed in, pointing to me with an excited look.
We all broke into laughter again, picturing the sight, and my head was light and my stomach unknotted for the first time in a long time. I hadn’t laughed like this in a while.
My head fell back, exhausted from the day and night, but kind of happy.
Really happy, actually.
But then the chuckles died down.