Mayhem in the Park
an excerpt
They found the body on a hot summer night beneath the pinprick of stars as mosquitos nipped at their ankles. Cassie screamed and stumbled back, falling to the grass. But Jane just stared at him. She couldn’t say she’d seen worse things though she’d seen a lot in her first year of medical school. Maybe her brain no longer processed the facts together: the dead body and the man he used to be. She smacked a mosquito on her arm. The worst part of summer.
“Oh, damn, no,” Will said, the back of his hand rising to his nose even though there was no smell yet.
Cassie was now hyperventilating, on her knees, with grass stains on her jeans. Her blonde curls fell forward across her face. “We have to call the police!”
Jane turned and looked down at her. The moon bathed the park in a glow of light while the park lamps cast their yellowish beams. It made the park feel surreal, like they were in a dream. Or a nightmare, she supposed. She spotted a shadow of a man or woman walking a dog across the way. They weren’t near enough yet to notice anything amiss. “What? The police? No, why?”
“What do you mean, why, Jane?” Will gestured widely. “Maybe the dead man?” He stepped closer, inspecting the body in the bushes at the bottom of the tree.
Jane shook her head slightly. “No, you’re right. I – I don’t know what...I was thinking just an ambulance or something.”
Jane used to climb that tree all the time when she was a kid. Its branches were thick and strong, growing out of the tree in just the right ways like a ladder, allowing her to scramble to the top. The branches would scratch her arms and legs as she slid back down, though she never cared.
Cassie pulled out her cell phone, but her hands were shaking too hard, and she couldn’t get the numbers right.
