Food Fright by Nico Bell

Author:Nico Bell [Bell, Nico]
Language: eng
Format: epub
Publisher: Unnerving
Published: 2020-03-26T04:00:00+00:00

Chapter Eleven

Emily Bower

Emily slid onto the stool at The Tipsy Pig Bar a small hole in the wall just south of Main Street. The bartender nodded at her arrival and fixed the usual. Cranberry vodka.

“Thanks.” She took a sip and let the familiar taste glide through her, sweeping away a gnawing sensation of dread. Exhaustion took permanent residence in her muscles causing her shoulders to sag and her back to hunch forward.

At least she blended into the after-work crowd. Men and women relaxed with drinks in hand, a light buzz of conversation slowly drowning out her thoughts.

Everything you want is out of reach. You fucked it all up.

At least Jennifer’s soul couldn’t venture from school property. Surely, that counted as a step in the right direction, but what next?

Another drink.

She raised her glass and jingled the ice, waiting for the bartender to take the hint.

Behind the bar counter, a small TV perched on the ledge flashed the local news logo. A headshot of Jennifer popped up on screen.

Emily’s chest tightened. “Hey, can you turn up the volume?”

But the bartender didn’t hear and kept chatting with a customer on the opposite end of the counter.

“They’re spreading out the search.” A man with bushy eyebrows and tobacco breath sat beside her, tilted his head toward the television. “Starting to look in the woods behind the abandoned lumberyard.”

“The one in the woods behind the school?”

“That’s the one.”

Shit, shit, shit.

Her pulse quickened as she stood and tossed some cash on the bar.

“Whoa, where you going?” The man’s words slurred together as he watched her.

Emily lowered her head. She hurried into the parking lot, ducking into her car, and starting the engine. But her body froze.

What if it was too late?

No, the guy specifically said the lumberyard’s property, not the lake beside it. But it’d only be a matter of time.

She squeezed her eyelids tight and tried to forget, but the memories tumbled from the back of her mind.

Driving to the woods behind the lumberyard.

Shoving Jennifer’s body into one of the fire barrels.

The acid burning her sinuses as she puked.

Collecting the bones and ash and teeth.

More puking.

Then pushing the truck into the lake, spreading the ash, and burying the bones in various places in the woods on her walk back to the school.

Disbelief dizzied her vision as she opened her eyes. Had she really done all that? Surely not Emily Bower, the woman who wanted nothing more than to make a difference in this community, who paid her way through college by working shitty dead end jobs and felt such elation when she got her diploma that she couldn’t stop crying.

Surely that Emily didn’t know the odor of a lifeless body.

Stomach acid rose in the back of her throat and she pushed open the car door just in time for chunks of a late lunch to splatter on the asphalt. It stank of vodka and Italian salad dressing. She groaned and leaned back against the driver’s seat.

She could drive to the lumberyard, volunteer to help with the search.

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