Kurt is dead

It turns out that Kurt is 6’3.

We know this because the fucker wouldn’t fit in the damn box, no matter which way we tried stretching him. All the while, rigor was setting in and he wasn’t getting any more flexible. Overhead, the trees swayed in the breeze, casting a spooky shadow over an already less than ideal experience.

After a while of trying, Darv just sighed and sat on the edge of the box, pushing Kurt’s size million shoes out of the way for about the thousandth time, reached into his pocket and drew out a packet of fags.

“I fucking give up” he said, breathing out smoke in a thick blue cloud which drifted up before being taken by the breeze and whirled around his head. I could see his point. The fucker was annoying in life so it kind of made sense that he’d carry on being a cunt now we’d finally done something about it. I looked across: Darv looked tired. As well he should, having spent the last forty-eight hours on torture duty. Hard work, torture.

Kurt still had his eyes open, the cunt, staring upwards at the damn trees which carried on their swaying. He pissed me off. The damn hat did my head in. Always the hat, like some kind of fucking marketing bullshit. I made sure I put a hole in the fucking hat when I topped him, slap in the middle of the grey head band. Even in death, he had the hat with him, this time on his chest, a powder burn blooming out in a 2-inch circle from the bullet hole.

Down on the highway, a police car sped past, clearly headed to the motel or somesuch. I watched it go past and then turned back to the hole. The box fit in the hole. Kurt didn’t fit in the box. Fuck.

Darv finished his cigarette, putting it carefully out on the sole of his shoe before pocketing the butt. I’m not sure why he bothered. It’s not like anyone was ever going to come up here, and even if they ever did we’d be in some other county doing some other shit, Kurt long forgotten, some kind of hat-shaped smear on our scoresheet. Even if we just gave up on the whole box / hole idea and just left him out here under the trees with a note with our names on it, it’d probably be an archaeologist rather than a policeman who’d finally uncover him. He’d probably decide that our society was indeed doomed given the crappy hats we obviously all wore. No wonder – he’d say, in some academic paper given three thousand years from now – no wonder they couldn’t procreate: look at the damn hats.

I stepped away and looked down over the lake. It looked peaceful from up here. I could see someone in a canoe over to the west, a thin trail of wake on the surface spreading back like a white tail behind them. I wished I was down there, some kind of normal, a day of fishing or paddling, a family, a kid.

I turned back to Darv, took a deep breath, and thought.