*Behind the bushes, the view of a dead body came into view. She looked like barely a teenager, and she was completely naked.
She was also completely mangled, all her fingers pointed in weird directions, some even had the bone visible, on her feet there where no fingers at all, it seemed she had them cut off.
All over her body were black and blue marks, as if she had been beaten badly. She had an eye missing, and through her slightly open mouth, you could see a mangle of red where a tongue was supposed to be. Her wrists and ankles had cuts and bruises from what seemed to be chains, and blood covered her nether region, a clear statement of what happened.*
"F-fuck me…" whispered Alex at such a grotesque view. Meanwhile, Marc was getting paler by the moment and started retching.
Alex, on the other hand, had a somewhat better time managing this carnage thanks to his never-ending nightmare, still, his stomach twisted and his throat lumped at such scene.
They couldn't catch their breath when the sound of rustling came again.
*Rustle, rustle*
'Shit!' Alex was the first to react and, dragging Marc along, he carried him and hid. The noble man appeared yet again, carrying a shovel and some stuff inside a bag.
The moment he started digging with her back to the boys, Alex made the decision to get the hell out of there.
Dragging Marc along, who's still mentally locked out, they started retreating. After like 20-30 meters, Marc absentmindedly stepped on a branch.
*CRACK*
The branch-breaking noise seemed multiplied in the quiet of the night.
"WHO GOES THERE!" screamed the man.
"Fuck!" said Alex and started running, dragging along Marc.
"STOP!" yelled the man again, chasing after them.
Alex didn't stop running, not even daring to look back. Luckily, the man was fat and couldn't chase them for long, giving up halfway and turning around.
Still, Alex kept running and running, still dragging along Marc, who seemed to start running on his own after a while.
Reaching the town yet again, both of them rushed to an alley and knelt.
Marc immediately started puking his insides out, while Alex gasped for breath, shivering from head to toe due to the combination of fear and adrenaline.
*Blherg* "haaah, haah, Wha-what the actual fuck d-did we just se-see?" Marc said panting heavily after he had nothing else to puke, he was also shivering from top to bottom, and as pale as a sheet of paper.
"A psychopath." Replied Alex, his voice trembling.
He closed his eyes and tried to breathe like he did with his nightmares, but the moment he did, the visions of the scene came rushing back to his mind like a tide, so instead of relaxing, he started shaking yet again.
"We… we have to tell the Authorities about what we just saw!" exclaimed Marc to Alex, starting to settle down a bit and regaining his ability to speak without stammering again.
"We can't." Replied Alex, in a gloomy voice.
"Why?! why can't we?!" Marc began to raise his voice, clearly frustrated at Alex's refusal to report what they had just seen to the authorities.
"If you don't want to, I'll do it myself!" he continued, angry.
"It's not that I don't want to, it's for our sake, dumbass." Alex retorted, his mind working at high speed on how to keep themselves safe while at the same time reporting this atrocity so the psycho could be brought to justice.
"What do you mean for our sake?! A girl was brutally killed, someone has to do something about this!" Marc was losing his mind over the fact that Alex was so adamantly refusing to do something about this.
"Let's go back to the orphanage first, and we will figure out what to do then," Alex said, trying to get Marc to calm down while getting them on the move, since they were in the alley a tad too long.
"O-okay." Replied Marc, still angry, but he knows that unleashing that anger onto Alex was unfair, as he was only looking out for them and in fear.
A while later, after entering the orphanage and being scolded for 10 minutes by an angry Mary, they were back at Alex's room.
"Now, can you kindly explain to me why the fuck we can't say anything of this to the authorities before I lose my shit again?" Marc told Alex clearly hellbent on going to the police.
"Because they will do nothing, moron." Started Alex, he was no dumbass, and not as naïve as Marc.
"What do you think will happen, that they will break into the house, arrest the man, and take him to jail?" Alex asked.
"Shouldn't that be the case??" Answered Marc in a heartbeat.
"How can you be so naïve, man!" retorted Alex, exasperated.
"What?, naïve how?" Marc said clearly, not accepting Alex's statement.
"How does expecting justice to work make me naïve?" he continued, taking a deep breath to calm his yet again rising anger.
"What makes you naïve is thinking justice applies equally to everyone." Alex said, also taking a deep breath, on his case, to control his frustration.
"Nobles control everything, man! They held the power to bend every aspect of life, including justice." Alex said, starting to speak again.
"That dude probably has all the authorities in this damn town bought. Why do you think he stopped chasing us so early? It's because he does not give a fuck."
Alex's statement hit Marc like a punch in the gut.
"Ugh." He grimaced. "Then what can we even do? Just live with it? If I don't try to do anything, this shit will eat me inside out." Marc confessed, breaking down, tears started welling in his eyes. Alex got close to him and started patting him on the back slightly.
"This is an evil world we live in." He told him softly.
He understood Marc. This experience should be nothing a kid like them has to go through. He was more used to the view of carnage since his nightmares were so lifelike.
But Marc wasn't the same as him. This will definitely scar him for good, and doing nothing will certainly only deepen said scar, but first, he had to look after their safety, and then consider what they can do.
"Listen here, Marc, how about we call this a day and tomorrow we devise a plan on what to do about this." Suggested Alex.
"Right, okay, sleep tight, if you can, I sure as hell won't."
Said Marc finally, after some time, and left to go to his room.