“I feel bad…”

  “Why?”

  The two boys were sitting on the stairs for lunch, making sure to avoid walking deans and teachers passing by. The elder boy was still retrospecting what happened last night, the fervor feeling of getting possibly caught was eating away inside him.

  All the younger friend could do was sigh, continuing his snack and staring off into space. His elder friend was conjuring up the courage to confide in him about what was bothering him; when he looked over to initiate a venting session, the young boy was infatuated at a cockroach crawling towards food he was dropping for it.

  ‘...’

  He slammed his foot on the roach, crushing it and turning his foot on it for extra precaution measures. He didn’t want any roaches crawling onto his clothes to carry home, and he surely didn’t want a goodnight smoochie from any either. The thought of that sent shivers down his spines and started making him overthink about diesel eating roaches too. Maybe she was fond of roaches? They do have some nutrients that she might need. He’ll start thinking about having Diesel as a roach repellent or consumer.

  The young boy who was looking at the flattened roach: Mr. cocky… :c

  “As I was saying.”

  The younger boy gave him his undivided attention, making sure to look at his eyes only and concentrate on what he was saying without going into a reverie state. He turned his body towards his elder locking eyes, which kind of made his older friend awkward, but regardless he continued.

  “I feel like I wasn’t really concerned about the severed finger she just threw up…”

  The younger friend looked at this friend a little confused but then immediately told his opinion, “oh i just think you were being more cool headed and, uh, collected.”

  “I don’t know man… I feel like I was just so focused on the bodies not being in my house instead of worrying about where and whose body parts they belong too.”

  He nodded his head with affirmation, “I agree, but your mom was about to come home, and i think if i was in your position i would do the same.”

  He continued, “plus i was just following you, and well i think what we did was better than, you know, suspiciously showing the police body parts. And you didn’t want to bring attention to us, right? Even better that we dumped them somewhere else!”

  “And well… I don’t think it’s our responsibility to like, find out whose body parts they are. We should leave that to the police…”

  The younger boy looked at his friend to see if he made any sense to him, and even though he doesn’t like taking sides or making an opinion, he did stand his ground when he said that. She was extorting dismembered parts and his friend simply didn’t want to be affiliated with it. Even he was scared for a bit. But seeing him being content and thinking critically, he just kinda felt calm and followed him.

  “Yeah?” the elder boy contemplated; then dropped the conversation again without dragging it to avoid asking for attention.

  Now the two sat in silence, staring at the dust particles flying around, and looking outside the window through the stairs fence that blocked them. When the bell resounded throughout the staircase the boys got up and dusted off their butts from the dirty stairs, which may, or may not, have questionable dried up liquid…

  Human liquid…

  Against all odds, when school was over for the day, and the two of them stayed back to venture around the school to discuss school drama and rumors of other students they talked to once in a full moon, news about an unexpected occurrence at the desolate village arose. One of their classmates who had stayed back to hang out with them for a little while was the one to go off tangent and mention it.

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  Said classmate was preparing to show them the news outlet for that specific area; but it was pretty much useless when she was giving substantial information about the case then the police were. Mentioning the ramifications that police and detectives were concluding about where the body parts came from, to how the rain strengthened the foul stench of the desecrated body parts, that were already rotting from the beginning. She kept on going on and on, being loquacious to the point where the news outlet proved useless when being compared to the information she was spouting out. She even gave her own shrewdness and practical theories of how the body parts gathered in an alleyway.

  Despite her rambunctiousness, the minute she mentioned how the officers are reopening cases now that they have identified the body parts to the missing persons’, the two boys began to panic.

  The two boys looked at each other.

  “...”

  “...”

  ‘FUCK! DON’T REASSURE ME NEXT TIME AND CALL ME OUT!’

  The young boy retrospecting: we should've brought bags… wait no that's worse.

  The elder boy looked at her and excused them both saying it’s getting late and they need to head on back home.

  They walked down the stairs to the main entrance leisurely, and once they stepped foot outside of school grounds, they made a run for it back home. Once again, but this time the younger boy too, were trepidatious of Diesel.

  The girl that was now abandoned by the both of them just walked around the school looking for other people to randomly have a conversation with. She really wanted to tell them the pretty girl who was being interviewed by the broadcast went to their school too. But it was probably for the best that they left or else they would’ve stayed for another hour or so forcing themselves to listen to her rant about how pretty the girl was.

  The elder boy was running ahead of his younger friend, once again leaving him behind whilst he slipped through the congested sidewalk back home. By accident, he bumped into a baseball player supposedly from their school and apologized before he even processed what happened. The younger boy passed by afterwards and apologized appropriately in advance while catching his breath, and once he did, he jogged back on the path his friend took. The baseball boy could candidly say that he looked crippiled running, especially with how he was swinging his arms and jogging on his tippy toes.

  The younger boy who finally reached his elder friend's house was wheezing his heart out, noticing that he already went in and came to the front door with Diesel in his arms wrapped in a towel again.

  Now the only problem is what are they going to do?

  He beckoned for him to come upstairs in his room to think of how they were going to flee the country to which on the contrary the absurd idea should’ve been switched with the younger boy but was coming out the elder boy's mouth. This made the younger boy reminisce on his prior thought he had before, his friend really was getting attached to an anomaly, and not very healthy either.

  “I think you should calm down. The police aren’t really gonna come for us you know-”

  “But someone could’ve seen us! They could’ve seen us leaving the alleyway from afar!”

  The elder boy was sweating profusely, drenching his bangs and leaving the sweat dew on tiny strands. Taking off his glasses and resting them on his table near the foot of his bed, he started wiping his eyes and pushed his hair back resting his hands there. Regardless of all the comforting mechanisms his younger friend tried, he still couldn’t calm his rapidly beating heart that was making it hard for him to breathe.

  The younger boy stood in front of him while he continued to panic perpetually. He did want to tell him to calm down until they meet her again for questioning, but knowing his elder friend, it would only make him worried.

  Out of all the three years he knew his elder friend, he had never seen him panic this much before over an anomaly before. Well, yeah he had a good reason to panic and such, but it just feels weird to see him having a mental breakdown. Even before they had meet Diesel, which was astonishing because his elder friend was the one who willingly picked her up on his own volition, whenever someone just so as minutely mentions anything about encountering an anomaly, he would always raise his lips and mention how ludicrous it was that people still gather attention around anomalies; but regardless, he still followed his friends footsteps

  ‘Should I be worried too?’

  Not knowing what to do – which was evident – he finessed his way to his friend's armpit and started tickling him, catching the elder boy off guard by the sudden action.

  Well at least it worked and calmed him down.

  A strange affiliation enveloped inside Diesel when she saw her guardians frolicking around, and when she tried to join, she felt the atmosphere simultaneously change. The two boys returned back to reality and remembered what they were panicking over. As potent as it was to take care of Diesel, they got other things to worry about first.

  “Can we just wait until tomorrow? I doubt they’ll connect the incident to us, plus we can just ask the girl about the broadcast again?”

  “I suppose…”

  He felt encumbered over this whole ordeal, but he tried to keep his cool for himself and his younger friend.

  Better they wait until tomorrow.