Page 1 of Not Your Body

AFTER

The Dead Boys

“Jesus…” Deputy Dwayne stood frozen in place, face ashen. Quiet horror wafted off him like a heat wave. It took a lot to rattle Rick Dwayne, but what lay before them wasa lot.

Sheriff Kate Hunt fell in beside him and his horror became her own.

“I’ve never seen anything like this,” Deputy Dwayne mumbled as his palm slid over his mouth. His breath sifted from his nostrils, steaming the chilly morning air. “Not around here. Stuff like this isn’t supposed to happen out here.” He shifted his feet, his boots crunching against the dead, frozen pine needles that blanketed the forest floor.

Rick Dwayne came to them from Chicago, leaving the big city behind for a quieter, less stressful life in a small town. Over the last two years since relocating, his life had been just that. The occasional drunken brawl and DUI were the worst this town had to offer. Until now.

When Dwayne first arrived, he projected a leftover tension from the city. Over time, the deputy relaxed and the tension faded. Standing beside him now, Kate sensed it returning.

“Neither have I,” Kate murmured, feeling queasy and alarmed. What happened here was noaccident.

“Who could’ve done this?” Duey Johnson came through misty woods, a sickly pallor about him that gave him a ghostly appearance. At age twenty-three, Johnson was the department’s youngest deputy. Born and raised in rural Garlin, the young man wasn’t accustomed to such carnage.

Kate shook her head and stared at the dead bodies—hung by the neck and swaying in the chilled breeze; three youngmen naked and castrated with their severed genitals stuffed into their mouths. Disemboweled, their innards dangled from the gaping wounds, some piled beneath their suspended feet. Massive contusions marred each body as if brutally beaten before castrated and gutted.

“Fuck…”Deputy Johnson choked and turned away, vomiting on the ground.

Deputy Red McCoy came to Johnson’s aid and moved him away from the slaughter. McCoy was a few years older than Johnson and had known the younger man long before either joined the department. Rumors drifted around about the two deputies and the context of theirrelationship, but both men were consistent in their claims that they were “just friends.”

Kate didn’t care, it wasn’t her business. Just as her personalpreferenceswere no one else’s business. If there was credence to the rumors, she understood why the men put up a front. Garlin wasn’t the mostalternate lifestylefriendly town—why Kate kept her private life to herself.

Deputy Harry Watts approached Kate. Watts was a man of few words, but he knew his shit. Though Kate and Watts occasionally butted heads, she trusted him. And trust was everything when it came to her deputies.

Watts squinted, furrowing his brow beneath his brown Deputy cap. “What is that?” he mumbled and walked forward, drawing closer to the bodies.

“Be mindful of the crime scene,” Kate cautioned as she followed him, taking careful steps. When Watts halted before one of the bodies, Kate frowned. “What is it?”

“Something…” He stretched out a finger, pausing an inch or so before touching the corpse’s chest. “… words.”

Kate looked closer. With the dirt, blood, and contusions… it was easy to miss. But now that she saw it—she couldn’tunseeit—four words,carvedinto the dead man’s chest:Your Body, My Choice.

Watts checked the other two bodies, each bearing the same inscription.

“What the hell…” Kate breathed as an eerie feeling tickled her insides. She’d heard this quote before. A recent “epidemic” of men—most of whom were part of the political cult that elected a horrible man into office—had taken it upon themselves to “put women in their place”, claiming women no longer had rights to their own bodies and the men could do as they please with them, stating – “Your body,MyChoice.”

The first time Kate had heard of such an incident, it enraged her. It felt as if the country had taken a suddenhugestep backward toward a time when women were little more thanproperty.Some of these men were even picketing college campuses and such, their picket signs listing forms of property—withwomenandslavesas the first two items on the list. It was frightening howemboldenedthese men felt, that they would take such stances right out in the open—as if they were convinced their new “leader” would condone and validate their behavior.

The scary part was—he would.It wasbecauseof him that these men felt emboldened.

Which put women’s lives at risk.

But it isn’twomenhanging here dead, gutted and castrated.

What the fuck had happened?

Kate stared at the swaying corpses and the crudely carved inscriptions.

What did you men do?

“First, those two girls last week,” Deputy Dwayne said. “Now this. Do you think the two are connected, Sheriff?”

The two girls…

Assaulted. Brutally raped and left for dead. One still in a coma. The other—dead by suicide.

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