The newspaper crinkled in my hands as I sat by the window, the August sun creeping reluctantly behind a veil of clouds. It was the kind of day that hung heavy, where the stillness in the air felt like something waiting to snap. I’d only skimmed the headlines—the usual politics, a robbery a few towns over—until something caught my eye and hooked me deep: “Will He Ever Be Found?”
Beneath it, a photograph of an elderly couple stared back at me. Their eyes were worn and hollow, like empty sockets where hope used to live. The article didn’t need to say much more. I knew their type. People who’d lost their son, swallowed up by the earth, by time. The kind of loss that festers, mutating into a lifetime of agonising questions.
I shouldn’t have kept reading. But I couldn’t stop. That headline stirred something I’d buried long ago. Memories came crawling back, brittle and vivid all at once.
André.
We were kids, back then. Just kids. Me, Ben, Oliver, and André. We roamed the streets and fields of our small town like kings of an empire no one else cared to notice. No phones. No streaming TV. Nothing but time and trouble at our fingertips. We set fires in trash bins. Raced our bikes where we shouldn’t. And once, we even tried to steal a caravan that some circus folk had left behind. We didn’t get far, but when we tipped it over, the explosion of breaking wood and tumbling clutter was a sound we’d talk about for weeks.
But there were other games—ones that ended with more than bruised knees and scuffed sneakers.
André was the youngest. Eleven. Ben liked to remind us that he was a teenager, thirteen and superior because of it. That late summer day should’ve been like any other. Golden sunlight streaming through cornfields, the air buzzing with the electric hum of cicadas. We’d carved a maze through the corn, building forts out of stalks. But Ben got bored.
“Teenagers don’t play in corn,” he said, striding ahead like some self-proclaimed leader. “Let’s see what’s beyond.”
I hesitated. “Not all the way to the quarry,” I warned. “Mom doesn’t want me going there. Says it’s dangerous.”
And she was right. A couple of years later, some kid slipped off the quarry’s edge and drowned. I didn’t know him, but the story was all over town for weeks.
But that day, danger was just a word. We followed Ben like moths to a flickering streetlight. The quarry loomed in the distance, the sun dipping low behind it. Someone had put up a fence—tall, metal, foreboding. Ben grinned.
“Let’s climb it,” he said, like it was the easiest thing in the world.
Oliver didn’t hesitate. André and I, though, stood there for a moment. I wasn’t great with fences. André—well, he had something to prove. He always did. He darted forward, grabbing the fence before any of us could stop him.
None of us noticed the sign until later. Danger. High Voltage.
We’d messed around with electric fences before. The ones around cow pastures gave you a nasty jolt but nothing serious. We were idiots back then, playing games with sparks like it was a rite of passage.
But this fence was different.
I remember it all in a grotesque slow-motion. André’s hands met the metal, and there was a flash of blue-white light, a sound like the world tearing in half. His body shot backward, limbs flailing like a marionette whose strings had been severed. When he hit the ground, it was with a sound I’ll never forget. Dull. Final.
For a moment, none of us moved. The only sound was the wind hissing through the corn.
Then Ben whispered, “Oh, fuck.”
We scrambled to André’s side. His eyes were wide open but lifeless, like two black marbles. His right hand was charred, curled like a dead spider.
“What do we do?” Ben’s voice cracked. He looked less like a teenager now and more like a scared little boy. “If my parents find out…”
“It was an accident,” Oliver stammered. “We’re not going to jail for an accident. Right?”
Ben shook his head violently. “I might! I’m… I’m thirteen. That’s old enough for juvie. Right?”
I swallowed hard. “We’re not telling anyone. No one can know we were here.”
Oliver’s eyes widened in horror. “What are you saying? We’re just gonna leave him?”
“No,” I said slowly. “We’re gonna bury him. By the trees. No one will ever find him.”
It was a horrible idea, but none of us could come up with a better one. The sun was bleeding out over the horizon by the time we dug the hole. Our hands were raw, caked with dirt and sweat. We laid André down gently, covering him with the earth that swallowed him whole.
We made a pact that night. Never tell a soul. Not ever.
And for years, I didn’t.
Until today.
Now I’m sitting here, staring at the crumpled newspaper. That elderly couple’s faces haunt me. They’re still looking. Still hoping. I should feel pity. Instead, I feel something else—something darker.
I don’t want them to find him.
Let them wonder forever. Let them live with the question. André’s death belongs to us now. It’s the only piece of him that’s still ours.
I’m a monster, I know that. But I’m also still that scared kid by the fence, trembling as the sun set on everything I thought I understood.
