My friends started un-boarding the door, and going about their daily chores. They swept, they cleaned, and they did dishes. It was all very organized, and no one seemed to need to be told what to do.

I didn't have a chore yet, so I walked outside to look around. It was still a shock to see things all blown up, torn up, and chard. The overcast sky today was a burnt orange.

Longfellow Avenue wasn't all that wrecked compared to how my street had been. But it still looked like we were under siege in a third world country. I wondered how long it would take for me to get used to this. I wondered how badly I would start feeling when I did get used to it.

I made a beeline back behind the pizza parlor, and looked around Ellie's house. Her father owned it, having bought it back when he and his wife were happy and still together. Back before his wife left him and never came back, and he started drinking his pay away. That was one thing Ellie didn't have to worry about, having a roof over her head. She'd stolen the deed to the house and hidden it, just in case her father ever decided to take a mortgage out on the place to help pay for his liquid diet. She said he never noticed.

Since her house was starting to give me the willies–from all the many memories I had of sneaking into Ellie’s room when her father passed out, of us making out in her bedroom.

We’d never gone all the way, but I’d been extremely happy with how far we had gone.

I was a teenage boy. Of course I wanted to go all the way. The kissing… and groping, had been an excellent way to spend our evenings together.

I pushed all of that out of my head. The past was the past, and Ellie was with Oz now. Oz, my first friend… my best friend in the world.

And now I was a freaking garden gnome made out of terracotta.

Truthfully, that all didn't sit well with me one fucking bit. I wanted to be petty. I wanted to wreak revenge on them both. And I really, really wanted to pummel Oz’s blemish-free face, and maybe break his fangs off at the root with a few of my pummeling, gnome punches.

I felt a smile twitch on my lips just thinking about that. I turned the corner around a neighbor's house, and saw something that made me stop in my tracks.

There was a naked body lying between the houses.

I walked over, took a look at the face—realized I knew the face—and then hot-footed it back to the pizzeria.

I ran in, went straight back to where I knew Ellie was scrubbing pizza pans from the day before, and said, “There's a body two houses over.”

Ellie turned and looked at me, her eyebrows knitting. “Monster?”

I wanted to shake my head, but that wasn't happening. “No, human. And he looks familiar.” Actually, I got scared just looking at him.

Ellie looked over to Wood and he nodded. She put down the pizza pan, dried her hands on her pants, and we all headed out the door. Teddy was already gone, having wanted to scope out another part of town prior to us going there to grind later. I lead the way. “This is where we dump the bodies of the monsters,” Wood said when I turned to go in between the houses.

“This close to the pizzeria?” That was… gross. But I hadn’t seen any other bodies.

“Monsters turn to dust by morning,” Ellie said, “so there's no point in going too far.

Oh…

When we turned the corner, Wood hissed, “Shit...”

“Is that where you dumped the werewolf from last night?” Ellie asked.

“Yeah,” Wood said. As we got closer it was Ellie's turn to say “Shit…”

“You know who he is?” I asked.

“Yeah,” Ellie said.

“Travis,” Wood said.

Unlawfully taken from Royal Road, this story should be reported if seen on Amazon.

“Yeah,” Ellie said. “His last name started with a “D”, I think.”

I shook my head. “I’m so stupid!” I pulled up my stats box and looked at the body. The stats box changed color to a mossy green

Lootable Corpse: Travis Deverell. “Travis Deverell,” I read, and then added, “One of The Travai.”

“Shiiit…” Ellie and Wood muttered in chorus.

“Isn't he the one that broke Teddy's glasses junior year?” Ellie asked. “You know, before he got LASIK?”

“No,” Wood said. “That was Travis Monroe. I broke his nose for that.”

Ellie smiled. “You had to clean the bathrooms at your dad’s shop for a month as punishment.”

“Totally worth it.”

“This one,” I said, “beat Oz up sophomore year because he beat him online playing God of War.

Ellie and Wood nodded their heads at the same time, putting the name with the act of violence.

“What a dick,” Wood said.

Ellie nodded her agreement, and I said, “Fucking right.”

“So,” Ellie said, leaning down to give him a closer look. “He's human, was turned into a monster, and then after he was killed… he reverted back to being human?”

Or as human as one of The Travai could pass for.

“Do we know if the other two are still around,” I said. “You know… still alive?”

Ellie shook her head. “I don't know. I haven't heard of them being seen since… it all happened.”

“We should presume that they are around,” Wood said, “and that they’re also werewolves.”

I felt something inside me. Not a shiver, because I didn't have a body to do that anymore, but definitely a feeling of dread. That wasn’t good.

“That's not good at all,” Ellie said what I was thinking, and gave me a look. Again, I had that feeling of hope again. The feeling of camaraderie, that we were one against the monsters out there. Human monsters or alien-generated.

Wood stepped forward, glaring at the corpse. “Since we don't know what one of these werewolf things can do, sense-wise, we've got to assume they're going to be able to track the body here.”

“And straight to us,” Ellie said.

She turned to wood. “How far do you think we could move the body?”

I suddenly got a really, really bad idea. “Maybe we could put him in one of our inventories.”

Both Ellie and Wood turned to me, their expressions horrified. “What do you fucking mean put him in one of our inventories?” Wood growled. “That's… that's…”

“That's a pretty good idea,” Ellie said, shaking her head.

There was a pause. “He's not going in mine!” Wood said.

I took a couple steps towards the naked corpse at my feet. “I'll put him in mine.”

Tentatively I reached over and put my hand on the corpse’s naked shoulder. I close my eyes, and concentrated, opening up my stats box, and even making a special folder for the body. I named it Gross Shit.

But nothing happened. I was afraid of that. Everything that I could put into my inventory so far, I had to be able to physically pick up. I hadn't been able to put my bed in my inventory, because I couldn't pick it up.

Shiiit...

I started to grab a hold of Travis's corpse. That's when Wood said, “What the fuck are you doing?”

“I'm pretty sure I have to be able to pick him up off the ground before I can put him in my inventory,” I said. I got my hands up under him, trying to pick him up by lifting him under his ribs, and a hand down by his hips. I was really surprised that I was strong enough to move the body by myself. Yeah, something else interesting and useful about me being a gnome. But even though I could lift the corpse up over my head, his arms and his legs were still touching the ground. Yet another reason being a gnome sucked.

I was fucking short.

I tried to jump up a little bit, trying to get his legs and arms to maybe flop up in the air for a second so I could try to get him in my inventory. All that did was make the body fall back over my head and onto the ground, making a sickening splat sound.

Maybe it was just in my head, that splat sound, but I could swear I’d heard it.

Ellie turned to Wood. “You're the only one of us who could pick this guy up. He's almost as big as you.”

Wood looked up into the orange tinted overcast sky and swore. “I don't want this thing in my goddamn inventory. That's so…”

“I made a special file for him, one that was just called Gross Shit.”

Wood just glared at me. He was still pissed at me, and I still didn't know why.

Ellie laid a hand on his shoulder. “We really need to get his corpse out of here.”

“Mother fucker,” Wood growled, shook his head and spat on the ground (that may have been overkill.) Then he leaned down, grabbed hold of Travis’ corpse in a bride-carry, and heaved the dead body up off the ground, staggering backwards, having a hard time keeping his balance with the corpse in his arms.

Wood ended up tripping forward, toppling over, and landing on Travis's naked body as he fell. He jumped up, brushing himself off and making little choking sounds. I felt bad for the guy. Whether he hated me for no good reason or not, he was one of my best friends in the whole world. I didn't like seeing him go through this.

“Maybe try a fireman's carry,” I said.

Wood glared at me, but then he grudgingly nodded, walking back over to the now preposterously laid out corpse–it's arms akimbo, it's legs bent up under his rump. It was almost a funny look.

Wood bent down, took hold of him by his shoulders, and then heaved him up. Wood was amazingly strong, and in seconds had the rather large corpse flung over his shoulder as he stood up straight with it. He didn't stumble back, he didn't waver. His balance while holding the corpse in the fireman carry was nearly perfect.

He stood there for a few seconds before Ellie said, “Okay, go ahead and put him in your inventory.”

He shook his head, gritting his teeth. “This is fucking disgusting.” But in the next moment, as if by magic, the corpse of Travis Deverell disappeared from where it was perched on his shoulder.

But not before a sparkly gemstone fell onto the ground.