“Lift it higher,” Toby grunted.

“I’m trying, but this bastard is heavy.”

“Need any help?” Anna asked from the front passenger seat of the van.

“Anna, just stay there and be quiet or I’m leaving you here.”

The girl pouted and crossed her arms. “Jerk ass brother.”

Toby ignored her response, and after another few minutes of struggling the pair managed to heave the heavy body into the back of the van.

Toby slammed the doors closed on the back and started heading for the driver’s side. Norman grabbed him by the arm.

“What's the plan here anyway? You gonna just dump him, or bury him somewhere?”

Toby yanked his arm free with a glare. “What I’m going to do is get rid of any evidence of our involvement in this death. Now get in, we got quite a ride ahead of us.”

Toby stalked towards the driver’s seat and slammed the door shut.

Shaking his head, Norman opened the sliding door on the passenger side and got in. Toby didn’t even wait for the sliding door to close before punching the accelerator. Norman was forced to grab the passenger seat so he wasn’t tossed into the back of the van and onto the body.

He wanted to yell at Toby for being an inconsiderate asshole but decided it wasn’t worth the effort.

Norman lowered himself onto an empty milk crate in the back of the cargo van. He stared at the corpse wrapped in the dirty blue tarp seeing as he had nothing else to look at.

How had his life turned so upside down so quickly?

All he wanted was a life of leisure and luxury, and now he was disposing of bodies like it was normal. Norman wasn’t stupid, he knew he would have to get his hands dirty eventually along this path. But he pictured more grave digging, than body disposal. He liked to refer to it as the ethical sourcing of spell components. Meaning what they were doing now was a massive waste.

He certainly wouldn’t waste an opportunity like this, which practically fell into his lap, if Toby hadn’t forced his hand. Why toss away an opportunity to learn and grow?

Norman didn’t even know what he needed to learn. Or if the body would even help him,  considering he had already used one spell on it. But he wouldn’t know unless he tested it out. Norman may not be the smartest person but he knew getting rid of an opportunity was a dumb idea. Then again, Toby would likely make his life a living hell if he had argued to keep the body.

Not that the man hadn’t already done that by betraying their friendship. All because of a stupid misunderstanding with his nutty sister. Norman understood the man’s desire to protect his sister but that didn’t mean he appreciated the way Toby handled the situation.

The trip out to wherever they were going was quiet, except for the sound of the tires on the pavement. Anna tried a few times to strike up conversations but Toby just glared at her until she went quiet and Norman just ignored Anna’s attempts at small talk, lost in his thoughts.

There was a bump that almost sent Norman into the roof followed by the sound of tires on gravel.

“We’re here,” Toby said, pulling to a stop.

Norman looked out the front window. “And where is here?”

“It’s an abandoned tree trimming service,” Toby replied as if that answered everything.

Norman was about to ask a follow-up question but Toby dipped out of the driver's seat before he could.

“I’m getting out to stretch my legs,” Anna said in irritation.

“Anna get back in the van!”

“No, Toby, I want to stretch my legs and get some fresh air. Besides, there isn’t a damn thing around here.”

Norman listened to the muted argument before sighing and getting out of the van himself. The fresh air hit him and he inhaled deeply. The smell of the corpse had been slowly filling the van for the last twenty minutes and Norman didn’t even notice. Maybe he was finally getting acclimated to bad smells?

“Fine, whatever! Just stick close to us.”

“Yeah, yeah,” The girl waved off her brother’s concern.

Toby turned towards Norman, “alright let's hurry and get this done.”

Norman looked around the lot. There was a corrugated storage building, that had seen better days, off to one side of the lot. Norman could also see the lot was surrounded by a barbed wire fence and a gate near the entrance, that hung lazily to the side. Sitting out in the elements was an old dump truck with a trailer of some sort attached to the back of it. Norman couldn’t quite make out what sort of trailer it was.

“Get what done? You haven’t exactly been Mr. Informative.” Norman was getting agitated with Toby’s attitude.

Toby rubbed the bridge of his nose tiredly. “Just pull the legs out enough so we can tie something around it.”

“Whatever, where’s the rope?” Norman figured they were gonna use a rope to pull the body out of the van. It would be a heck of a lot easier than getting it in there or lifting it back out by hand.

“Look around and find something! Do I gotta do everything around here?” Toby threw his hands up in exasperation as he walked off toward the dump truck.

Norman flipped Toby off and walked around looking for something that would help them pull the body out. He eventually found an extension cord lying in the dirt next to the building. It wasn’t rope but it should work fine for dragging the body out of the van. He was carrying the heavy cord back toward the van when he heard the old dump truck rumble to life, the diesel engine sputtering and spewing black smoke.

Confused as to what Toby was up to, Norman stopped and watched as the truck slowly jerked away from its parking spot on flat tires. It was the first time Norman got a look at what was attached to the back of the truck.

“Seriously, we’re going to throw the body into a woodchipper?” Nobody replied as Norman’s words were drowned out by the loud truck.

Toby stopped the truck with the wood chipper facing the back of the van and the chute Facing over the fence and into a wooded area next to the business lot.

“You find a rope?” Toby asked.

“No, but this should work. I assume we’re going to toss it into the woodchipper? Is this really necessary? Can’t we just dismember the body and scatter it into the woods? Who is going to know?”

“First of all,” Toby turned toward Norman, “I’m not spending the next couple of hours dismembering a corpse and getting covered in blood. So unless you want to do that yourself, this is faster. Second of all, this leaves nothing left for you,” he pointedly jabbed Norman in the chest. “Call it a win-win for me.”

“Fine, you don’t need to be such a dick about it.” Norman rubbed his chest where Toby had poked him.

“Maybe next time you will heed my advice, now let's hurry up, I got a headache and want to get some sleep. Get that tied around his legs and I’ll find something to toss into the chipper.”

After Toby walked off, Anna came up to him. “What was that all about?”

“Nothing. Want to help me?”

Anna looked at the corpse and shrugged, “Eh, ok.”

It didn’t take long to get the cord tied around the legs of the dead man. Toby returned shortly after with a short log that he tied the other end of the cord to.

“Anna, go wait in the van.”

“No, I wanna watch.”

Norman could see the vein in Toby’s forehead budge as he tried to control his anger. “Fine! Just stay off to the side and out of the way.”

Anna smiled, seeing she had gotten her way, and merrily skipped off to the side of the van like this was some sort of game. The girl really was batshit crazy and that little ‘date’ had seemed to release whatever repressed persona she had within her. Either that or she just stopped hiding it.

Norman decided to stand on the opposite side of the van from Anna, just in case. Toby checked to see that everyone was clear before he started the engine on the wood chipper. It surprised Norman that both the wood chipper and the truck still had fuel in them. He would have thought for sure someone would have drained it out by now. Then again they were quite a ways from town.

A blue puff of smoke exploded from the exhaust pipe on the chipper, the exhaust flap making a loud pinging noise as the engine came up to speed. Toby threw a lever on the trailer and the huge metal teeth began to spin.

Norman glanced over at Anna and saw a look of undisguised glee on the girl's face. He swallowed hard, realizing the girl was probably going to become a serial killer. Or worse try to follow in his footsteps of becoming a necromancer. Her becoming a necromancer didn’t bother him, it was her surpassing him as a necromancer that did.

Without any fanfare, Toby tossed the log into the chipper and stepped off to the side.

Somehow, Norman figured this was going to be some slow gruesome display as the cord was slowly pulled into the machine along with the body.

That wasn’t what happened though. The cord went taut so fast there was a twang. The force launched the body out of the back of the van so fast that it didn’t even touch the ground as it covered the thirty feet to the opening of the wood chipper.

The body was yanked into the chipper in a violent spray of pink mist, the discharge chute doing its job and sending a spray of red liquid and pulped body parts over the fence. The process was so quick and violent that a wave of red mist shot back from the mouth of the woodchipper and splattered onto the three unfortunate idiots standing nearby.

“I think I’m gonna be sick!” Anna started gagging.

Ok, so maybe not a serial killer, Norman sighed in relief. He turned toward Toby who was spitting out blood from inside his mouth and trying to wipe it from his face. The sight of Toby suffering from his mistake made Norman smile. If Norman could have seen himself in a mirror, he probably would have looked like a psychopath. He removed his shades and turned them around to look at the speckled blood that had coated them.

“Yup, real fucking brilliant idea. Serves you right for being such a dick.” Norman turned toward where he had seen a hose on the side of the building. Hopefully, there was still water pressure.

After hosing themselves off and the back of the van out, the three sat in sullen silence as Toby drove them home.

Norman got out of the van and walked straight toward his house. While this little fiasco probably wasn’t the end of their friendship, it was going to strain it for some time.

He walked through the broken front door and sighed, Norman needed to fix the broken front door before he could get any sleep.

It took him a few hours to find boards and nails, but he managed to ‘fix’ the door. It wasn’t pretty. Three boards crisscrossed the back side of the door making his house look even more like a run-down drug den. The only thing left would be to board up the windows and the look would be complete.

Norman sighed and sat down on a kitchen chair. He had mopped up the blood and body fluids from the floor and table to the best of his ability but the room still had the tang of iron. It was infinitely better than the smell of rot, body odor, and baby powder though.

He should be heading for bed, but he was too keyed up. He was sitting in the kitchen and suffering the stink for one reason and one reason alone. Norman stared at the two bottles of elf blood as he tapped his fingers on the table. He had stored them in the fridge after extracting the small amount for his ritual. Had Toby seen the bottles, Norman had no doubt he would have made him dispose of them. But that wasn’t going to happen, not after all the bullshit he had to go through tonight.

It hadn’t escaped Norman’s notice when he returned home that the small bit he had dried and put into a bag on the kitchen table was now gone. The only other person to come inside his house was Toby so it was easy to figure out who had taken it. Norman couldn’t figure out why he would take it, except to prevent Norman from researching further into necromancy. It made no sense to Norman why Toby was fine with him experimenting with animal corpses but suddenly drew the line at human ones. Too bad the man had miscalculated.

Norman couldn’t help but smile. While he no longer had the body to experiment with, he did have the blood to turn into powder and new experiments to test out. Life was starting to look up for Norman.