He wasn't even twelve hours out of school, and Daria Morgendorffer lay dead in his trunk.
The past few hours were a blank to him. All he knew was that, sometime between accepting his diploma and his coming to, he and his car had ended up on the far side of town, and the delightfully droll Daria was deceased.
"...charles..."
He jerked his head back and forth, looking for who had spoken the unfamiliar name, but there was nobody around. He wondered what he should do.
Turning himself in to the police was not an option. After all, he may not have actually killed Daria. Anything could have happened during that blackout. And, as he was not the type to normally murder his classmates (beloveds), then clearly he was not morally, ethically, or legally culpable for his actions while unconscious. (This conveniently ignored the possibility that Upchuck could experience another blackout and wind up with another body in his trunk).
Okay, that left hiding the body somewhere, and hoping to God it all blew over before he left town for university. He considered his current location, High Hills Park, for all of fifteen seconds before discarding it. It was used frequently by a lot of people, and somebody would surely notice a fresh grave. Even the rumored Satanists would probably call the cops with such a discovery; Upchuck had actually spied on them once, and found the only animal they sacrificed was a chicken, and it had probably run them about four dollars at the local deli.
He considered the quarry: It was remote, it was mostly abandoned...in fact, the only use anybody got out of it nowadays was as an expermentation grounds for teenage forays into the worlds of sex and drugs.
The scratching noise coming from inside the trunk threw him off his track of thought. He also twitched so hard he landed face-first in the grass.
He scrambled for the keys in his pocket, scratching the paint around the keyhole as he desperately thrust, finally unlocking it a good minute after the sound startled him.
Daria was as still as she had been the first time he had popped the trunk, half an hour ago.
He took one wrist to check for a pulse, but it was still as cool and stiff as it was half an hour ago.
His eyes wandered to the black skirt she always wore. His imagination wandered...had he gone exploring during his blackout? He began to reach a hand out...he shook himself out of the daydream and slammed the lid shut on the trunk. He looked at the scratched paint, a little irritated that he'd damaged his beauty, then slammed his fists down onto the trunk. "Focus, goddamnit!" he shouted to himself. "Scratched paint is not high on your list of goddamn priorities! So leave it, Chucky!"
As he moved around the car, opened the driver's side door, and slipped behind the wheel, the plan finally solidified itself in his mind: he would first purchase a shovel, then drive to the quarry, bury the murdered Miss Morgendorffer, and then drive home and not leave his room until August, when he would be heading halfway across the country to start university.
Christ, he hoped he could make it that long without cracking.
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Normally, I'm not too fond of the 'Upchuck is a deranged lunatic' trope, but when the idea for this story popped into my head, I rather loved it. I can't wait to write out Upchuck's night; I'll be aiming for 'very surreal'.