Jeff went to school the next day like nothing had happened. It took a little effort for him to compartmentalize exactly what he did to Jenny. After a great deal of searching, he found that the Chronivac specifically could not bring people back from the dead. Thus, his only option was to cover up what he did.
When Jenny didn’t come to school it was noticed. She was a social butterfly, and had a ton of friends in every clique. As Jeff walked through the masses of students, he felt their eyes on him. It likely was just him feeling guilty for what he did, but he could at least take solace in the Chronivac on his laptop, stashed in his backpack. It was his life line, as long as he had that, he was untouchable.
When he got to class, his friend Darren started talking up a storm. He was one of those guys who would talk for ages and ages if you let him. Jeff just stared off into the distance, and let him ramble on about sports, or video games, or girls. When that subject came up, Darren finally asks how date night went for him and Jenny.
On that note, many of his classmates went quiet. Some were only interested because they were hoping Jeff had screwed up and Jenny was single again, others were Jenny’s friends and just wanted to know why she wasn’t at school. Jeff didn’t see any reason to lie, not after she emotion swapping he had done. So, he told them outright, about the movie they watched, and the fun time it led to. The he told them about when he was done, when he killed Jenny.
It felt surreal when Darren went in for a high-five. Most just lost interest, but one girl seemed to swoon in the corner to Jeff’s story, as if he had bought Jenny flowers, or taken her for a romantic drive.
Either way, he could tell that he was in the clear, at least this time. Figuring, he wouldn’t get mad if he pushed his luck, Jeff asked Darren, “So, I did the deed. What do you think I should do with the body.”
Darren paused for a second, Jeff almost thought he had said something that was too far, then he piped up, “She’s dead, so just bury her. Then her meat can decompose naturally.”
Jeff didn’t like that thought, it didn’t feel right to just dispose of her, where he would always have to know where she was. It felt almost haunting to leave a piece of her in a place where she could be dug up and horrify some unsuspecting passerby. He needed to do something that completely got rid of her, or at least made her no longer recognizable as a person. What Darren said though, about meat, it gave him an idea.
When Jeff got home, he opened the chest fridge in the garage, where he stored Jenny’s corpse while he was at school. He took her body, still naked from their sex, and loaded it into the back of his car and drove off. There was an old hunting lodge he knew of out in the middle of the woods. He drove for an hour to get there and when he did, he went to talk to Old Man Gunther, the keeper of the lodge.
Jeff and Gunther went way back. Jeff and his dad had been out deer poaching when they met him. Gunther abided no laws, and held no fear. He hunted the deer in the wood, and lived off the fat of the land, and Jeff needed his help. He never cared much for hunting, and was creeped out by how much Gunther seemed to love it.
As soon as they started talking, Jeff and Gunther reminisced about how big he’s gotten, and how much of a man he’s become. Gunther remarked that Jeff probably has tons of ladies at his feet. Jeff chuckled at that, and quickly moved on to the truth at hand. He asked Gunther how he would feel if her brought him a deer to butcher, and Gunther remarked that he would normally like to have been the one to hunt the deer, but for Jeff he would do the job for free.
Jeff plays it off as a joke, but asks what if it was a person ‘hypothetically’. Gunther did not appreciate his humor, and said he would shoot Jeff on the spot if he ever did something like that. Jeff nervously chuckled and went out to his car. He pulled out the Chronivac, with the Emotion Swap Package still open, and on both sides, typed ‘Gunther’. Then in the left box typed ‘Kill and butcher deer’, and in the right box typed ‘Kill and butcher Jenny’, and pressed swap.
Foregoing the caution of testing, he left the Chronivac in his car and pulls Jenny’s body out of his trunk. Gunther examined her body, and agrees that it is a fine piece of meat he has brought. The way he treats her is so callous, it almost makes Jeff want to take her back, and find some other way to cherish her. But he stilled his heart. Her knew this would get rid of any evidence this was Jenny’s corpse, and he could finally get on without her.
Gunther carried her away, and Jeff got his last look at Jenny’s face.
A couple hours later, Gunther came back with a cooler filled to the brim with properly carved meat, packed and wrapped, as though they were being bought from a deli. Each chunk corresponded to all the pieces that made up her body. If Jeff did not know better, he would have thought it was beef, or lamb.
Jeff wanted to take his mind off what this cooler really contained, and decided to test how well the emotion swap really worked. He jokingly asked Gunther how he feels about butchering deer, and the Jeff is immediately told he would never. Gunther then started some explanation about how it’s just not right to do that to such an innocent creature, and total 180 from when they met.
Jeff loaded the cooler into his car. It contained almost a hundred pounds of Jenny meat, that he could now get rid of in a way that he didn’t have to think about the human being, whose life he took.