The guilt was too much to bear

The guilt was too much to bear.

Corbin stabbed into the soft earth and brought up another shovelful of dirt and tossed it into the pile with the rest, the mound steadily growing as the grave deepened. He heard a soft chuckle coming from behind him and he spun to face the darkness and saw nothing but a wisp of smoke wafting through the trees.

“Come out, Shamus,” Corbin growled, but he was answered by another low snicker.

Corbin kept digging. Shovel after shovel full of dirt, faster and faster now.

“What you burying her for?” Shamus asked, finally stepping out from the tree line and he came to stand beside the mound of dirt.

“It’s the right thing to do,” Corbin answered.

“Right thing to do would have been not to kill her,” Shamus mused, pacing in a circle around Corbin and the grave. Corbin tried to ignore him, hoped that Shamus would go away, and he kept digging.
Then Shamus moved to the body that was laying under the blue tarp and he lifted the material to view the corpse. Shamus whistled low under his breath and shook his head before lowering the tarp back over the girl.

“My now,” Shamus said. “Looks like the Little Prince lost control of himself, hmm?”

“I am no one’s prince,” Corbin said.

“That’s not the word on the street. Word on the street is, the Eldest chose you.”

“I never asked to be chosen for anything. All I’ve asked for is to be left alone, but your kind just won’t let me be.”

“Your kind?” Shamus repeated. “But you are of our kind, Corbin. Why say ‘your kind’ like it’s some sort of insult?”

“Just because we share the same blood doesn’t mean we share the same purpose.”

Corbin leaned against the shovel and sighed. The hole was deep, deeper than it needed to be. He lifted the body wrapped in the tarp with ease and lowered it into the grave.

Shamus stood and watched while Corbin worked backwards now, filling in the grave with much more speed than he’d dug it, and the task was finished in minutes. He patted the earth down with the shovel and stood back to observe his work. The rain would come and wash away his tracks, and by tomorrow this would not look like a grave. It would be just a regular patch of mud in the middle of the woods.

“What are you doing out here, Shamus?”

Corbin locked eyes with the man on the other side of the grave and after a long moment Shamus smiled wickedly.

“It’s been years for you, hasn’t it? I can tell by the look in your eyes. You still look desperate, and something like this should have sated you. What did it feel like, huh? When you knew she was dead? When that blood rushing over your tongue started to taste like death instead of life?”

Corbin prayed that Shamus hadn’t noticed him shudder, but by the laugh that was barked across the grave, apparently his prayer was ignored.

Shamus laughed again, loud.

“It’s alright, Little Prince, I won’t tell. Just another animal attack, right? Nothing to see here.”

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This was written for week #111 for the Yeah Write Speakeasy Challenge.  The challenge was to write a piece of fiction of 600 words per less using the first line 'The guilt was too much to bear.'

I am currently in the planning stage of a new project and I plan on using writing challenges to flesh out some ideas, so these characters might keep appearing here on the blog.