1655. Shooting rabbits

(Thanks to ARANEUS1 for the opening sentence).

Lying in the grass on the side of the hill he would have had an excellent view of the valley if it hadn’t been dark and he hadn’t been dead. The corpse seems to have his foot caught between two rocks and was in a sitting position. It was in an advanced stage of decomposition. The head was all decayed and only the bones remained. The body was dressed in a brown coat, singlet, and trousers, and a brown knitted beanie was found lying close to it, while a plastic shopping bag containing a dead rotten rabbit’s carcass lay about two metres away.

Eddie had taken his sister’s teenage boy, Charlie, rabbit shooting in the hills beyond the valley where they lived when they came across the body. It was fun to hunt rabbits by torchlight. The beams of light would catch in the rabbit’s eyes and BANG! Usually Eddie would go out rabbit shooting with his sister’s husband but he’d disappeared some time back. That’s why Eddie went out this time with nephew Charlie.

Suddenly, the sweep of the searchlight caught the corpse of the man.

“What the hell?” said Eddie. They moved closer.

“We’d better go to the police.”

Charlie knew the dead man was his missing father. It was then too he realized for sure a funny feeling he’d had all along; this wasn’t an accident.