During lockdown, I started a creative writing course, and one of the modules was to write the opening page of a book in the first person from the protagonist’s POV. It needed to be compelling and to draw the reader in. They scored me 100% for this.

I sat in my garden, gently rocking back and forward on my swing chair.

‘It’s the first time in a while the weather has been nice enough to do this,’ I said to my wife as she popped her head out of the open kitchen window.

Pigeons were cooing in the tree next door, bees were buzzing around and various other birds were singing their songs. The sun was beaming down overhead from a magnificent blue sky with only the occasional cloud rolling past.

‘Is the hole big enough?’ she asked as she walked out and handed me a cold drink, the ice clinking as the liquid swirled around in the glass.

‘Fairly sure,’ I replied, taking a sip of the drink. I had been digging deep into a section of the garden for a good couple of hours, getting rid of roots and weeds in order to plant some vegetables. I had bought the seeds I needed earlier that day.

Before I started to fill the hole back in, I pulled back the tarpaulin that was on the floor and began to push the dead body into the hole with my foot. Almost immediately, my wife stormed out of the kitchen and directly over to me.

‘What the hell?’ she exclaimed with an angry expression all over her face. Before I had time to react, she exclaimed, ‘Lewis and Becky got a new car,’ angrily as she helped me push the body with her foot.

Oh, by the way, it’s probably a good time to tell you that we are both serial killers, and we are living the suburban-dream lifestyle. Also, I’d like to point out that no one knows our little secret, and the last person that did is about to go in a hole in my garden, soon to be food for my vegetables.

Greg Boyce