Corpse Dream Takes on a Life of its Own

Sequel to If You’ll Please Excuse me while I Take Care of this Corpse

There are always party stragglers, the ones who don’t notice your right hand pretending to mouse-click-and-drag them into their cars and double-click on their cars to make them drive away so you can bury the dead woman tucked in a bed upstairs before she stains the sheets. You know the kind. They start up a new subject on what you thought were excellent parting words.

I say to the last couple, “Well, it was nice meeting you, Bert and Lois. I hope you make it back home before the sky opens up…any second now!” They reach for their car door handles like synchronized swimmers. I push away the thought that if their car had a live, downed electrical wire touching it, they would both be electrocuted at the same time. I could put the corpse in their trunk. Say it was theirs. My life could go back to normal.

Just when I think they’re going to lift their door handles, climb in and scoot, they steady themselves against their car and launch into a litany of all the other trips they’ve taken in much worse weather. Nooooo! No more stories!!!!

“How ‘bout that Thanksgiving we drove through Pennsylvania and the roads were a sheet of ice!” Bert says to Lois. After 40+ years of marriage, she is well rehearsed and without pause takes up the slack of telling the rest of the story now that he has volleyed the serve

“We were following behind a snowplow,” she says on cue, “when an 18-wheeler passes it, jackknifes and slides into the median. Right before our eyes!”

I want to say, “Well I hope everyone was okay. Bye!” But I can’t. I stand there, smiling politely through gritted teeth, using all my mental powers to make the phone ring or the smoke alarm sound. Then, miraculously, and still unexplainably, comes an answered prayer — a crash from inside the house.

“Whatever broke sounds expensive!” Lois says, letting go of her car door, stepping toward me, as if called by God to form a search party. Nooooo! Get in your car and go!

I can’t let them loose in my house. They’ll run upstairs. They’ll find out that “ill woman” is really dead. “Oh, that’s probably just the cat.” I say.

I wave and run up the porch stairs, turn around to see them following and shout cheerfully, “I’ve got it! You’d better run along!” I look up at the sky in horror as if it just flipped me the bird. The clouds aren’t anywhere near as menacing as I’d like but while the couple in perfect sync turn their equally stiff necks to see, I jump inside the house. “Bye!” I say, wave nervously through the half circle window of the front door and duck.

The cat, hearing the sound of the front door slam, runs up onto the porch as if to say, “Don’t forget me!” I open the door very slowly, to the width of the hiss belly when all his fur is pressed flat. He slithers in unnoticed while the stragglers pull away from the curb. Thank God! Now I can take care of that corpse before it rots!

As I’m walking up the stairs, the cat scurries past me with his ears tucked. Lost and Found is an excellent mouser. I know he smells the body. He wouldn’t eat it, would he? Paw at it? Make it bleed? Would it bleed out with just a puncture wound?

“Lost and Found, leave it!” I yell up the stairs when I hear by the squeak of the corpse’s bedroom door he has nudged open with his nose.  I pick him up, pat down the hair that is standing up along his arched spine, toss him onto my bed and shut the door tightly.

Upon returning down the hall to the corpse’s bedroom I’m thinking, Wouldn’t it be funny if I walked in there and she was sitting up, brushing her hair with the ivory handled brush that used to be my grandmother’s, and then asked me something weird like “Can I do your hair next?” That would so freak me out.

What’s ironic is that when I walked in the room, she wasn’t lying in the bed where I left her. The hairbrush was still on the dresser, untouched. But she was gone. I couldn’t tell how long she’d been missing. It’s not like the bed was ever warmed by her being in it.

“Where’d you go!” I shout aloud while throwing the covers over the footboard. “Jesus, Mary and Joseph! Where the hell is she!?” I am in deep shit. Did someone come in here and take her while I was…I bet that old couple was in on it, Lois and Bert! I wonder what Bert is short for, anyway? Norbert? Herbert? Who would do that to their kid?

I throw open the door to my bedroom and consult with Lost and Found, the only other person in the house. He is now a pet detective and together we will get to the bottom of this. “Someone took the corpse,” I calmly explain to Lost and Found, trying not to frighten him. He was outside the whole time. “Who, Lost and Found? Who took her? I’m putting you in charge. Show me a clue.”

He meows and waves his tail at me, shewing me out of my room. God only knows, if Lost and Found could talk, that he even saw what happened. What if that crash was someone stealing her out the back door? Lost and Found was hiding in the bushes in the front. He can’t help me with this, even if he wanted to cooperate.

I’ll never sleep tonight until I know what happened to her. Did she walk out of here? And where is that broken vase or windowpane or whatever it was that crashed? It definitely came from inside my house.

I try to go with my gut on this since the cat is no help. Was she dragged out of here, and something got knocked while she flipped her arm out like she does? Was she carried out of here and kicked something to get my attention? Was she crying out for help? “Amy! Someone is stealing me! Save me!”

Or was she never really dead and she tiptoed out behind my back without a note:

“Amy, thanks for tucking me into bed when all those people came over in the middle of my half-assed burial. I can’t believe you were only going to put me in a shallow grave. I was hoping for a little more pomp. Tears. Speeches. Tears. How I touched other peoples’ lives. Tears.

I really didn’t want complete strangers to see me in my sheer nightgown that, by the way, is completely see-through WHEN LEFT OUT IN THE RAIN! What were you thinking!? And who were those people who randomly stopped in and commented? I can’t believe you just let them in your house. You’re very risky you know. All your secrets will be out if you put the welcome mat out like that for the entire world to just pop their heads into your life.

I was afraid when they saw my arm plop out from under the table where I was hiding they would bombard me with questions, psychoanalyze me: ‘Why did you climb onto the bottom tier of that table, and why is your face green? Do you need a bucket? Are you going to be sick?’ I am leaving. They can psychoanalyze you.”

But there was no note. I looked.

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