I’m not all right. I am in a funk. But it will pass. I need a change, which is convenient, because I feel tectonic plates shifting. I’m trying to hold them back but that is like preventing the sun from setting. It’s going down and I am not Atlas. I cannot hold it back.
The other night I had this dream that I killed someone, a woman. At least I assume I killed her. The dream started in the body disposal phase.
I needed to bury a woman that was dressed in nothing but a nightgown and I couldn’t seem to find a convenient time. It was either raining outside or the next door neighbors were having company over on their patio. I started to dig a hole in the ground in the backyard. I placed the body next to the burial site and began digging out a shallow grave. If anyone asked, I was digging a garden.
I knew that was risky. It’s like me to get distracted, come inside for a drink or a phone call, and forget the body out there in the rain on the ground next to the wheelbarrow. I figured once the body was in the ground and I pieced together the grass to make a level lawn once again, no one would suspect that I was the one that put it there. I could have just changed my mind about that garden. It’s a little late in the season for planting.
The tension was killing me. The only way to save myself was if I could do the impossible and bring this other woman back to life. Undo what I did. But, like putting words out on the internet, death cannot be undone, no matter how well you hide the body.
I’m putting myself out there and people are coming into my life, literally, walking into my home. I hear the doorbell mid-grave dig. Voices in the next room. I hoist the body from the ground, place the dead woman on the bottom tier of a two-tiered wicker table and throw an embroidered linen tablecloth over the table. Dead woman in the nightgown? What dead woman in a night gown? I didn’t see anyone. Dead. In a night gown. Waiting to be buried just as soon as I can release unexpected company back out into the world.
She doesn’t smell yet so I figure I can pull this off. But the room gets warm and stuffy as it fills with guests who stand around the table, talking, sort of like the proverbial elephant in the room. No one is talking about the dead body on the second tier of this table. That is, until she plops an arm out from underneath the linen cloth. Did someone bump the table or is that woman not really dead?
Someone asks about the arm, sticking out from under the table, casually, as if asking if it’s okay to let the cat in. I say, “Oh, her. She’s not feeling well.” I’ll let the company assume that it was the ill woman who climbed onto the tier and then fell asleep there. I lift the dead body, which is green now, and I carry it like a child up the stairs where I tuck it into bed. I am grateful that none of her limbs have decayed at the hinges and fallen off on our way up the stairs. I’d have some explaining to do.
After a few minutes of gathering myself together, I walk down the limbless stairs with my head poised and confident. I smile at my guests and offer them iced tea in vintage glasses with a cherry motif. We carry on as if there is nothing odd. I am smiling and moving slowly and relaxed but inside my heart is pounding and my thoughts are racing. I am picturing the Channel 6 News van out in the driveway any moment. I’m frustrated with myself for not thinking through all the possibilities of what could go wrong. That was a close call when her arm flipped out from under the tablecloth. I thought only as far as I’m safe as long has no one has reported that she is missing and flash her picture on the screen.
It seemed cold not to notify her family and to place her body directly into the ground without a casket. But I didn’t know who to notify. I didn’t know who this woman was. And then what would I tell her family? As long as I can get her into the ground without anyone drawing any unwanted attention, I’ll be fine. I can keep on going on about my business.
But in the meantime I need to get all of these people out of my house. Go back to my private life. I have nothing to talk about. Especially not that dead woman.
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