Bodies Bodies Everywhere

by Em
“How the hell you think yer gonna get ridda that body?” my uncle, One-Eyed Jack shouted when I showed him the body of my husband lying face down in our marital bed, drenched in red goo.  Jack and I had never been close, but he had helped others dispose of bodies in the past, and to him blood was thicker than water.  Jack had lost his left eye in the war and had never forgiven the Vietnamese for it.  Still, the V.A. gave him a glass eye to replace the missing one so he didn’t look nearly as creepy as he had with a patch over it.

“It ain’t like you got a lotta options, Darcie,” he fiddled with his gray beard while considering how to handle the situation before him.

“Jacky, we gotta bury him.”

Jack’s good eye glared at me.  “Bury him?!  It’s 30 damn degrees outside and the ground's frozen, woman!  Unless you know of any pre-dug holes big enough for a 200 pound man, we won’t be buryin’ him!”  He threw up his hands in the air and placed them on his head.  “What’d you do with the gun?”

I panicked.  In the heat of the moment, I had placed the gun somewhere.  “I—I can’t remember!”

“What?  You shot your husband of 14 years tonight and you can’t remember where the gun went?  My Gawd woman, you jes’ need to call the police right now and turn ye’self in, cuz yer jes’ makin’ things impossible!”  He sat down on my velvet loveseat with a thud.

“Dammit Jacky, wait a minute.  I haven’t left the house since I shot him.  I, uh, I walked to the cordless phone to call you, then over to the—fireplace!  Here it is!”  I handed the .22 caliber revolver to him.

“I’ll get ridda this.  Now you got any trash bags?

I nodded and pointed under the sink where some Hefty trash bags were stored.  I could suddenly hear Steve in my head calling me a “whore” just a few hours before.  I tried to convince him that Ricky and I were through, but he saw right through me.  He even threatened to take my daughter, Rosie, from me.  That was something I would never allow. 

When I found the letters from the divorce attorney in his desk, I panicked, got his gun from the locked glass cabinet and went to confront him.  Before I knew it, the gun went off and now half of his head was missing.  My mind wouldn’t stop racing.

I didn’t notice Jack cutting the trash bags so they would unfold to wrap their entire width around Steve’s body, but when Jack called me into the bedroom, I helped wrap him tightly in the bags.  We used some fishing wire to tie his body so none of his limbs would flop out of the bags, and tossed the body into the bed of Jack’s truck.

“You let me take care of this cuz you got some serious cleanin’ to do, Darcie.”  Jack started his truck and headed towards the city dump.  I was left alone with a bloody bed and memories of life with Steve before all of this happened.

I sat on the end of the bed, wondering how things had come to this.  This wasn’t how I imagined the end of my marriage with Steve.  I thought we would always be together, but the truth was, things had change drastically since we had met 15 years ago.

I was a senior in high school working at a local restaurant to save for college.  Steve used to come into the restaurant and sit in my section.  He was a big flirt, so I assumed he was just joking around until one night, he asked me out.  We went out to a movie and on the ride home, Steve told me about his dream to become a chef.  He was in community college to get his culinary degree and he hoped to be able to work in Italy one day. 

Two years later, I was still working at the restaurant, saving to start a family.  College would have to wait because Steve had proposed.  I couldn’t be happier as I walked down the aisle with Steve and our daughter came along 3 years later.  Rosie was a joy and she had grown to be as smart as her father.  She was just 6 and in 1^st grade when I returned to school to take night classes at a local community college.  Steve watched her after his shift at the Italian restaurant where he worked and I completed my degree to work as a flight attendant.

By then, the newness and passion of our marriage had cooled, and Steve and I worked hard just to keep our family unit together.  I was so focused on work and family that I barely noticed when a man at work began to fancy me.  Ricky was a tall, dark pilot who usually flew to New York City and Washington, D.C.  He was constantly asking me to work his flights and I was glad to do so since flights along the east coast don’t tend to last nearly as long as coast-to-coast flights. 

One day, Ricky asked me to stay behind after the passengers and other attendants left.  Once everyone was long gone, he backed me into the cockpit and gave me the most electric kiss I’d ever had in my life.  I distinctly remember my knees buckling and I gave into the chemistry between us.  Our affair was passionate and we met as frequently as we could, without our spouses suspecting.  That is, until Steve found a racy text from Ricky on my phone 6 months ago.  He became so enraged that talking him down seemed impossible.  I let things cool down with Ricky for awhile and Steve went back to believing things between us were better.  I think he wanted to believe for himself, but mostly he wanted to believe for our 10 year old daughter. 

When Jack arrived back at my house, two hours later, the entire place smelled like a bleach factory.  The sheets and pillows were bundled in trash bags and I had flipped the mattress.  I also bagged most of Steve’s clothes, toiletries and prepared to throw out 2 suitcases in the city landfill.  I made a mental note to pick up some burgundy paint for the walls to cover the blood spatter.  I would also need to pick up more sheets and towels, but I couldn’t go buy those things all at once or it might appear suspicious.  I would buy them slowly, over time, with cash. 

It only took a few weeks for the police to stop sniffing around our house.  When they were shown the letters from the divorce attorney and the empty closet devoid of suitcases, they were almost convinced Steve had left me.  When charges on Steve’s credit cards were being made in Las Vegas, they were no longer worried about his whereabouts.  The fact that Uncle Jacky had sold Steve’s credit cards to a similarly built friend of his to throw off the cops was never discovered.

Ricky was able to divorce his wife the next year and along with Rosie, we started a new family together.  Ricky and I were happy for awhile, but over time, the things I had found charming about him faded.  We no longer flew together anymore either.  I longed for the excitement of our earlier years and I even convinced Ricky to take me to Italy for our 4^th wedding anniversary.  However, the spark never returned.

The next thing I knew, One-Eyed Jack was back at my front door asking, “What did you do this time, Darcie?!”

I showed him Ricky’s body, lying face-down on the bed. 

“Another husband?  Jeez woman, losin’ one husband is an accident, but losin’ 2 looks careless!”

“But Jacky, this time I did you a favor, guaranteed to make you happy.”

“Oh yeah?”  He frowned.  “What’s that?”

“I used arsenic!”  I smiled.  “Less mess!”