2. Unzipped

A dead woman ought to be buried....

David Rozelle had a lot on his mind.

The woman he called his mother but who in actual fact was completely unrelated to him (though she’d believed she was) lay dead as a dodo on the kitchen floor, and he urgently needed to move the body before her husband, the simpleton Steven, asked why it was she wouldn’t move when he kissed her but just lay there in a pool of blood with aone of her best kitchen knives sticking out of her.

It might even cross his mind that the love of his life was dead. Murdered, even.

David’s problem was the nosey woman next door. He’d spotted her last night when he’d been digging the grave and she’d been lurking spying on him in her kitchen He could see her quite clearly through the window.so doubtless she could see him. He had breathed a sigh of relied when she had vanished and the dim kitchen light had gone off followed by other lights in the house, meaning ten to one she’d gone to bed. After all, it was midnightish.

The next day was Sunday, so he didn’t have to go to school and face the blank faces of the wretched kids they were making him teach for his sins. All he had to do was park the very demanding Claire Beachus, his own make-believe mother and harridan of the worst order, in the hole he’d dug for her, the big, deep hole where she would never be discovered, not in a thousand years.

Her sin was that when she’d been alive she’d guessed all his little secrets, like the grave he’d dug for Amanda Clitheroe in the field behind the school, the horrible girl in his class who had absolutely refused to learn even the simplest words from the very first reader book in a series of very easy books.

She’d had no right to life, though he’d found himself crying his heart out after he buried her. But that gnashing of teeth and weeping was his own essential contribution to mourning for her, and he loved it.

He stared one more time at the inert flesh on the kitchen floor and felt that prickling behind his eyes that told him all was well in the world of death. The sweetness of justice had been done and all good folks could breathe in peace.

And the witch Claire was no longer alive and lay hideously dead on the kitchen floor and needed to be planted as soon as maybe in the very deep grave he’d dug for her last night. He’d have done it then but for the curtain twitcher next door. In the end he’d been obliged to postpone the burial until this morning.

And to make sure that nothing went wrong he had been planned the moment of burial so very carefully. He’d use the deckchair they’d found in the shed, left there by the last tenant, unwanted even though it looked decent, as a kind of stretcher and secretly, with nobody watching, tie her to it and lower the whole lot, deckchair and lump of cold flesh, into the grave with a holy prayer on his lips.

Only then would he burst into tears, of course. He couldn’t help doing that because wasn’t it so very sad, a life ending, eyes no longer capable of sight and mouth muted and no longer able to nag her lodger. He’d wept when he’d buried Amanda “thickie” Clitheroe the other week in that newly ploughed field, the tears had flooded out because even though it was verging on being fun it had been so very, very sad despite the undoubted truth that the child was a waste of space.

In a way he enjoyed weeping, crying as if the world was ending, his world and everyone’s world. because death does that to a living human being. Makes them sad and tearful. Turns a hidden tap on.

Now, though, to get this one done before her rather stupid husband came down to chat with her. And Steven would do that. Reach for the teapot expecting it to be filled with tea and start pouring it into a cup, licking his lips and muttering a combination of sweet nothings and nonsense at her.

The deckchair was just outside the door and he dragged it in, lay it on the floor next to the cooling Claire, and it was only then that he realised there was one huge fault in his plan. Yes, he could drag the body onto the deckchair (with difficulty because the darned thing wanted to slide everywhere rather than stay where it was) but when he got only part of her weight onto it he realised that it was no way strong or steady enough to be a stretcher. He shoud have thought of that.

He needed another plan, and he needed it now. There was the clomping sound from above that meant the simple minded Steven was getting up, clumping out of bed, staggering into the bathroom.

He had an idea that might slow the silly man down.

He went to the bottom of the stairs and called up, “Mr Beachus, sir, your wife says you need a shower,” he called, “she says she thought there was a smell from you in the night…”

Then the reply, “I don’t usually shower on a Sunday! It is Sunday, isn’t it?”

“I’m just the messenger, sir,” he called up.

“Tell her okay, then, I will.” He sounded disgruntled, which may slow the silly fool down, thought David, and give enough time for him to do what he had to do.

Moments later he heard the shower turn on and rushed onto the back yard, to where the bins were scattered and brought in the blue one because it was closer to being empty than either of the others.

Then he lay it on its side next to the absolutely deceased Claire and somehow managed to shove her into it.

He was in a hurry now. The shower upstairs was being turned off. The old man would be drying himself, towelling his head and shoulder and even his disgusting you-know-what. Then he’d get dressed and come down the stairs with a grin on his face and his flies undone, for effect.

So David managed to force the bin upright and heave it back out of the kitchen door, onto the garden and right up to the empty grave, and it was one hell of a struggle but he managed.

Tipping the body out was much easier, and he managed it with one titanic heave. The dull sound of the body falling onto the bottom of its brave was most satisfying.

He then had to fetch the deckchair because the effort had worn him to a frazzle. It was in the kitchen, and when he got there he heard Mr Beachus climbing down the stairs and huffing and puffing as he did so.

By the time he returned to the grave and its occupant he was crying his eyes out because that’s what sorrow and sadness did to him. And the darned woman next door was there, on her side of the fence, looking quizzically at him as if she knew something. She saw him, blast her, nd maybe she’d even guessed. She’d have to be next.

© Peter Rogerson 21.05,24