Not Like the Movies
By Bri Murphy
“Jesus, you’re heavy.”
The black body bag at your feet has “Misters Morgue” written in dainty cursive on the side. Panting deeply, you wipe the sweat threatening to drip over your brow and burn your eyes with the grime it carries. The sweat accumulates between the strands of your short, army-style cut hair. You straighten up and lean backwards, sending several pops up your spine. The pops sound like the keys of a typewriter being pushed in rapid succession. You’re alone. You squat on a log that has bark cracking and splintering down the sides; it’s near uncomfortable to sit on, but it’s still better than the mildew covered grass.
Bark stabbing you in the ass, you take in the forest for the first time. The trees are so full that it’s impossible to locate the rising sun, but light still gleams golden through the small gaps in the leaves. You half expect to see small sparkles in the beams of light like in the Looney Toons shows you watched as a kid. It is nearing fall and some of the green leaves had already turned shades of burnt orange, mustard yellow, and deep red. Under a different circumstance, this forest could’ve been the most peaceful place in the western United States.
But the self-assigned homework is not done.
Once the cool autumn breeze cools you and calms your breath, you get back to work. You stand, brushing off the pieces of bark sticking to your ripped jeans, and reach your hands to the sky for one final stretch. Then, you let out a sigh, looking back down at the bag. “This would be a lot easier if you weren’t so heavy, Jeff. Should’ve laid off the late-night snacks.” You bend down and wrap the top of the bag around your hand twice so it doesn’t slip out of your grasp. Then, you continue backing farther and farther into the forest, pulling the body along, heading for the densest collection of trees.
What might’ve been days ago, but was really mere hours, you had gone to the nearest morgue to retrieve a John Doe that no family members would miss. The diener was so pale himself that he could’ve been one of his cadavers. Maybe he never left the dark depths and forgot what the taste of the sun felt like on his skin.
With you standing at 6 feet tall, his head came to only about your chest. You asked him if you could have a body that no one would miss for research purposes for a story you were writing from the dead man’s perspective; you are a writer after all. Intrigued, he helped you carry the bagged body from the morgue to your truck, saying, “Let me know when I can read it!”
After the diener went back into the morgue, you pulled a tarp and planks of wood from your backseat and covered the body so that it would’ve looked like you were either going to the dump or to attempt a DIY project. A thought had crossed your mind in the process – Would people really notice if I threw him out with the wood at the dump? That would be the easiest. But you probably would have struggled to get the bag over the edge of the container only for a man in a flannel and garden gloves, who smelled as though he lived there, to come over and help. He’d feel a hand, an arm, a head, etc. and you wouldn’t know how to explain.
Instead, you Googled some of the least visited places near you. 87 million search results popped up, but you eliminated the first 13 by skipping straight to the second page. No one ever made it past the first page, so they’ll be even less visited.
Your phone slipped and opened the link titled, “6 Of the Least Visited Places In Pennsylvania.” But the first on the list, Dead Man’s Hollow, was aptly named. Maybe it was fate. The blog writer had noted that the place was thought to be haunted. Maybe if the body is ever found, they’ll just think it belonged to one of the ghosts who were already there. The others on the list, like the rose garden or the mattress factory museum, seemed like good places to relax after this mess was all sorted.
Now, instead of focusing on the job at hand, you wonder what the mattress factory museum might be like and accidentally back into a tree. Hard.
“As if my ass hasn’t been through enough already!” you yell at the tree like it got in your way. The thickness of the brush seems untouched; no one else would venture this far. “Unless someone else is trying to bury a body,” you say, “Am I right, Jeff?”
It hadn’t taken you long to start calling the body Jeff; John from John Doe was too unoriginal.
You unzip the black body bag and grab the shovel from inside, mumbling an, “Excuse me, Jeff,” and rezip the bag. Using the head of the shovel, you sweep away some fallen leaves and mark the length of the hole by going a few inches past either end of the bag. You’re still alone so you dip your head down to focus on digging as fast you can. The sun was teasing you, rising faster than she ever had before, daring you to move along if you were to finish in time to get breakfast at that mom-and-pop shop you passed on your drive here.
The shovel went into the ground smoothly; the rain the night before must’ve loosened up the dirt. The soft thuds of the dirt hitting the ground next to you were as soothing as the soft sounds pages in a book made when you turned them. Maybe this story could turn into a book someday, you think.
The rejection letter you received that led you to this forest had said your story that was based in realistic fiction was unrealistic. Whoever had written the letter, probably someone named Jennifer, had suggest that you write from experience to improve your work.
“And then they had the audacity to say, ‘Thank you for submitting to our magazine, and we wish you the best of luck with your future writings.’ As if they care. Can you believe that, Jeff?”
You continue to shovel the dirt from the ground, ensuring that you don’t throw it too far from the hole to make it easier to fill once the bag is at the bottom. The farther you get, the heavier your breathing becomes, and the sweatier you get, the less you feel the once cool breeze. The handle of the shovel is rusted and creeks when you lift too much dirt in one scoop. Your dad had bought it for you as a housewarming gift ten years ago to do yardwork. Like the diener, this is the first time the shovel has seen the sun since.
You take a break and turn your head up to the sky, soaking in the morning sun. After a moment, you glance down at the hole and then over at the bag. “You know, they make this look so much easier in the movies.”
You resume your digging. Remember how that guy from the show You put a dead body through a meat grinder? He bagged the pieces individually and carried them out to a dumpster in the alley behind the kitchen. That guy had the right idea. “Why did I choose so much physical labor, Jeff? I haven’t sweat this much since middle school gym class.” But you never would’ve stomached putting limbs through a grinder.
It takes 185 more scoops of dirt to get the hole wide and deep enough to fit the bag. Counting was supposed to make it go faster; you aren’t sure if it helped or not. The hole is even with your eyeline, so you get a running start and jump to grab the ledge and pull yourself out. Thankfully your dad had forced you to play basketball to fit in with the other boys, so you get plenty of vertical from the many times you rebounded.
You stand back and admire your work. Pulling a watch from your pocket, you check the time: 8:36 am. “Hear that, Jeff? We’ve got plenty of time before they stop serving breakfast!”
You throw the shovel aside and step over the bag and brace yourself for pushing it into the hole. But before you do, you look over at the tree that ran into you, then back at the bag. You unzip it to rip off a piece of clothing. Most men are buried in a suit and tie, but John Does must get buried in whatever they were wearing when they died. Jeff is wearing a floral Hawaiian shirt with two buttons undone. You imagine Jeff wore that shirt whenever he was feeling lucky but guess that it didn’t work out well for him in the end. You rip a piece from the bottom hem, not wanting to impact the way the shirt laid across his chest and the macho way his chest hairs poked out.
Standing up with the fabric in your hand, your knees crack a little from stretching out. You walk over to the tree, choose one of the thinner branches, and tie the piece to it. Turning around, you hold out your hands like one of those women on game shows that show off the biggest prize, and say, “Look, Jeff, your favorite Hawaiian shirt marking you forever.”
Pleased, you walk back over to the bag and zip it up for the last time without a second thought. You reach your legs out behind you and push with all your strength. The bag slides to the edge of the hole and then rolls in, landing with a thud; you can’t tell if the bag has Jeff’s face towards the sky or towards the ground. It’s not like he’ll suffocate; he’s already dead. You move over to the dirt pile and turn the shovel sideways. You attempt to push the dirt into the hole so you don’t have to dig it all up again, but most of the dirt just slides over the rust-covered handle of the shovel. After a heavy sigh, you concede to shoveling the dirt back into the hole one scoop at a time. It takes less than half the time to fill it as it took to dig it. But somehow, the hole is not completely filled and you’re out of dirt. “Now how the fuck did that happen, Jeff? Shouldn’t there be leftover dirt instead?” When you started filling it, you thought it was going to be like packing to leave a vacation versus packing for a vacation: It seems like you always end up with more than you started with, even if you didn’t buy anything.
It’s ridiculously obvious that there’s a body probably buried at your feet from the stark contrast of the fresh dirt and the rest of the forest floor. At first, you move to dig another hole to fill in the rest, but that wouldn’t make it any less obvious. Instead, you head over to the tree to spread leaves across the ground and cover the 2.5 by 6 ft rectangle of exposed dirt.
Glancing at the fabric on the branch, you pull off a handful of different colored leaves and toss them into the air. With the small breeze, they drift gracefully to the ground and look like they had fallen from the branch naturally. You do this at least ten times, sometimes over the dirt, sometimes over the grass surrounding the hole. By the time you’re done, you can barely tell where you dug and where you didn’t.
You put your arms on your hips and take another look around the forest. “Maybe I’ll come back and visit sometime, Jeff,” you say, knowing that you probably won’t even be able to find this spot again without dragging another body bag with you. Looking where you’re pretty sure the hole is, you wipe the last couple drops of sweat from your forehead with the back of your hand. Your heart skips a beat. Damn. I did it.
The watch in your pocket tells you that it’s 9:28am and that you need to hurry to the mom-and-pop shop on the side of the road about 5 miles back. Swinging the shovel over your shoulder, you say, “Thanks, Jeff. This’ll make a great story.”
The piece of Hawaiian shirt around the tree is waving in the wind. You start to wave back at it as though saying goodbye, but you stop yourself, thinking, I’m a fucking idiot, so your hand only flops up to about your chest before flopping back down to your side. You shake your head as you walk the way you hope you came from. The trees rustle in the wind, the leaves crackle under your feet, and the birds chirp off in the distance. You imagine what Jeff would’ve eaten if he was alive and happened across the mom-and-pop shop too.
You would’ve sat at a table by yourself, Jeff’s bright Hawaiian shirt easily catching your eye. The ease of his manner while reading the morning paper would’ve kept your attention and when the waitress asked you what you wanted, you would’ve said something like, “I’ll have whatever that fella’s having,” pointing over at Jeff.
Bri Murphy (she/her) obtained her BA in Creative Writing from Susquehanna University in spring of 2021. She's currently an Area Manager at Amazon, writes copy part-time, and still finds time to write creatively. It's also important to note that Bri believes the Oxford comma is not optional.