Common House Magazine

The girl wasn’t mangled in the way they expected. This was, of course, the best-case scenario considering the circumstances, but the guys panicked nonetheless. The one with the shaggy hair and the Hawaiian button-up screeched and tugged at the sides of his head, while the gangly one with the buzz-cut and the all-black suit stared fixedly ahead at the dense mist lapping the road’s double yellow lines. 

“What the hell are we gonna do, man!” yelped the one in the Hawaiian shirt, whose name was Gary.

The one in black, whose name was Richard, said nothing.

“Say something, you goof!” Gary shouted, knocking on Richard’s head. “You just killed a girl! Hellooooo! Hello, Mr. Murdererrrrr, you just killed a girrrrrl!” 

Richard finally had enough. He seized Gary’s face so it was too contorted to utter another sound and spoke sharply into it.

“Shut your ass up! She’s not dead. Look at her. Do you see blood? Do you see a scratch?” 

The girl lay on the road, her porcelain legs bent limply like the legs of toads. Her eyes were closed, not open like the eyes of the dead, passively taking the force of the rain, which was coming down faster now, in thick droplets that cascaded slowly down her face, breasts, and arms, softly coruscating on the gems of her green sequined dress.

“Her eyes are shut, Rich! Looks pretty dead to me.”

“She’s asleep, you stupid bastard! Are you dead when you sleep?”

“Kinda!”

Richard approached the girl, put two fingers behind her ear, then looked despondently back at Gary.

“See!” Gary exclaimed, “I told you! We’re gonna go to jail, and the beers we had aren’t gonna help our case! We’re gonna get a DUI charge and a murder charge and a life sentence and—”

“GARY, STOP!”

Gary fell silent.

“Here’s what we’re gonna do,” Richard leaned against the hood of the car, facing the fog, which felt like it was advancing, creeping up on them like someone in need of help. He resumed calmly, enunciating every word:

“We’re going to drive back to the city, then we’re going to get a shovel from somewhere—shut the fuck up—then we’re going to dump her somewhere, and then we’re going to go to this party.”

“Nononono—”

“—we’re going to have an alibi, we’re going to drink and have a good night, then we’re going to go home and carry on with our lives.”

“Nononono, Rich, we can’t—”

“What the fuck else can we do then, Einstein? I still have law school and Toronto and a whole life I’m not going to throw away because some street-tramp didn’t look both ways before crossing the road! Do you have a better idea? Huh? Huh, genius?”

Gary didn’t, so they carried the girl into the trunk and drove into the city—in silence, until Gary raspily pointed out that the whole situation stunk because the girl was quite pretty and probably would have made a darling girlfriend otherwise. It was easier to think of her as a girlfriend, of all the things lovers do together, now that she was dead. It was kind of like looking at the skimpy girls in the magazines. The boys blasted music from Richard’s busted sound system and wolfed down a pack of gummy worms and sang till they got to the Canadian Tire. 

*

Along the way, they heard a thumping coming from the trunk. Gary proposed that maybe the girl was alive and was kicking to get out, and that they were actually just kidnapping her, but Richard countered that if she were alive, she would be screaming. Gary was quite stupid, but he had a good heart. In their school days, he was often beaten up by the older boys, and on their middle school graduation trip to a mountain cabin, he was tossed out the window of the shared dorm for stuttering too much in an argument. But he always got up from these things, always turned the other cheek. If, God forbid, they got charged with murder, Richard knew Gary would jump in and take all the blame. Sometimes Richard didn’t feel like much of a good guy because he would never go to such lengths for Gary. Or for anyone for that matter.

When they reached the parking lot, Richard turned off the ignition and turned to Gary.

“Alright. We’re going to go inside now and buy a shovel. Don’t walk too fast, don’t walk too slow. Don’t be too quiet, don’t be too loud. We’re buying a shovel because we’re doing work on the garden. Understood?”

Gary nodded vigorously.

They went into the Canadian Tire, scouring the aisles. They couldn’t find the shovels, so Richard suavely asked an employee for help. The cashier at the checkout was a young girl, high school aged most likely, who looked a bit like the girl in the trunk. Green-ish eyes, brunette hair, a nose shaped a little like a light bulb. Gary’s eyes went wide, and Richard stepped in front of him. 

“Hi there!” the girl said jovially.

“Good evening,” replied Richard, somberly, setting the shovel on the counter.

“Any big plans tonight?”

“Nope, just doing work on our garden.”

“Wow! So late?”

“No. I mean, the shovel is for the garden.”

“I see,” she responded. “So you don’t have plans tonight.”

“No plans tonight.”

“You’re sure dressed for the occasion. Cash or card?”

“Just normal clothes, ma’am. That’ll be on card.”

She recoiled at the word “ma’am,” but was too fixated on Gary to express further offence. 

“Is your…is your friend okay?”

Richard turned to see Gary’s head hung low, his mouth open like a dope. 

“Yeah, sorry, he’s”—he leaned in to whisper—“he’s kind of slow.”

“Oh dear. Well, enjoy your—”

“Thanks, you too.”

Richard shoved the shovel in Gary’s hand and pulled him out of the store and into the passenger seat.

“You fucking idiot! I told you to act normal.”

Gary was red, shaking as he brought his hands up as though Richard was going to hit him.

“I tried, man! I just froze up, that’s all! We all freeze up! You freeze up too! We all freeze up sometimes! Especially when you have a dead girl in the trunk—”

“She’s not dead!”

“But you said earlier that she would have been screaming or something!”

This is when the weight of what he’d done descended on him. She really was dead. His own logic was failing him. Richard started the car and continued down the road, his hand shaking on the wheel. He scratched at the back of his hand until little droplets of blood formed and slipped down the knuckles. After a few minutes, Richard realized he didn’t know where he was going or what the plan even was. He stopped the car.

“Where should we bury her?” he asked.

“I don’t know, I saw a McDonald’s earlier.”

“I’m not burying her at a fucking McDonald’s.”

“Why? No one would expect it!”

“What about a cemetery?”

“Yeah!” shouted Gary. “That’s genius! You’re a genius, Rich!”

“Thanks. Okay. So a cemetery.”

“But don’t they have cameras and stuff?”

“They have cameras at McDonald’s too. Besides, it’s dark, and there are fields at a cemetery.”

“That’s right. Okay. So a cemetery.”

“Yes. A cemetery.”

“Okay.”

Richard drove absently down the country roads towards the cemetery behind their former elementary school. The bleak atmosphere of night made him reflect on his circumstances. Other people his age were working to become doctors, lawyers, engineers, CEOs. And what was he doing? Driving back to his old school with his moron friend to bury a girl they ran over on their way to a party of people they didn’t even know. He felt like a failure and was about to cry when he turned to the side, then sharply pulled over.

“Ouch,” said Gary, rubbing his neck.

“Look!” Richard said, beaming.

To their left stood a vast stretch of grass, weakly illuminated with a milky sheet of moonlight. A massive cross penetrated the sky, and in front of it, tall iron bars formed a wide rectangle scattered with patches of mud bearing erected stones. 

“I don’t think God’s gonna get us out of this one, man.”

“I think he can! Let’s bury her here. No cameras, no witnesses, and it’s only forty-five minutes away from where we just were—just far enough to not be traced to us, but not too close to where we’ll miss the party!”

“Genius! You’re a genius, man!”

“Yeah, yeah, thanks, come on, grab the shovel.” 

While Gary skipped to the car, Richard craned his neck to the sky and began crying tears of joy. He ripped off his shirt and spun around in circles, letting his face and hair get drenched.

“Uh. Rich?”

“Mhm?”

“Where’s the shovel?”

Richard froze.

“I gave you the shovel. I had to grab the keys so I could drive. So I handed you the shovel.”

“It’s not here.”

Richard tackled Gary and punched him repeatedly, calling him the names the older kids had used to torment him in their middle school days. Gary slipped out from under him and begged him to stop, sobbing like a girl.

“I’M SORRY, RICH! I’M SO SO SORRY! GOD, I’M SO STUPID!”

Richard sat with his knees to his chest, sobbing. He walked to the car, idly, like a demoralized prisoner, grabbed the tequila bottle they keep under the passenger seat for good measure, and downed half the thing in a single swig with the rain washing over him in vicious tides.

“That’s it. I’m all out of ideas, Gare. I’m fucking wiped, man.”

“I mean… we can always just go with the McDonald’s idea.”

Richard burst out laughing. He beckoned Gary over, and they passed the bottle back and forth, laughing drunkenly till their stomachs ached. The more drunk they got, the more they started to feel like characters in a sitcom. After all, there’s no way this could happen to ordinary people, right? Every time one of them cracked a joke, Richard heard a laughing audience, sometimes a director’s instruction. These nonexistent voices closed in on them, and with shocking acquiescence, Richard accepted that he was most definitely going insane. Isn’t that inevitable for murderers? To go insane? Yes, replied the sitcom audience.

Finally, they climbed back into the car and turned in the direction of the McDonald’s, laughing, because there was no way there was a dead girl in their trunk.

*

“GaryGaryGaryismy…ismyturn.”

“Okayokayokayyougo.”

“Knockknock.”

“Knockknock.”

“Nostupidyouhavetosaywho’sthere!”

“ButIalsowannaknock!”

“HARHARHARHARHAR!”

“HARHARHARHARHAR,” the audience replied. 

Richard parked almost horizontally in a space reserved for customers. He didn’t realize this until a pudgy middle-aged man approached them with a large brown bag. Richard rolled down the window.

“Uh, order number four one five?”

“Ohnononosorrythat’s—”

“THANKS!” interjected Gary, snatching the bag from the man’s hand. The man turned around and waddled back to the front door.

“Garythat’snotforus!”

“Itsadoggiedogdogworldman!”

They scarfed the food down and pulled out of the spot, parking instead at a more remote space closer to the dumpsters. The food sobered them up, and they were aware of it immediately, because the fear returned and the tangible world descended on them with terrifying clarity. Crunching gravel. Howling winds. Periods of silence punctured only by the sound of buzzing flies and shifting against car leather. The sitcom crowd didn’t disappear, though. They just got quieter.

“Let’s get this done.”

They waited until the final car left the drive-thru and pulled the girl out of the trunk. While they were carrying her, they spotted a boy with a cigarette between his lips, carrying a bag to the dumpsters. Panicking, they dropped her in a bush and drove off.

They drove to the party in an adrenaline-filled haze, coming up with all sorts of unintelligible lines of logic for how they were going to make it out of this unscathed. Of course, though, hanging over the way they spent their final moments of freedom was the sense that their lives were essentially destroyed. 

*

The party was held at a downtown shack of an apartment. Kitsch artwork lined the walls in their chintzy frames and there were stacks of dishes in the sink, lit prismatically by a plastic disco light propped on the kitchen counter. On any other occasion, Richard wouldn’t have seen much sentimental value in this display of poverty, but that night, he saw them as emblems of youthful living, of freedom. You’re only in your twenties once, surrounded by drunks and gorgeous girls and zealous young people, ironically ardent to make something of themselves, yet with no sense of direction. For him, this “once” would not last for any longer than three days, so he drank and danced and chatted up a storm with everyone in sight. The sitcom crowd returned, this time not laughing, but weeping. They were on his side, which was comforting. He thanked them aloud and a young lady turned to him, gave him a concerned look, then nestled herself behind a group of women.

But then the door opened, and the crowd roared with cheer. And much to his horror, in walked the girl.

“I have the craziest story to tell you guys!” she projected.

Everyone gathered, smoking cigarettes and gorging on snacks from huge plastic bowls as she spoke. She explained that her memory was all over the place, but what she did remember was being hit by a car on the highway and waking up in a McDonald’s parking lot. Everyone laughed along, clearly entertained, though suspicious of her testimony. They showered her with questions she couldn’t answer: What were you doing crossing a highway? Why didn’t you have an umbrella? You seriously woke up in a bush? At a McDonald’s?

Richard found Gary in the crowd and embraced him, crying and laughing, holding him like he was going to vanish. When the party resumed and everyone dispersed in their groups, Gary approached the girl, whose name was Sally, and asked her to dance. They giddily twirled around the room, oozing with youth, while the sitcom audience whooped and cheered in Richard’s head, reverberating like the taunts of the dead.

It made no sense, her being alive. After all, Richard did check her pulse, and the girl was out cold for so long. But this is just a story, so Rich and Gare have to make it out unscathed, and the girl whose name is Sally must be oblivious to the crimes committed against her, otherwise we’d get into a much messier situation with words that are to be believed and words that are not. Besides, she had no scars, nor any memory of what happened, and ignorance is bliss—we can see it in the way she danced with Gary after—so is there really any need to start any fuss? Sally and Gary had sex that night, then woke up and got breakfast. They went on more dates, then got married, and had 3 children—all girls—who Gary fathers wonderfully. They built the picturesque kind of suburban life you see on television. What would have happened had they not met as they did—if she’d had the open eyes of a dead girl? There would be no suburban home, no children, no marriage—only the green dress, her bent legs, and an awful memory of a night that would have otherwise been pleasantly forgettable.

Cries of joy came from the sitcom audience, and Richard knew that they would live there, in the cave of his mind, forever. But a voice in your head is a hell of a lot better than a dead girl in your trunk, so he drank and drank and talked and talked with no one but himself until the party ended and it came time to drive home.