The Body

Carla opened her eyes and pulled the comforter tightly around her. She’d woken up before the alarm yet again. She closed her eyes and spent a few seconds trying to will herself back to sleep before giving up. She stared at the ceiling for a few more seconds and then rolled over — when she did, her face and chest smacked up against another person. Carla screamed out and recoiled so hard in the other direction she rolled right off the bed.

Carla had not gone to bed with anybody the night before. And her boyfriend David had no way of getting into her apartment, which she was certain she’d locked and deadbolted. “Who are you? What are you doing here?” she called up from the floor to the bed, almost involuntarily. No answer. Carla slowly lifted her head above the mattress. There was definitely a person in her bed, obscured almost entirely by her comforter, except for their feet. “What are you doing here?” she asked again, more loudly. The person didn’t move. “I’m calling the cops!” she yelled, though she knew her phone was on the other side of the bed.

Very quietly Carla stood up and tiptoed around the bed toward her phone resting on the nightstand. She did not take her eyes off the person in her bed. As she slowly reached down for her phone, she instead kept reaching, all the way to the comforter, overcome with a mixture of curiosity and dread. “Last warning!” she shouted as she gripped the edge of the comforter. And then in one fast motion she pulled it off.

In shock, Carla tripped backwards up against her dresser, knocking over several framed photos. Her heart stopped beating. For seconds she just stood in silence, her eyes searching up and down the naked body. “What is this?” she asked nobody in particular. It took ten more seconds for Carla to fully process she was looking at her own body.

“What are you?” she asked, though she wasn’t sure she wanted to know the answer. She reached down and brushed several strands of her long brown hair from her face. It was hers. Her hair, her eyes, her neck, breasts, torso, legs, all of it. She ran her fingers down the length of it. The skin was cold. There was no heartbeat, no pulse. “Is this a dream?” Carla asked, closing her eyes and focusing hard. “Am I dreaming right now?” she opened her eyes again and her body was still there.

The loud knock at her door startled her so much she yelped. “Hey it’s me,” she heard David call out. “Sorry I’m a little early. I can just hang for a bit if you’re not ready for brunch yet.”

Carla broke into a sweat, her eyes never leaving her body’s. “I, uh, one minute. I’m getting dressed.” An instinct kicked into Carla and she got to work, grabbing both of her body’s arms and pulling it onto the floor with a loud thud. “You ok?” David asked from behind the door. “I’m fine, one minute!” Carla dragged her body to the bathroom, knelt down and lifted it into the shower as quickly as she could. An arm dangled off the edge, she folded it into the shower, spun out of the bathroom and closed the door behind her. She leaned against it, taking deep breaths, trying to regain her composure. “Ok,” she whispered, and walked to the door.

She opened it, not fully knowing what to expect. A thought entered her mind. I’m a ghost and he won’t see me. But David greeted her with a cheerful “Hi! How’d you sleep?” She stood in silence for a few seconds. “You ok?” David asked. “You don’t look so hot.”

“I’m fine,” Carla assured him — and herself. “Do I… seem… fine?”

David laughed. “I mean, you look a little pale and you’re sweating a bit. Like you might be coming down with something. But otherwise, yeah.”

“Ok. Ok,” Carla nodded.

“Do… I seem fine?” David asked.

Carla chuckled nervously. “You’re always fine, David. Hey, let’s just go to brunch right now.”

“Oh are you sure? I know I’m early.”

“No no, it’s fine. I’m hungry anyway.”

“Gotcha,” David replied. “I just need to use your bathroom real quick before we go.”

“No!” Carla yelled much too loudly. “Sorry, I mean, let’s just beat the crowd. You can go at the restaurant, right?”

David flashed her a confused smile. “I really gotta go. It’ll take me like one minute.”

“It’s just a ten minute walk to the — ”

David brushed past her, toward the bathroom. “In the amount of time we’ve spent arguing about this I could’ve already been done.”

Carla watched him walk in, turn on the light, and shut the door. Her heart stopped. She’d closed the shower curtain, hadn’t she? Carla honestly couldn’t remember, so frenzied and panicked she’d been just moments earlier. She listened carefully, expecting David to scream out at any moment. The seconds stretched out into years. Suddenly she heard the faucet run and shut off, and the door swung open.

David walked back to her. “Ok. Let’s get some food.” He smiled tenderly at her. Out of nowhere, Carla put her hands on David’s arms and then hugged him. He hugged her back twice as hard. “What’s that for?” he asked. “I just really love you,” she said, understanding that something unknowable and vast was being exchanged between them.

All during brunch, Carla was distracted thinking about her discovery that morning. She knew she’d have to deal with it somehow when she got home. How does one dispose of one’s own body anyway? she puzzled. But another part of her seemed almost certain the body would be gone when she returned.

After Carla and David parted ways, she took the long way back to her apartment, not wanting to confront what was waiting there. She walked inside, to the bathroom. Opened the door, turned on the light, closed her eyes and counted to five. When she opened them, her body was still there in the shower. Carla leaned back against the counter. What am I going to do about this? she wondered. She left the bathroom and walked to the kitchen to get a glass of water. Suddenly she stopped in her tracks.

The shower curtain was open. It had been open when David went to the bathroom earlier. She walked back to the shower. There was no way anybody could have walked from the door to the toilet and back without seeing her body there. Was it just a figment of her imagination? She kneeled down and felt its cold skin again. She touched her nose, ears, hands, feet. It was real. She was sure of it.

David descended the stairs into his basement and turned on the lights. A black tarp laid at the far edge of the cold concrete floor. He walked over to it, knelt down, and pulled the tarp back to reveal his own face. This was, what, the seventh or eighth time today he’d done so? He grunted and grabbed his body and hoisted it onto his shoulder in one fell swoop, and carried it back to the stairs.

It had only been 14 hours or so since David had discovered his own dead body lying next to him that morning, but the shock had worn off almost entirely. Truth be told, he’d surprised himself at how quickly he was able to put it out of mind. Wait until night time, he’d told himself. Cover it, bury it, forget it. It never happened. David had dragged the body into the basement and wrapped it in tarp before driving to Carla’s. When he’d seen Carla’s body in the shower — despite having just talked with her, touched her, heard her speak, he understood something was awry in the world. Something way beyond his comprehension. Cover it, bury it, forget it. None of this ever happened.

In the moonlight, David dragged his body to the far east corner of his backyard. He picked the shovel up and started digging in silence. Be quick. Get it over with. He dug as fast as he could, focusing only on the matter at hand. The sooner his body was buried, the sooner he could begin the process of blocking the day entirely from his memory. Suddenly he heard a scraping sound coming from the yard behind his. Hushed at first, then louder. David walked gently to the fence and poked his head up over it. In the moonlight David could make out a man digging with a shovel. It was his neighbor Mike Gray holding a shovel. Next to where he was digging, there was a body wrapped in a white sheet. Perhaps sensing he was being watched, Mike spun around and saw David. The two of them just stood there, looking at each other for a bit. Mike opened his mouth to begin to say something, but then stopped himself. The night was perfectly still and silent. Something is awry in the universe. It’s beyond your control. Dig, bury, forget.

Mike nodded at David and slowly resumed digging. David left the fence, walked back to his shovel — and his body — and did the same.