A corpse is a heavy, clumsy item. Try handling one yourself, if you are of the nerve to touch the cold dead flesh. Morticians will tell of how unappealing the entire activity truly is. The arms do whatever, swinging and swaying, until the stiffness sets in. After that, it's no better lugging around something akin to a soft, weighty log. It's better to deal with the living; at least most of the time.
A corpse is expected to be found in some locations. No one is shocked to find one laying around in a mortuary, or buried in a grave, or strewn about on the fields of war. Death is perfectly at home in those instances, and a few more. However, death is out of place nearly everywhere else. A body wrapped in duct taped plastic behind a faux panel of a wall, for example, is not perceived as normal. That would be a real shocker, unless you owned the wall and had placed the bodies inside. To anyone else, it would be the obvious scream fest loaded down with shock and horror. Nevertheless, the young beautiful woman who was, only three days ago, full of life and dreams was indeed bundled so insidiously as just described. Her make shift tomb behind the wall was filled with other young and beautiful woman previously, very lively.
The plastic within which Sarah Benherd was enshrouded was semi-transparent and not yet coated with dust as the others were. Her eyes were closed as well as her thin, flat line of a mouth. Those foggy features could be made out through the concealment. All other features were murky at best beneath the overlapping layers. Lighting in the cellar where the shabby tomb resided was insufficient for good viewing the body, adding mystery wherein the plastic wrappings failed.
"Pretty butterfly. When you come back out, you will be a beautiful butterfly, transformed in the most wonderful way," spoke a young blond female with fiery red lips.
She snapped a strip of tape away from the side of the death head and opened the face to the air, and then carefully caressed the side of the face, "So lovely. So young. So beautiful. But just you wait and see, my darling, what you become."
The front door of the home slammed shut and echoed through the house. The young blond asked, "Billy? Is that you?" She knew it was him, but this was a convention he expected.
"Yes, it's me," he called.
Quickly she closed the face back up and tucked the corpse back into the wall and sealed the panel thereof. She spun around quickly and smiled brightly, as if she were a professional hostess, and dashed up the stairway. Ever so quietly, yet astoundingly fast, she closed the cellar door behind her. She met Billy in the hall beyond the living room; and she never missed a beat. Her arms wrapped around him and she planted a long kiss on his cheek, "Oh, I am so glad you are home."
Billy smiled, "I'm glad to be home." He removed his coat and hung it, "How have you been today?"
"Oh," she made a sideways frown and fidgeted a bit, "Bored mainly. Nothing much on television during the day. Nothing but quiet here."
"Bored?"
"Just a little. But you're home now, so I know that part of the day is over."
"I wouldn't be too sure. I'm bushed. I just want to sit back and watch that television with nothing on it."
The young woman trapped Billy with a tight embrace as he tried to step by her. A newborn baby reciting the entire Iliad after the doctor smacks its behind would make more logic than to think of the young woman being in honest love. However, she was, regardless of her very recent and villainous activities in the cellar, deeply in love with Billy. The love, too, was nothing skewed. It was as pure and humble as any love of which the tribe of humanity has ever known.
"Billy, let's go out tonight. I'm hungry," she pleaded childishly while burying her head in his chest. Shuffling dead bodies around can create quite an appetite.
Billy laughed one of those 'you've got to be kidding me, but you know I can't turn you down' laughs that all people, who when also truly in love, surrender with. "Okay. I'm hungry too."
He was rewarded with a peck on the cheek and the young woman bounced down the hallway to the front door, "Great, because I have the perfect place in mind."
"Oh, you do?"
"Yes," she said, while the other beautiful women inside the cellar wall slept the dreamless sleep. "Let's go to 'The Spaghetti Spoon.'"
Billy nodded and followed her. The closed doorway to the cellar must traveled by to exit the small house, and Billy was doing just that, when he stopped and wrinkled his nose, "What's that smell?"
"Smell?" she asked, dragging a couple of whiffs into her nostrils, "I don't smell anything."
Billy inhaled again, "Yes, a horrible odor. Does the trash need taking out?" He walked into the adjacent kitchen and dipped his head closely to the garbage can, "Ew, that's it." He raised the lid, "Rotting potatoes. I will take this bag out when we get back."
She looked over into the garbage receptacle with him, "Well, what-a-ya-know. Never can tell what kind of stuff is hiding around." In her mind, the secrets of the cellar began to tumble out of their holds and fall behind her eyes, rolling down the back of her throat, and over her tongue. Her mouth begged to be opened so she could further spill the delicious words, but instead she caught them by jamming her tongue between her teeth. Now was too soon.
They were only half steps from traversing the exit way of the home when a thump, a lowly muffled bump, of a noise issued from behind within the house. Billy easily grasped his girlfriend by the elbow and asked, "Did you hear that?"
"Hear what?" she pleasantly asked.
"There was some sort of thud in the house. Sounds like it may have came from the cellar."
The young woman poised the stance of an advisor, as that of a person with the sure knowledge to fill in the gaps of a puzzling and perplexing problem. "You know, I think we have mice."
"Mice in the cellar?"
"Mice in the house in general. I don't know about the cellar exactly. I haven't been down there." No hesitation was in the lie she delivered; no sign of any attempt to cover up a hidden affair was enunciated from her. She held the grace of a practiced liar, from whom the truth was packaged all the same. His trust was desired from her, nonetheless; but for the present time trust was to be on her terms. After all, this wasn't the first lie she had ever told him for his own protection.
"Mice? Really?" he asked.
"I'll set out some traps."
"I could call an exterminator."
"Don't be silly. They are too expensive, and they will only do what I will do."
"I will set them out," he said.
"Suit yourself."
They exited the smallest home on the street, which rested on the smallest lot, and anchored the corner of the intersection. It begged no attention, red bricked and white shuttered. The tiny lot of land was well manicured, and also never gained a first glance by the overwhelming majority of people who passed by it daily. The home simply blended in with normality like a single tree folds into the forest. Billy's automobile was of a plain and ordinary sort, too. A Honda, of some make and model, not very old nor new. Everything about the couple and their trappings seemed perfectly common.
Billy opened the door for the young lady, "To 'The Spaghetti Spoon' then."
"I want-a big meat-a ball-a," she punned horribly.
Billy laughed and said, "I don't know what I ever did right to deserve you."
"Fate, it's all fate. Isn't that what love is all about?"
"I guess you can see it that way."
"There is no guessing. It's fate."
She sat in the passenger seat, and before Billy closed the door behind her he said, "I just hope whatever I'm doing right, I continue to do right."
Sternly she said, "You just have to remember one thing."
"What's that?"
"Don't ever make me angry," and instantly a devilish and playful grin came over her face.
Billy smiled and chuckled, "I don't think you have to worry about that. I've been afraid of you since we first met."
She patted his arm, "Good for you then. Everything should work out just fine."
He closed the passenger door of the Honda as the sunlight dimmed away. The love struck couple rode out of the driveway and down the street, leaving the ordinary house behind temporarily.