A Body Bag Showed Up On My Doorstep

Why is this ordinary, small-town citizen being gifted a human corpse?

I don’t murder people for fun. Or for any reason, really. So imagine my surprise when, opening the front door, I came face-to-sack with a body bag?

Shortly before 6:00 am on Sunday morning, the dark skies threatening more flurries, I thrust open my door to find a cadaver sack. A slight tremor of terror earthquaked through my gut and up to my gray matter, where it dowsed any curiosity.

I wanted to be chuckling at what could be the wind storm’s creative deposit.

Instead, my neck twisted side-to-side observing my surroundings for Lizzie Borden’s descendants. I was headed out to meet my running partner and wondered — were they going to stalk me throughout my whole icy dash? Were they after just me alone or would my running partner be added to their rampage tally?

As I crunched my way across the icy gravel towards our usual meeting spot, my mind morphed several considerations. First on the mental scene was Mafia. Doesn’t everything always link back to Mafia? Have I binged too many episodes of Murdoch Mysteries and Blindspot?

I was headed out to meet my running partner and wondered — were they going to stalk me throughout my whole icy dash?

Mafia hit?

A mysterious uncle of mine, long ago heart attacked into the blackjack capital in the sky, was thought to have been a member of the Canadian Mafia. His wife happily purchased vino and saffron with his paycheque though she was clueless as to where that money came from.

“I don’t know what he does,” is all she ever said about his occupation. If he could keep a secret from even his bed partner, then he was probably very good at hush-hushing classified intel.

But no one is perfect.

He must have made some errors. I mean, if Amazon can misdeliver a carton of socks to the West address rather than my Eastside house number, perhaps some newbie crime family cousin did the same. Maybe this mutilated mortal was simply tossed out of a passing van at the wrong end of my street.

Shetland, Hinterland, and other Netflix detectives would all likely agree that moving evidence is right up there with missing church on Sunday morning. So I don’t give in to the thought of stuffing the sack into my own van and performing a drive-by-body-release towards Mildred’s moldy front porch across town.

Christmas Tree?

Next up as to possible rationale is a Christmas tree.

Last year, probably thanks to Covid imprisoning everyone at home, live holiday herbage was unattainable. We considered chopping one out of our neighbor’s backyard — they’re not going to miss it amongst all that junk. We resistantly resorted instead to one of those gawd-awful artificial trees and settled on one from the thrift shop.

It looked like a pile of barfed-up turf. But it was a measly ten buckaroos and there were two other families clamoring the aisle to yank it from our hands. When it did a decent job of imprisoning our ornaments amongst its twisty metal, my mother suggested she store it in her basement.

So we said yes and she packed it into some sort of giant baggie that smelled like it had hidden years' worth of unwashed hockey jocks.

Was she dropping it off?

Usually, when she’s ridding something from her basement she calls first — or at least honks from the roadside as Dad curse-carries it to our stoop. Our neighbor had dawdled over with pie and chatted until after 8:00. There was nothing there when he left and after that seems an odd time to abandon a Christmas tree, but who am I to question her deep need to release the plastic pile into its unnatural habitat?

Dead dolphin?

Lastly, I clung to the idea of it being a not-yet-decomposed Flipper — washed up and blown 1200 miles north to its final resting place. It’s not that I dislike dolphins or wish them dead. It just seemed an easier alternative to chainsawing body parts, or spending 18 hours unwinding artificial tree branches. And it does resemble a fish-in-a-bag — or mammal-in-a-bag in this case.

Returning from 7 kilometers of somebody’s-out-to-get-me theories, I noticed that even my cat refused to get closer than Covid-acceptable distance to the creepy loot.

“I’ve got to do it!” I shouted, thrusting my fist into the air, before skulking into the house without having allowed my foot, or any other body part, to make contact with it. “But I’ll wait until the sun comes up.”

And I did. In case you’re wondering, I’m currently trying to locate the owner. As well as the Mafia, Christmas tree packing companies, and SeaWorld’s mortuary — because they all need to know the ingenious, multi-purpose power of a BBQ cover.

©Jennifer J. McDougall 2021