Left for Garbage

been given a chance to see Deeley before her so-called business trip , and if she was here, then where was Deeley?
    Denise brushed him off but he grabbed her arm and asked if she had his missing gas cans.
    She tried to bluff him away, telling him again she was in a hurry, but he said, “Fine, go grab what you came for. I’ve got a set of keys to the Nissan. I’ll check the trunk myself.”
    Denise, feeling as though she might faint, still managed to act outraged, snarling back at him, “Fine, you fucking cop … I’ve got ‘em, I’m the big criminal. Here, I’ll get ‘em.”
    For a second Denise didn’t think he would relent, but he did, and he remained in the doorway as she rapidly opened the trunk an d yanked out the cans, stepping into the garage and dropping them to the floor.
    She wondered if the wave of stink from the trunk’s brief opening had reached her father across the garage, but he was inside and the trunk was outside. If it had, he didn’t say anything and she wasn’t going to give him a chance to. Muttering a last insult about his fucking gas cans, Denise swung into her car and peeled out of the driveway before her startled father could do more than shout out her name.
    She was so freaked, she turned the wrong way on Subdivision and headed for where the road ended in woods, and not the exit from the neighborhood.
    Then her cell went off. S he answered automatically. It was her father. “Denise, I want you back here immediately or I’m calling the police. Something’s wrong.”
    She feigned an annoyance she couldn’t must er. “God, Dad, nothing is wrong. I told you I have to get back to …“
    “I saw you, Denise, I saw you turn for the woods. Turn around and come back here now. I mean it, Denise, this time I mean it.”
    Shaking, despite the blistering heat, Denise laughed nervously. “God, Dad, calm down. I turned on purpose because I need to call my partner Jeff back in Jacksonville because I didn’t get that report I needed, because of you, and I didn’t want to drive and talk. It’s illegal, you know, since I don’t have a hands-free …”
    “Just come back, Denise. I want to look in the trunk of your car.”
    “My trunk? I gave you your goddamned gas cans …”
    “Just turn around, De nise, or I’m calling the cops.”
    Her breath whistled through her throat and she hoped he would mistake it for exasperation, not the choking fear it was.
    “Fuck you … fine, I’ll come back.”
    “Good.”
    Her father disconnected.
    Denise reached down and pushed the tr unk release and began repeating, “Don’t look, don’t look, don’t look at her.”
    Resolutely she stomped to the back of the trunk, and in one movement, bent down and picked up the bundle. It was sickeningly loose and seemed to slide around in her arms.
    Trying to keep up her mantra, “D on’t look, don’t look,” she started purposefully down the slope to where the small swamp lay. She heard the plastic tear but still kept her eyes fixed forward, and then she felt it, a splash of liquid running down her hands. With a shriek of disgust she dropped the stinking bundle where she stood, and making low moaning noises, ran doubled-over back to her car. Then she drove at high speed down Subdivision, not even bothering to glance at her parents’ house.

Harley Ray
    (Sewage worker)

    Before I’m leaving the office at nine the morning of December eleventh, my dispatcher Lizzy calls me up and tells me I gotta go on down to the swamp area behind the school yards again, off Subdivision. We’d some bad storms moving through starting the month off, with heavy rains and strong winds, and I’m told I gotta check the water table level down there.
    I didn’t want to go back there, I’d had a bad scare there back in August when I thought I saw a bag with a little arm sticking out of it.
    I say ‘thought’ because I did what I was supposed to do, then I called the police, and after they kept me waiting two hours in that heat, they finally come out and all they did was look down the ravine where I was pointing and tell me I had quite an imagination.
    Maybe I do , maybe I don’t, but I know what I saw. Truth of the matter is, since I was going to have to be down there anyway, I thought I’d maybe look a little further south of where I saw the bag at the back in August, but I needed to relieve myself, if you know what I mean.
    In my busin ess, you just can’t go knocking on doors and ask to use the little boys room