A Bump In The Road

Well, that day absolutely sucked. My boss made me stay back till 10pm to finish some project. I’m that tired that I can’t even be bothered to remember what I’ve been doing all day. Now I just need to drive my normal route home. So far, so monotonous. It’s around 10:30pm and pitch dark all around, but I can see enough to know that I’m passing that small stretch of forest that marks the halfway point of the trip. I’m trying not falling asleep at the wheel but I’ve done this drive enough times that it’s practically muscle memory at this point. I just need to make it to… OH MY GOD! A man walks out onto the road as if he doesn’t see me at all. It’s like time stops for a minute and I’m able to get a perfect view of his features. He looks mid 30s, tall and lanky, pale, short black hair and dressed in a dark grey t shirt and black jeans. I’m going too fast. I can’t slowdown in time. In what feels like slow motion his eyes look over to me and for a split second we lock eyes before my car ploughs into him at 80km/h. I hit the brakes as hard as I can and he is flung forward and skids across the road. I open the door and sprint out to check on him. The only light coming from my car’s headlights. Even through the terrible lighting I can see that he is a mangled mess and that he’s not breathing.

Oh shit. Oh shit. Oh shit. What do I do? I don’t know how to handle this. I’ve never even gotten a speeding ticket before. I mean, I was speeding just then, but that’s the least of my worries right now. All I know is that I need to get away from this goddamn body. It’s like I can still feel him staring at me. So I walk away. I leave my car there and I just walk for a few minutes, my mind racing with everything and nothing at the same time. I can see some lights up ahead and I remember that Anna’s friend’s house is right next to the forest. June? No. Jess. That’s her name. I think she’s a doctor. Maybe she can help me. We’ve met once or twice and I was plus one’d to a party at her place once but we’ve never spoken very much, but I need someone to help me right now. She lives in a cosy little house. Old but well-kept and dwarfed by the massive trees at the edge of the forest. I walk to her door and knock. She opens the door pretty quickly considering how late it is. Jess is a short, pear shaped woman with frizzy, light brown hair and the smallest hint of a Scottish accent. She seems surprised to see me. I can’t say I blame her. “Hey…Laura?”, she cautiously greets. “Lisa”, I reply back, “Sorry to bother you so late Jess but I need help or advice or anything, really”. She compassionately responds, “Of course. Come in, please. Sit down. Excuse the mess”. We both enter the house into a small living room.

“You call this a mess?” I respond. The place is immaculate save for some mail scattered across a coffee table. I suddenly remember why I’m there again and sit down on the sofa in a panic. “So, what’s the matter?”, she asks as she sits next to me. I really don’t want to explain the situation to her, but if I don’t, then why am I even here? So I explain, “So I was driving home from a really long day at work and I was very tired and it was dark and hard to see and I was going really, really fast and he just walked in front of my car and I didn’t have enough time to slow down and…You’ ”. Jess looks very concerned. “Is this man okay?”, she asks. “No”, I reply, trying and failing to hold back tears, “He’s dead. I killed him”. “So what are you going to do about it?”, Jess inquires calmly. “I…I don’t know”, I cry back through my hands covering my face, “What do you think I should do?”, I question as I take my head out of my hands and look at her. “Well, I would say that the best way to dispose of a body is to cut it up into manageable pieces with a bone saw and put them in garbage bags. It’s a less suspicious, easier to carry and it makes the body harder to identify, especially if you bury the pieces in different locations”, she explains.

I don’t even know how to process what she just said to me. It takes me a moment, but I begin to get angry. “Are you fucking serious? Are you making sick fucking jokes right now?”, I scream at her. She stands up and exclaims, “Hey, you’re the one who came to me for help”. She points to the entrance. “There’s the door if you don’t want it anymore”. I’m starting to think that she might be serious. I stare at that door, trying to figure out another way to fix this situation, but I just can’t think of anything. I don’t know if it’s the stress of the situation or if I’m just too tired, but in the moment this seems like the only viable option. I turn my gaze to Jess and sigh, “So what now?”. Jess smirks. “Okay then. Where did it happen?”, she asks. “just down the road”, I answer. She fires back, “In the woods?”. I nod. “Perfect. Okay. Let me just grab some things and we’ll be on our way”. She is absolutely terrifying in how casually she is reacting to this. I want to run away as fast as I can but I’m in too deep now. I’m her puppet now and she knows it. She comes back into the room holding a large duffle bag. “Alrighty. Let’s go”, she chants as she walks out the door. I follow suit.

It’s still pitch black outside, so Jess pulls two heavy duty flashlights out of her duffle bag and hands one to me. I turn it on. I shine it down the road and I can already see the car. The closer we get the more anxious I feel. “So Lisa, it’s been a while. How’ve you been?”, Jess asks me as if we’d just bumped into each other at the pasta aisle in the supermarket. I didn’t respond out of fear, anxiety and sheer disbelief that she was making small talk at a time like this. I think she understood my silence because she didn’t say anything else for the rest of the walk to my car. As soon as the body came into sight I began to feel sick. Jess squatted next to the body and examined it. “Ooh. You really ruined his day”, she exclaims. I look around with my flashlight. Everything is exactly the same as when I left. Thank God it happened in the secluded, empty part of town. “Well, let’s get to work”, I hear from behind me. I turn to see Jess standing over the corpse holding a bone saw. The sight of it turned my stomach and for a second I legitimately thought I was going to vomit. Jess must have seen the look on my face because she then put the saw back in her duffle bag. “Fair enough. It’s your first time doing this and it’s an area where people probably won’t be looking, so we can just do a simple burial”. I feel like my lungs are being crushed in a vice and every word she says is making it tighter. “Okay. I know a spot nearby where the soil is softest. Help me drag him”, she says, almost excitedly. Crank goes the vice again.

I’m already burnt out, and it takes all of my remaining energy to drag this body to the spot that Jess was talking about. It’s a small clearing, surrounded by long, thin trees on all sides and a dense canopy over us. It feels almost like a cage. Before I’ve even had a chance to catch my breath, Jess pulls two shovels from her duffle bag and hands one to me. How much stuff is in that damn bag? So we start digging. The movies make digging seem like a quick process but it is agonisingly slow. Every couple of minutes I’ll ask Jess if it’s deep enough and every time she says no. The way she says no becomes more and more resentful each time. Until finally, the hole is deep enough and we roll him in there. He crashes to the bottom with two or three thuds, as if we’d dropped a bag of oranges down there instead of a person. I fall back and lay in the dirt for a while, until I get a soft kick to my arm and I see Jess standing on top of me. “No rest for the wicked, love. When the evidence is laid to rest, so can you”, she snaps. I get up, despite every muscle in my body telling me not to, and I pick up the shovel again. Then we start burying.

Jess and I walk back to my car. “See? You’re a natural”, Jess chuckles. I open my car door to try and get out of there as soon as possible but Jess closes the door before I can get in. “Before you go, can I get your phone number?”, Jess requests. “No”, I react, “Absolutely not. I’m going to go home and forget that this night ever happened”. “Yeah, but here’s the thing”, she explained, “You now owe me a favour and I know exactly where to tell the police the body that you murdered is buried. So give me your phone number and we’ll do this again sometime”. I reach into my car’s glovebox and pull out a pen and notepad that I keep in there. I write my phone number on it and hand it to her. “Thanks”, she smiles back, “It’s been fun catching up with you Lisa. See you later. I’ll call you”. I reluctantly wave at her as she walks back up the road to her house. I climb back into my car and turn it on. I begin to drive home, only this time I drive much more carefully.