I am safe.
This is what I tell myself.
I am safe and there is nothing in there.
Yet, my eyes find their way back to the closet, trying to see through the cheap wooden door to the very back. The darkest corner. Where it might be.
My memory is odd. I remember events that happened twenty, thirty years ago like they were yesterday; crisp, glossy magazine pages rather than the curling yellow newsprint they should be. I can remember almost everything that has happened in the last few days; even most of the words I have read stand out clear in my mind. But more than a month back things start to fade. Memories become brittle black things that fade to dust if I blow on them too hard.
My memories then take a slow, dark trip through the whorls of my brain, living completely apart from the conscious me for a time it would seem, before emerging like shiny pennies on the other side, welcomed back five or six years later.
My eyes turn on their own to look back at the closet door. It has been months since I’ve seen the back of that closet. Maybe a year. Maybe longer. It’s hard to keep track.
Is the troubling image that surfaced out of the soup of my mind like a slimy chunk of meat a memory or simply a flight of fancy?
When did I last look in the back of the closet?
My mind is telling me that among the relics of my childhood—crates of Hardy Boys books, never-worn rollerblades, a box stuffed with mouldering, threadbare stuffed animals—is a small form wrapped and double-bagged in heavy black plastic.
Heavy enough to contain fluids for a long time…
How long does it take for plastic to break down?
I sit on the edge of my bed, mattress sagging beneath me, and think back to the documentary on soap mummies I watched once. Bodies in anaerobic, moist conditions can sometimes become mummies, the fat transformed into something called adipocere. Young children and the obese are more likely to become soap mummies because of a higher concentration of fat.
Utterly fascinating.
However, more commonly, the bodies of those wrapped, double-bagged in heavy black plastic simply turn to sludge.
A soft touch to the side of the bag would be enough to tell which one it was.
A shiver of disgust.
Would it smell?
I sigh and stand, approaching the closet door with more trepidation than I have ever felt towards a closed door. I sniff the air and almost laugh to myself; whatever odours there were, I would have noticed long ago.
Wrapped and double-bagged in heavy black plastic.
It would hold the smells in.
Just a small package.
Whose child?
I rub the stubble on the side of my head, closing my eyes to revisit the memory. Real or no?
I’m almost tempted to leave the closet untouched; part of me would rather not know.
My mind flicks quickly through options: bury it in the yard (no, a dog might dig it up), throw it into a dumpster (no, no telling where my prints are on the bag)… I’ve watched too much crime drama. It’s making my normally precise mind stumble over itself.
One hand on the knob, a chip missing out of the side of it from the time I fell against the open door. There’s a matching divot in the wall next to the closet; the hinges never worked properly again.
One.
Two.
Three.
The door swings open with a creak and butts the wall, chip to divot, and I peer in.
My heart has stopped, or so it feels, when I see the black shape beyond. It takes a few breaths to realize that I’m staring at my own shadow, the sun behind my head casting a dark blob right where the body should be. A trick of the light.
Nothing more.
No child wrapped, double-bagged in heavy black plastic.
Nothing to dispose of. No law to fear.
I am blameless.
I am safe.
