Page 4 of Best Served Cold
She shouldn’t have been thinking it, but at present time, after coming to the realization as to how strenuous the task at handwould truly be, Lee Holmes was beginning to regret working out earlier. “Fine,” she muttered. “Climb over whilst I grab the shovel. I’ll throw that over first along with the spray bottle. It’s easier to explain than body parts if anybody shows up.”
Her girlfriend laughed effortlessly, as if they had just stepped outside for margaritas, placing two gloved hands into the wiry fence as she found her footing towards the bottom of the metal grating just above the grass. “If anyone asks, we can just say we were trying to save money on a funeral.”
By the time Lee had returned, Morgan had already reached the other side of the fence, looking relatively pleased with herself, either from the joke, or the time in which it took to climb over, Lee wasn’t sure. “That’s not even remotely funny, Morgan. Why don’t you tell that joke to your detective mother? I’m sure she’d love that.”
“Perhaps on my deathbed,” Morgan responded, theatrically jumping out of harm's way as Lee threw the shovel and the bottle over the fence. “Okay, easy part over. Are you ready for this?”
Lee nodded, exhaling until all of the oxygen had left her body. “Ready as I’ll ever be,” she responded, finding her breath again when she opened the first box—her own leaking one. She covered her nose with her right arm, bending down to retrieve the trash bags with her left. Closing her eyes, she picked up what she could only assume to be the torso, hovering it over the cardboard box as she wrapped another two bags around it. If it wasn’t for the lack of food in her stomach after having already dispersed it into the toilet prior, she concluded that she would have likely thrown up along the grass at that very moment.
Moving out of the way a second time, Morgan could only watch as a large black bag was thrown over the fence with a grunt that could wake any neighbor in a one-mile radius; that is, if there were any. Lee, however, had chosen this place for a reason. The pair of them were nestled behind the cover oftrees, alongside a downtrodden path with no streetlights. In the daytime, Rosehill Cemetery could be perceived as rather picturesque, in a morbid sense of the word. At night, the cemetery was eerie incarnate, and, more importantly, closed to the public.
The act was replicated a total of five times. Upon the fifth bag, Lee Holmes wiped the sweat from her brow, and picked up the newly empty boxes, placing them back into the trunk, closing it behind her. “We should probably burn those boxes here afterwards, where it’s quiet,” she proposed whilst clutching onto the fence, using her last remaining strength to haul herself over it.
When Lee found herself on the other side of the fence, she was met by two gentle hands on each side of her waist, helping her down towards the ground. “That works for me,” Morgan said behind her. “We can worry about that later. Let’s just find the grave first.”
Having scanned the obituaries earlier, the pair had produced a reaction that was likely on the rarer side as far as reacting to obituaries go, uttering a “yes!” and a “thank God,” in unison. The feeling of relief came in the form of a seventy-two-year-old widow who had passed a few days prior. Her funeral had been held yesterday afternoon, making her grave the most recent of the bunch, allowing them to dig up fresh soil and replace it once their grotesque act had been carried out.
Leaning against the fence now for support, Lee regained her breath and stared directly into Morgan’s eyes, wondering if she could see through them and into her psyche, pulling out the parts of her that had made her do what she had done. “I think it best that one of us stays here with the bags whilst the other searches for the grave. We can’t be hauling these around without any clear direction and we also can’t just leave them here, either.Even if it’s pitch-black outside and the bags blend in, the smell alone could make them easily locatable.”
“Rock, paper, scissors?” Morgan offered, creating the snipping motion of scissors with a gloved hand. “Kidding,” she continued, reacting to Lee’s huff of disapproval. “I’ll stay here if you like. You go find our old gal Maggie.”
Neither option filled Lee with enthusiasm at present time, although, she supposed it was easier to explain trespassing than it was standing beside body parts, and so, she simply nodded and aligned herself with the closest path, walking down it with haste, her eyes focused not on the path ahead, but rather, the rows of graves alongside it, and more importantly, the names that were etched into them. The term ‘finding a needle in a haystack’ came to mind as she searched, her head turning side to side like a dance move in a nineties pop video as she scanned the graves from left to right.
Upon twenty minutes of repetition, Lee Holmes huffed in frustration and began devising a new plan when a fresher-looking white headstone caught her eye towards the far right-hand side of the path. “Please let this be it,” she whispered, as if the graves themselves might hear her and finally give her a break. Stepping onto the grass now, she walked a few meters towards the right, passing headstone after headstone, until she was standing before the fresh marble headstone of one Margaret Spence.
Chapter Four
Despite being able to see her breath, the physical exertion of carrying all of the trash bags to Margaret Spence’s grave had resulted in Lee Holmes expelling the black band hoodie she had borrowed from Morgan in order to cool down.
Wearing just a black T-shirt and equally black jeans now, having changed out of her red dress earlier, she wiped the sweat from her forehead and took a seat on the short patch of grass to the left beside Morgan, whom of which was currently shoveling away at the soil where Margaret Spence had been laid to rest. Morgan's denim jacket had been discarded simultaneously, revealing a white tank top underneath that highlighted the tattoos on her arms, even in the dark. “I can’t believe you didn’t think about wearing black, babe. You’re like a lighthouse navigating sailors to land right now,” Lee commented as she plucked out a few strands of grass from the ground.
Morgan Finch snickered, throwing dirt outside of the hole she was digging, adding to the growing pile on her right. “I wasn’t planning on taking my jacket off. This is just so fuckingexhausting. I can take my tank top off too if you think that it sticks out too much.”
Lee rolled her eyes as if Morgan was looking at her directly, lifting her knees towards her chin in order to get more comfortable. “I can’t believe that you’re flirting with me right now. I can only hope that ghosts aren’t real and that Margaret Spence doesn’t haunt the both of us for desecrating both her memory and her grave with your crude remarks.”
The sound of the shovel hitting wood spurred them both into motion, their conversation a thing of the past as Lee lifted herself from the ground and stood beside Morgan who placed the shovel down beside the newly formed mound of dirt with a satisfied exhale. “That was far deeper than I expected, and no, I’m not going to make a ‘that’s what she said’ joke about my own comment. No matter how much I want to.”
Wasting no time, Lee Holmes escorted herself to the closest trash bag, rolling it closer towards the open grave in preparation. “You technically just did. You just phrased it in a way that allowed you to make it without seeming like an insensitive asshole. Remove the rest of the dirt, please, so we can get this over with and go home.”
Home—the thought of going home, where everything had unfolded, made Lee feel ill, and yet at the same time, the idea of staying in the cemetary made her feel equally nauseous.
If it wasn’t for a certain type of behavior being unconventional, such as texting Natalie at 1:00am on her five-year anniversary with Morgan and asking her if she really could stay over, or walking into a hotel and checking in at the front desk potentially stinking of blood, she would remain in her emotional purgatory forever, between her home and the feeling she was terrified to face head-on. For now, she was simply riding a wave and hoping that it didn’t swallow her whole.
Morgan Finch did as instructed, crouching down as she leaned forwards into the dirt hole she had dug in order to drag the soil away with her gloved hands. Her breathing became deeper in unison with her girlfriend’s as Lee shifted another bag closer towards the grave. Each shift in the soil revealed more and more texture underneath—a mahogany wooden box with golden handles attached to the sides.
Uncovering the grave was like a morbid form of archeology, Lee thought, only an archeological dig that had been conducted hundreds of years too soon. Or perhaps, one that should never be conducted at all. “There it is,” Morgan observed, sweat beading off her forehead now as she pulled herself up from the ground. Retrieving her shovel now, she wedged it into one of the corners of the coffin and pulled. “Fuck, this is diabolical, even for me.”
As Morgan grunted her way through multiple attempts at prying open the coffin, Lee had taken it upon herself to roll all of the trash bags within a meter of the open grave. After many deep breaths to regain her composure, she made it her final mission to retrieve the spray bottle a few feet away from the grave, filled with the various oils that she had crafted to mask the smell. By the time the coffin had finally opened, Lee had practically emptied the bottle of oils into each of the respective bags.
Lee Holmes had expected to be met with another pungent smell as the casket lay open just a few steps away, and yet, to her surprise, her senses were filled instead with only the lingering scent of lemon and eucalyptus oil. Margaret Spence had yet to decay, her body still fresh, and if Lee didn’t know any better, she would say that the woman was merely asleep, a half-smile painted on her face. A wild-eyed Morgan stood firmly in place, her attention focused solely on what, or rather, who, lay inside the coffin. “Maybe we should say some words for Margaret after we’re through here.”
Morgan didn’t make any attempt to look away when she spoke, as if frozen in time, drenched in thought, and sweat. “Of course. I think we owe her that much,” Lee offered, as she watched her girlfriend exhale a sigh of relief at the confirmation. “I’ll start rolling the bags in when you’re ready.”
Sputtering into motion again not unlike a wind-up toy, Morgan shook her head. “Let me do it. I owe you that much, too.”
She moved herself over towards the bags before Lee could argue, positioning the first one beside the right-hand side of the coffin as she rolled it into the casket with a grunt. As each bag shifted out of Lee’s line of view, her body eased up bit by bit, the tension gradually loosening upon each of her joints as she allowed herself the gratification of an exhale.
When the act was brought to completion, Morgan retrieved the shovel a final time, moving the dirt with force, dragging each mound of soil in rapid succession towards its original space. With little to do except wait, Lee Holmes glanced at her watch, observing the time to now be a little after 2:00am.
