Uncollected Blood

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Authors: Daniel J. Kirk
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bag, does her business and keeps on moving. Only then it starts to smell. She gets off the interstate and lucks into asphalt-less ground just off of 295.
    No, that wasn’t it. Jeff could tell there was something a little more to be concerned about, whatever was in that bag seemed important.  She seemed to get her bearings as if trying to remember the exact spot she buried it. Then she took off with the subtly of the Apollo missions.
    Jeff considered another episode of Law and Order but his hand had already removed the chain on his door and he was hobbling across the street.
    He could still smell the exhaust from the woman’s battered red hatchback. What was left of the cartilage in his knees ached as he braved the short incline off the street into the ditch. Level ground was welcoming though slippery. He felt his shoes slide a little on the muddy grass beneath and then he saw where she had dug.  There had been no effort to conceal it. The woman must not have thought anyone would venture off the street in this area.
    Jeff hadn’t owned a shovel in fifteen years but he wanted one now as his arthritis reminded him he was no young pup. His digging days were over.  He kicked at the loose dirt instead, working his way until he felt something unearthly beneath the clumps of grass and mud. His body popped. A moan forced out of his stomach as he knelt and pulled the object out of the ground.
     
    The bag was purple and an imitation of velvet, like the kind liquor pretending to be fancy came in. It had a drawstring that was pulled as tight as could be and then knotted to where Jeff Simms’ years of experience knew to get a pair of scissors rather than trying to pick it open.
    As he foraged through his kitchen cabinetry he imagined what could be in the bag. He hoped it wasn’t shit. Jeff knew all about incontinence. He still couldn’t bring himself to wear the adult diapers his children kept sending him to ‘help out.’
    People had so many medical problems these days. Jeff couldn’t assume a woman of her youth would not be forced to make an embarrassing roadside stop. And if that was the case then Jeff was the jerk for digging it up. But the bag hadn’t felt mushy aside from the obvious mud clinging to it. Instead there were hard forms within.
    Jeff remembered not to run with the scissors once he found them in his junk drawer, however his trembling hands were hazardous enough. He dropped the scissors as soon as he clipped the knot. The bag immediately pursed open and with a soft shake Jeff watched the contents roll out onto his kitchen table.
    The sight registered in an instant but Jeff did not gasp or sigh. He just stared, wondering if he was really that senile. He tried to imagine the story behind the woman in the car and the reason she stopped here just outside his home and buried such a thing.
    He tried to remember life wasn’t like television, that there often times wasn’t any justice, and perhaps this woman had done the wrong thing to the right person and this was the last bit of evidence to link her to an unfair case in court system which would not listen to the reasons.
    No , Jeff knew he was senile. These were not human bones. He was sure of that, for all he knew they were chicken bones that had stunk on the woman’s drive and she just finally had to get rid of them. But then why did she put them in a bag and bury them. She could’ve tossed them anywhere. Every gas station has a trashcan.
    Occult sacrifice.
    No, pet. Just a pet.
    Jeff liked the simple idealism of his final thought. It was a dead pet that another pet kept digging up in the yard so this woman took what she could get and drove it miles and miles away and just picked a spot she knew her dog would not sniff out and dig up again.
    Jeff started to shovel the bones back into the bag when his knee popped.
    He shrieked as his arm swatted at the table for support. The bones scattered about the room and with a whine Jeff rolled on the floor. The pain was

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