It took me several minutes to process what I was looking at. I don’t know how long I stood there, staring down at the contents of the box.
I could have sworn this was where I kept a jumble of shoes I don’t wear very often. Instead, I found myself looking at a skeleton.
It was perfectly clean, without any traces of flesh or blood, but it was definitely a human skeleton in my closet.
“Cindy!”
I had to call for my roommate a few more times before Cindy, just a little older than myself at age 86, came shuffling into the hallway where I remained rooted to the spot in front of our coat closet. I still couldn’t take my eyes off the skeleton, as though it might get up and walk away if I averted my eyes for even a second.
“What is it?” said Cindy as she made her way over to me.
I pointed down at the contents of the box.
“Oh, you found Nancy,” she said quite matter-of-factly.
I slowly turned my head to stare at her. “Nancy?”
“Oh, yes, Dr. Lawrence asked me to hold on to her for him. He’s going to show it to his Anatomy class, but the morgue wanted to get rid of it before his class was ready, so he just asked me to keep it for him. It’s just for a few days.”
Cindy looked back at me, her blue eyes innocent, as my brain scrambled to put all of this together. By the time I had finally succeeded, all I could manage to say was, “So you put her in our coat closet?”
“Yep. I just couldn’t resist. You know the old saying about having skeletons in your closet? Well now we literally have a skeleton in our very own closet!” She grinned broadly at me, clearly delighted at her own joke.
As I looked back down at the floor of the closet, all I could think to say was, “But where are my shoes?”
“Oh, I just tucked that box back in the far right corner.”
As I followed the line of her pointing finger, I found the familiar box with the much more familiar contents. So I dug out the sandals I had been searching for, pushed the box back into the corner, and replaced the skeleton in our closet.
“Cindy, have I ever told you what a morbid sense of humor you have?”
“Many times, but let’s face it, that’s why you love living with me.”
“I don’t love living with you as much as I hate living alone.”
“Be honest. Old Burt never left you any surprises like that, did he?”
“No, he certainly did not.”
“See. Living we me is so much more interesting!”
“That’s for sure.”
The end.