All you ever wanted was a nice, quiet life. You grew into a fine, upstanding adult, with a respectable job and everything. You moved into a house and made it your home, carefully choosing everything from curtains to dinner plates. After living there a couple of years, you decide to make some repairs and renovations, only to find that your house has a horrifyingly distasteful secret. Under the floorboards of your lovingly decorated home lay a pile of bones belonging to a small child, an old-fashioned, stiff-armed stuffed kangaroo with a ratty tangerine ribbon around its neck, and a large wad of plastic sheeting wrapped loosely around them. It’s obviously been here for years, maybe even decades. You didn’t put it there, but it’s your problem now. You wish you’d never even thought to replace the floor.
You’ve lived there long enough that the cops will probably think you killed that poor child. You could be dragged into an interrogation room in handcuffs, questioned for hours. You could be under suspicion of killing that child for weeks, months, possibly even years; because, let’s be honest, real life doesn’t work like the TV crime shows where they get everything figured out in two days. Your neighbors might mob your lawn, demanding you leave the neighborhood, or at best, divert eye contact and walk quickly in the opposite direction of you. Your life would never be the same again, even if you are eventually cleared one day. Instant Untouchable, just add water and boil. No, it’s better to just put the floorboards back and pretend that you never saw that body. After all, it’s been there so long, there’s probably no one left to miss it.
Time passes. You keep your secret. Maybe you don’t host many parties anymore, but no one is the wiser about the truth of what’s under your house. In your quiet time, the image of those petite bones lying next to that tattered kangaroo haunts you, your very own Telltale Heart beating against the ribs of your home. But beneath the loud thrumming in your brain you wonder what kind of person would kill a child and bury it in plastic wrap under your living room floor. What could that poor, innocent child have possibly done to deserve such a tragic fate? How could someone just move out of a house and leave the body of a murdered child behind for you to deal with? But you can’t worry about that child. It’s been dead for a long time, and you need to worry about yourself. Yes, it’s far better to let sleeping bones lie.
Eventually you marry, and begin to believe that you’ve finally gotten your dream of a nice, quiet life. But then your spouse wants to redo the floors and replace the ones that creak. You have to refuse, of course. No one can know about the poor dead child, especially now that you’ve lived here so long. They’ll definitely think you did it, or that there’s no way you didn’t know that it was here after all this time. No, the floor stays. Heart thundering, you tell your spouse that you love a creaky floor because it gives the house “character,” and hope they let the subject die.
But before the year is gone, that creaky old floor you “love” gives way, and now there’s a very large hole in the middle of your house. The bones are discovered, Your awful secret is laid bare for everyone to see, and you have nowhere to hide. All eyes are on you. Some of them pity you, believing that you couldn’t have known that there was a dead child buried under your house, you poor thing. But the people closest to you, the ones who’ve known you the longest, they can see it in your eyes: the pure, naked fear of being found out. They’re the ones who suspect you, who don’t trust you anymore. You might not have put that child’s body there, but you were certainly responsible for leaving it there. Your spouse, your family, all casting sidelong glances your way, wonder how long you knew about the body under your floor, why you never came forward before.
And look at that. You were right. You knew all along that if anyone ever found out about the body that your life would never be the same. You knew that people would look at you differently, suspect you of killing that child, of hiding it under your house. You even insisted that the floor never be replaced, long after it should have been, so you must have put the body there. The police and reporters swarm you and your home, taking photos, getting statements, inspecting everything you’ve ever touched. All you ever wanted was a nice quiet life in a nice home. You didn’t ask for this mess. You don’t deserve any of this. You could have had no way of knowing that your floor would give out and a body would be discovered. But now it’s your problem, and everyone thinks you did it. You were right. Sleeping bones should be left to lie.
Thalia Huntley 