Bones on the Couch (short story, complete)

Bones on the Couch 

The first skeleton turned up in May on, I think, a Friday. I remember we were preparing to go out. Yvonne knew a place had great social distancing, so we could sit outside without a mask and look at the ocean while drinking cocktails.

We finished getting ready and came out of the bedroom and the skeleton was sitting there on the sofa.

"Who's that?" Yvonne said.

"I think it's my boss's father," I said. I knew he'd been sick.

"It can't stay on the couch."

It wasn't putrid or anything. No smell or scraps of flesh. Just clean bones, still attached together somehow, without any wires or ligaments. Maybe some sort of magnetism? When I gripped it, it just pulled apart, and I stacked it in the cupboard under the sink. The ribcage was the largest and most unwieldy segment, so I put the little bones inside it, the long bones around it to make a sort of flattish platform and placed the skull on top.

We had a nice time at the bar on the pier that evening, and I don't remember any skeletons for a while.

One turned up about a week later, on a stool in the kitchen. It was my brother's friend, an ER nurse, or at least that's what we decided after a brief debate. That skeleton fitted under the sink as well, but when two turned up the next day, I started having to stack them in the bathroom cabinet. One was my brother's garage mechanic – I don't know why I was getting my brother's – and one we weren't sure about.

By then, we were hearing about other people getting them. Most did as I did – I learned it was called 'disarticulation' – but a few people just left them where they were. "They get less noticeable after a while, " a work colleague said.

"It's a nine-day wonder," another said, "I bet they disappear after the election."

In August, our son Ian came to stay with us. He said his apartment was full of skeletons and he had to move out for a while.

"You'd think a young guy like Ian would have fewer skeletons," I said to Yvonne.

"I think he has a lot of heart, and that makes them stick around," she said. She was disarticulating our mortgage loan manager so she didn't look up. He fitted under the sink. They did tend to pack down after a while, and you could get more in each space.

She was right about Ian. A skeleton turned up the next day and after a lot of inquiry, we realized it was a Black Lives Matter protester who'd been run over in the streets in Portland, so clearly it belonged to him. Ian wouldn't disarticulate it, so it stayed in the bathroom, sitting on the floor and grinning up at the shower rail.

"It wasn't a nine-day wonder after all," I said to my co-worker, who had to move the bones of one of the secretarial staff out of his cubicle to sit down that morning. "It's still only August," he said. "Anyway, you're outliers here – both you and Yvonne. Born worriers. Most of us just get on with life. It's not like you can put a stop to it."

"Ian gets them as well," I corrected.

"He'll grow out of it," the co-worker said. "It's you I'm most worried about. You should take a vacation."

I didn't – it never seems to be the right time to take a vacation. There's always a crisis. Riots, police-involved shootings, COVID-19 travel restrictions. Middle East in an uproar, again. Climate refugees on boats in the Mediterranean. It's hard to keep up with the news sometimes.

We had a few more. Mostly Ian's, I think. He was no help and his tended to hang around the longest. Yvonne wouldn't acknowledge any of hers and I would put them in the cupboard under the sink for her. One day in late October, as I was leaving work, I got one in the passenger seat of the car.

I sighed and drove off, and by the time I reached home it had gone.

End