So first of all I wanted to express my condolences, and stop me at any time if there’s too much grief for you to listen. Charitably, I mean. I’d like you to listen charitably, because in light of, uh, recent events, I’m gonna need to come clean.
The raccoon. That was me. Or the raccoon’s body, I mean. I didn’t kill the raccoon. I just found it. Doesn’t matter where I found it. But anyway I admit that yes, I put it in the hallway next to Clarence’s door. I didn’t expect he’d vomit or anything like that. Just that’s the place I could get her to stand, the raccoon. There was a spider web there, a cobweb really, and it helped buoy the tail.
So yes. I put the dead raccoon in the hall. And if you’re thinking that implicates me for more breaches of etiquette then darn it, you’re right, and I hope you’ll consider my honesty as well as whatever else, making a deliberation. A punitive deliberation, I mean, because I understand leaving a dead raccoon in the office is wrong, and so is leaving three dead birds, a dead snake, and probably especially a dozen dead mice.
And the fox, I know you know by now but I have to come clean officially, the fox on your desk was my doing too. That one I did kill, by mistake. With my car. I felt so bad.
If I were you, and I’m not, and I know I’m not, boss, but if I were you I might ask me a little about my motivation, and if you did ask I’d tell you how I found all four of my grandparents dead, separately, and that since then I’ve found animals dead all the time, it’s just a thing about me. And somewhere along the line, I’d tell you if you asked, I guess I started putting the bodies places. So I’d feel like there was some meaning. That I was meant to find the corpses so I could move them. You know.
As a gesture.
But anyway. All this to say, boss, and once again, my condolences, I was responsible for all those dead animals. But not your niece. I promise, on the graves of each and every body I’ve relocated, you were the very first to find her on my desk.
Justis Mills is editor of First Stop Fiction and associate fiction editor of Cease, Cows. His work has been published somewhere, he’s pretty sure, and maybe also somewhere else. Find him at www.justisdevanmills.com.