Dirt

This story contains mature themes such as death, grief, and handling of human remains. However, the protagonist explores loss, guilt, and emotional trauma more than graphic content. Reader discretion advised.

The first time I buried a body, I did it for love. The second time, I did it for justice.

I used to think the rich had it easy. I was mistaken. Wealth could build walls, buy silence, and erase problems—but it could never mend a broken heart.

Let me pose a question. If a man has everything but love, does he truly have anything at all? And if he tries to steal the love of others, is he merely lonely, or is he a criminal?

Thoughts like these churned in my mind as I stared into the four-foot hole I had spent all morning digging. It should have been six, but the Arizona sun was merciless, and it wasn’t as if I truly believed I’d get away with it. Still, leaving the body to bloat and rot under the sky felt… wrong. Even for a murderer.

I wiped a filthy hand across my brow, smearing sweat and dirt into my skin. The spade in my hands was as warm as the sun at my back, the metal slipping in my grip. I could already hear the flies crawling over the creases in the black plastic to the right of my boots. The sound traced unease up my spine.

I did not kill James Mallison. I never lifted a hand against him. His own greed, his own corruption, had led to his demise. I merely took what was left of him, stuffed his cooling corpse into a bag, and drove him across state lines to bury him where he belonged.

In the wasteland next to Dallas Cunningham.

Somewhere beneath the cracked desert stones, beneath brittle weeds and dust-choked fossils, lay my wife. Her beautiful brown hair long since claimed by the earth, her betraying brown eyes shut forever.

Later, in a Philadelphia interrogation room, they asked me why I did it.

“My wife perished from a sickness that gnawed at her mind. She wanted to be buried under the stars, in an open space. Maybe I never deserved her. Or maybe James Mallison did. Either way, they were meant to rest together—buried beneath the dust of their own undoing.”

I used to sit by our bed at night, watching her sway through the doorway, glassy-eyed and lost in a chemical haze. It became easier, over time, to tell myself that if she wasn’t happy with me, then maybe she was happy without me.

So I would press a cold cloth to her fevered skin, whispering against her ear.

It was one of these nights that she stopped me.

“Douglas. I’m leaving you.”

I should have felt torn, or lost at the very least. But instead, I stared at her as she stood balancing on stilettos, the ghost of the woman I once knew. The resignation that had consumed me only months before now washed over me like the night air.

“I know, baby.”

She had been leaving me for a long time. It was only on that night that she’d finally said it aloud.

Two weeks later, she was in the morgue. Unclaimed. It had been raining that day. Fitting, I thought. Rain feels like falling stars on your skin.

Before she left me, she used to take me to a mountain in Arizona. We would pack a small picnic, heaping the back of my truck with blankets and pillows. She would trace constellations with her fingertip, naming them as if they belonged to her.

Those moments were what drove me across the country, the body of a man under tarps in my trunk. I had turned up the radio and let the country drift out the windows as I replayed the memory of her smile, making the miles pass like minutes.

I had loved her more than she loved me. I knew it even on the day I slipped a ring on her finger. I knew it when she laughed, her voice echoing in my ears like a thousand tiny bells from heaven. I knew it when she whispered she loved me under the stars. Not a lie—only what she believed to be true.

As she slept in my arms, I could feel her slipping away, even in her dreams. And into the darkness, I would whisper, I miss you.

The holding cell was cold like those nights, the metal bench beneath me, hard and unyielding. The handcuffs were a new touch, though.

They led me through hallways filled with people who did not care to glance at me. I didn’t mind. They had lives to attend to. I’d once had one, too.

For hours, I sat in that wooden-backed chair, the weight of justice pressing down on the back of my neck. The judge looked as tired as I felt.

The jury filed back into the room. I hadn’t noticed they had even left. Had they been gone for minutes? Hours? Time was as meaningless as the money of James Mallison.

The courtroom quieted as the judge called for order.

“Having considered the verdict of the jury, the court now imposes sentence.”

The jury shifted in their seats, eyes refusing to stray toward my chair. In a way, I pitied them—forced to play God to a man who didn’t believe in one.

“Douglas Cunningham, on the charge of first-degree murder of Dallas Cunningham, this court finds you guilty. On the charge of second-degree murder of James Mallison, you are also found guilty. On the charge of mishandling human remains, you are found guilty.

“The court hereby sentences you to life imprisonment without the possibility of parole.”

The judge paused and looked up from her papers, her voice steady but expectant.

“Mr. Cunningham, do you have anything you wish to say?”

I rose from my seat. The attorney beside me barely spared me a glance. I wondered if it was guilt he was feeling.

The moment I met the judge’s eyes was the beginning of the rest of my life.

So, I smiled.

“I am free, Your Honor.”