Garbage Mourning

I came straight from the funeral. My black suit is covered in grime. The jacket constricts my movements as I climb and crawl, search and scavenge.

I know she’s here, somewhere.

We buried an empty coffin today and said it was Kasey. But it wasn’t my little girl. Not so little anymore. She was so much like her mother.

Was.

Crows say ‘ark ark’ and wheel around as I disturb their feast, flying up into the blue sky above, then coming to land again in watchful repose over me and their fetid little kingdom: the garbage dump outside Charleton, where the crystal clear country air is clogged with the rotting scent of decay.

We produce a lot of trash for such a small town. I guess we need a place to dump our secrets.

This is the last place anyone saw Kasey. The last place Jarrod was seen too. That rotten fucking Bailey boy. The whole family is rotten, always has been.

The last time I saw Jarrod Bailey is when he knocked on our front door, flowers in hand, looking for Kasey. I saw him off, real quick, with a boot in his bum. No girl of mine would see a boy like him. Its not right. I heard his dad belted him when he got home too. For the same reason, reversed.

I don’t know why Kasey cried so much that night. Her mother would’ve known.

The only trace of them was their bikes, hidden in the forest surrounding the dump. Volunteers scoured the woods, but never found any sign of them. Was the only time my family and the Bailey’s had put aside our differences.

But as we all walked and called, something seemed off. They didn’t search hard enough, and lacked the desperation that crawled under my skin day by day. They knew something. Finally, the desperation found its way out my pores as realisation:

Jarrod wasn’t missing. He was hiding.

And he would only do that he was responsible for Kasey’s death. I told my suspicions to the cops, but they didn’t believe me. Not really. Too many Bailey connections.

They searched the perimeter of the garbage pile, but wouldn’t comb through. Not safe, they said. The Bailey’s don’t want their boy to face justice. I know it. I knew it would turn out like this the moment Jarrod laid eyes on Kasey.

His parents dared to show their fucking faces again at the funeral today, so my knuckles are raw, bloody. I search with one black eye and one blurred with stinging tears, but I still see clearly enough to find the truth among the dirty nappies, used condoms and leftovers from potluck lunches.

I’ll stay here as long as it takes, overturning trash, to find where he hid my little girl; searching for some sense of justice in the rotting pile of Charleton’s discarded shame and secrets.

I’ll find her, even if I spend my whole life in this town’s filth.