Satan's Dollar Store & other stories

The Finder

I have a knack for these things. If I don't find dead bodies by accident, I find them on purpose. I can tell where the bones are.

It's not like I have visions or anything like that. It's not a "knowing" like a psychic claims to have. There are no psychics. Don't be ridiculous.

No, really. I've been accused of that kind of thing. Sometimes people get suspicious because wherever I go, there's another one, but it's not like that.

There haven't been that many. I tend to exaggerate.

Maybe it's because I want attention. I never got enough of that. Never could. Like a boy crying wolf I'm on the cellphone. Hey, I found another one.

Police departments know my name. Now I have this tracking device I lug around. Just to put them at ease. They know I had nothing to do with it, but, like I said, just in case.

One saturday I was driving around the hills. I like driving around the hills, okay? And I pull over to the side of the road to take a piss. I climb down the slope a bit, hide behind some bushes. What do you know? Dead body.

No, I didn't pee on the guy.

He was naked, no bruises, no wounds, no nothing. Later the cops said he'd been there for at least twenty-four hours, and since I got my ankle thing, they knew it wasn't me.

Another time I was just taking out the trash. Really. Hauling my garbage out to the dumpster in the back behind my complex. Open the lid. Body.

That one was pretty disgusting.

You'd think it'd happen more often. I mean, what are the odds? People are pretty particular about where they die, it seems. Or wherever they get dumped. People who get killed get dumped way out of the way a lot of times. Those are the kind of places I like to go, so that's a reason why I find them. Most people don't go way out of the way. They've got better things to do.

Not me.

Maybe I go looking for them. I tell myself I don't but maybe I am lying. When I was four I found my cat dead under the porch. It was interesting. How'd he get there? How'd he die?

Since then I keep my eyes peeled.

Never let a day go by without finding something dead.

It heightens the senses. Makes you think twice about life.

One day I'm standing by the overpass. Suddenly this bus comes plunging down. Bam.

There's ones that get hurt and ones that die. I was in a plane crash once so I know what that is like.

There are lots of dead people where I'm from. We got fields just full of them.

Those don't count. Anyone can find them just by showing up. I'm talking about the ones that haven't been properly disposed of yet.

I think it's seventeen or eighteen now. I found one once and she was still alive. She'd been tied up, left for dead in the middle of freaking nowhere. Saved her life I guess.

I keep thinking maybe I will find another one like that someday.

Makes it all worthwhile.

No, it doesn't bother me.

I'm a finder.

People get lost sometimes. They're out there and no one knows.

I think about the ones I haven't found yet.

They're out there, and they're waiting.