The Piggy Back
A married couple had been fighting a lot and were very aggressive with each other and it looked like they were going to get divorced. However the wife discovered she was pregnant and for the sake of the baby they decided to give the marriage another try. The boy was born and the family had a short period of tranquillity but before long the old hostilities resurfaced and the father and mother were fighting all the time.
One night when the boy was about 5 years old and they had put him to bed the couple got into an enormous row and in a fit of rage the father put his hands around his wife’s neck and choked the life out of her. When he eventually realised what he had done he began to panic, he knew he had to get rid of the body.
He bundled the body into the boot of his car and as dawn was breaking he drove out of town to a swamp, he took the body from the car, but rigor mortis had started to set in and it was difficult to carry her so he slung her across his back, like giving her a piggy back and waded out into the fouls smelling swamp were he let her go and watched the stiff hands and wretched face recede into the murky swamp water.
The man went home and cleaned up and got in the shower but he couldn’t get rid of the foul stench of the swamp that made him sick to his stomach. Now how hard he scrubbed or how much he showered it followed him wherever he went. As the days passed the boy became anxious for his mother and asked all kinds of question the father told him his mother had gone to stay with relatives.
One day the man noticed his son was looking at him in a strange way, the smell was as strong as ever. Every time he approached his son he recoiled in horror, he wouldn’t let him touch him. Eventually he walked into his child’s room as he was playing on the floor.
‘Son, is there something you want to say to me?’
‘Yes, father’
‘Is it about your mother?’
‘Yes’
‘What is it?’
‘Why is mammy’s face so pale?’
What do you mean?’
‘And why have you been giving her a piggy back all day?’
