A Cellarful of Nose - Future Shoes

not for himself but for a sweet friend who had passed.
It was deep into January, the ground too cold to dig even a
tiny grave. So the man placed Delores' body in a Ziploc bag,
inserted the Ziploc into a grocery bag, and placed the grocery bag
in box that had contained a pair of hiking shoes. This he set on a
shelf in the garage, until the weather warmed and a proper burial
became possible.
Then he forgot about it. Until a warm day in May, when he
opened the garage and smelled not the scent of lilac and
honeysuckle, but the thick stench of Lazarus.
Dismayed, he took the shoe box from its shelf. It was so bad,
he felt that if he buried it in the yard, the dog would dig it up
within five minutes.
In a moment of weak stupidity, he dropped the shoebox into
the plastic mini-dumpster behind the house. He would leave the
interment to Waste Management, Inc.
That was on a Thursday, a day marked by the dog being
unduly interested in the garbage can. On Friday, the man went
out, hoping to find the can emptied and his problem ended.
Instead he found, to his horror, a patch of flattened fur pressed
into the hot asphalt of the alleyway.
No doubt about it – that garbage can lid-sized oval of matted
hair was what was left of Delores. At that precise moment, the
boy appeared on the steps of the back porch. Horrified, the father
called to him to go back into the house.
"Why? What did I do?"
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