Keeping Score
Everyone in town agreed that Lake Convenience was haunted, and I knew what was actually buried beneath it. This was simply because I was someone buried beneath it—and I knew with who else.
And why.
No one could cite ther real reason it had been named “Convenience.” Most assumed the folklore was true. One story was that because of its slow, tapering shoreline, boats could slip in with ease. Or, alternatively, that it was because of this area’s weather conditions, in either summer or winter, in which the day air was unusually stable compared to lakes elsewhere. Even better, there was usually a light cloud cover.
Additionally, any rise in barometric pressure was very transient—overnight—followed by days of slowly falling pressures. There was always a light wind, and all these conditions conspired toward higher oxygen levels in the water which provoked exaggerations in the visible bait gyrations that drove fish to bite.
But as I lie in the bottom silt, rotting over time—with my compatriots—I—we—know the real reason this lake is “convenient.“ Below the silt sits dense clay, such that a weighted body anchored by ten feet of cable, would keep it from ever rising above the sediment to bob up for any witnesses, do-gooder Samaritans, or the authorities.
It’s where both the bodies and their forensic cases died; where both the bodies and their cases remained cold. When one thinks of murder, our state doesn’t rank high in either total number, which goes to California, or per capita, which is a three-way race among Mississippi, Alabama, and Missouri.
No, where I am, and in what state, isn’t typically associated with a lot of murders. It is, however, very high in missing persons. I should know. I am one of them.
I’ve been missing now for about two months. I wasn’t the first to be weighted down and planted at the bottom that rolls along as its substrate 32 feet below.
During the summer, my lake’s average temperature ranges from 65-75°F near its surface, but going lower soon encounters a drop to anywhere between 45-65°F. In the winters, my lake’s surface usually freezes, but below the insulating ice the temperature can be as high as 39°F. And although the body count pauses during this time, such a temperature is still an ideal refrigerated condition for a rotting body, stopping decomposition dead in its tracks (pun intended!) until the fall schedule once again turns up the thermostat.
And the introduction of new meat.
For the record, I’m an NFL fan and I support my team. Or, I did, until… I was driving into the stadium and all of the gates for incoming cars to park read “LOT FULL.” Still, diehard fans idled their cars in line to get in., hoping for the best. Many mounted their fake handicap placards, because a lot being full usually meant full for “regular” drivers. It was a favorite trick. The statistics on how many handicapped fans there are are quite lacking.
Truth be told, I was opening my glove compartment to retrieve my own fake placard when I noticed a gate off to the right had no such sign indicating the unavailability of parking slots, handicapped or otherwise.
Too good to be true, I thought. But I saw the other gates now were denying even handicapped cars. I say “handicapped cars,” as if it were the cars that were handicapped, because that is what the placards are for—the cars, not the handicapped people who need them.
Just see if a crippled and wheelchair-bound fan doesn’t get a ticket for parking in a handicap slot without the placard that identifies his car as handicapped!
The gate seemed suspiciously idle. A tall man—not dressed appropriately—not a single team color item on his person—smiled at me. He started waving for me to drive his way.
Why not?
I crossed the gate threshold and he handed me a ticket. “Thanks,” I said, and then, “say, where’s your colors, fella?”
“I don’t like your team,” he answered.
“My team? It’s not your team, too?”
He just smiled again, but it was forced. “Enjoy the game. May the best team win.”
It really was too good to be true. My parking was a slot right next to the elevator that rose directly to my stadium gate and section. How sweet was this? I pressed the number on the elevator directory but it stopped one floor shy. That’s when they came in.
These weren’t football fans. These guys were something else. Something out of a crime noir pulp magazine from the 30s. Hooligans in double-breasted suits, wide, wildly colored ties, and full brogue Oxford two-tone shoes.
“Nice shoes,” I told them.
These were my last words, and that’s embarrassing.
Into the lake I was thrown. Down I went thanks to the extra 150 of ballast. Deep I planted, thanks to the end of my line reaching the clay under the silt.
Now that I was good and dead, I looked around to see all of my fellow corpses in varied states of deterioration. The light wind above the lake did what it always did, engendering higher oxygen levels in our water which provoked exaggerations in the visible bait gyrations that drove fish to bite. Unfortunately, the bait was us, as sinews and swaths of muscle and skin frayed from our decaying bodies.
“Who were those guys in the elevators?” one corpse asked.
“I don’t know, but they’re not from our side,” said another.
Then all the bodies mustered patriotic sentiments for their bravado of posthumous appraisals of those who did the dirty work for others. Evil others. Unwelcome “visitors.”
“Fuck the Bears!” shouted one in a postmortem burst of reflexic bubble exhalation.
“And the fuckin' Packers!” said another.
“Yeah!” I agreed. “Fuck those Packers.”
We take our football seriously here. Unfortunately, so do our rivals, who will stop at nothing to trash talk our Vikings—or worse.
The amount of rival crimes is the same everywhere I guess. I’m thinking Lake Ponchartrain. I’m thinking the Everglades. But here it’s been escalating so much lately.
And not only in Lake Convenience. Lake Convenience is in Minnesota, the “Land of 10,000 Lakes.” Actually, it’s more like 11,842 of them. Lakes—just like mine. The dead could fill stadiums! And no one likes a tie. It’s like haunting your sister.