The Cracked Couch

            by Daniel Moreno

 

“I hate coming down here.”

“What? Why?”

“I don’t know.” Matthew’s voice bounced around the dingy hallway as the churning sound of the boiler hummed softly from his left. “It’s just kind of creepy.”

Elizabeth turned around and shot him a sarcastic scoff from the bottom of the staircase. “Okay, Shaggy,” she laughed, and added, “Would a Scooby Snack help?”

Matthew rolled his eyes and watched Elizabeth disappear into the darkened costume room. He slowly descended the staircase into the A-Building’s large windowless basement.  He turned and stood warily under the doorframe, staring into blackness.

“Beth?” This time his voice sounded muffled, dampened by the many racks of clothing and costumes that were invisible to him. He ran his hands along the wall in search of a light switch, all the while keeping at least half of his body in the partially lit hallway. Finally his fingertips met the small plastic switch, and he gratefully flicked it up, flooding the room in starchy yellowish light.

Elizabeth had her back to Matthew at the other side of the room. She was humming dully while thumbing through a large rack of moldy old business suits.

“Beth, come on,” Matthew said from the doorway as Elizabeth zipped from rack to rack. “We didn’t come down here to steal shit from the drama department. Ms. Carr wants us to find a desk we can use.”

“Okay, okay.” Elizabeth tore herself away from a box of shiny plastic jewelry she had found on the floor, and scuttled into the hallway, shutting off the light and closing the heavy metal door behind her.

The pair continued down the cold cement hallway, all the way into the prop room. The sound of their footsteps rang out across the expansive room. In the center was a mass of old furniture, signs, and other various odds and ends from previous school productions. The edges of the room were also lined with numerous objects, all covered in thick layers of dust and delicate wispy cobwebs.

“You go that way,” Matthew said, pointing to the left. “Yell if you find anything.”

Elizabeth set off, stepping over stacks of old pipes and wood planks that dotted the rectangular path encompassing the larger piles of props. Unfortunately almost everything she came across that mildly resembled a desk looked ready for the incinerator. She turned off the path and awkwardly made her way into the mass. Finally she came across a quaint little desk that looked like one meant for writing letters or perhaps putting on makeup.

“Found something,” she called out.

“Me too,” Matthew’s voice sounded out to her right. “Come take a look.”

Elizabeth ducked under a “Seniors Xing” sign and around a few dressers before she met Matthew.

“Yeah, um, that’s a couch,” she teased, looking at the wilted and somewhat stained sofa.

“Yes, thank you.” Matthew rolled his eyes. “But where the hell did it come from?”

“I don’t know.” Elizabeth shrugged her shoulders and looked around the room. “Where does anything come from down here?”

“No, no.” Matthew shook his head. “I came down here with Emma yesterday. We spent like an hour looking for a couch and all we found was this gross little futon.”

“Maybe you just didn’t see this one. I mean, it’s in the middle of the fucking jungle in here.”

“Maybe,” Matthew said unsurely. “But I don’t think we would’ve missed this one. I mean, look at it,” he said, putting his hand onto one bulky arm of the oversized piece of furniture.

“Well maybe someone took a trip to the Salvation Army or something. That’s probably where we get half this junk from anyway.” Elizabeth turned back toward her find. “Come on, I found you a desk.”

v         v         v

“Oh my God, why am I coming down here again?”

“Shut up, you know you love it,” Elizabeth teased, setting the desk she had found at the top of the staircase after having lugged it out from the maze of props.

As she pushed the desk along the floor and out of the walkway, Matthew led Emma back down the staircase and through the hall.

“I still can’t believe we missed a whole couch.” Emma said as they entered the prop room with Elizabeth breathlessly catching up. “I mean, we were looking forever.”

“I know, that’s what I said.” Matthew set off along the right edge of the room. “Come on, it was over here.”

After stumbling over a few bowling pins and an old T.V. stand, the three of them reached the old couch.

“Okay, this was definitely not here yesterday,” said Emma. “I know I looked here.”

“Whatever, it’s here now.” Elizabeth leaned against the arm of the couch. “Do you want it or not?”

“Hell yeah, I want it.” She hunkered down and lifted one end up off the floor. “It’s a million times better than that crappy old futon.”

“Hold on, hold on,” Matthew said, scanning the many pieces of furniture that boxed them in. “We can’t just throw this thing out of this mess. We’re going to need to get a few more people to help.”

“Yeah, okay.” Emma slowly lowered the couch back to the ground.

After a few moments of silence and awkward glances, Emma threw up her hands and said, “Well, I guess I’ll go.”

A few minutes of waiting was enough to make both Matthew and Elizabeth impatient. Matthew sat down on the arm of the couch, twiddling his thumbs in silence. With a great heaving sigh, Elizabeth fell back into the couch, only to jump back up again.

“What’s wrong with you?” Matthew laughed.

“That is the least comfortable couch I have ever sat on.” Elizabeth twisted her face in mock-pain while cradling her butt with her hands.

“Oh, don’t be such a baby.” Matthew rolled off the arm of the couch and onto the seat. “Ow… Jeez, you’re right,” he said, squirming uncomfortably. “Feels like someone put rocks in here or something.”

“Take the cushions off,” Elizabeth said. “Maybe something got caught underneath.”

Matthew stood up and tugged at the cushions, but they were stuck fast.

“They won’t come off,” he said, moving his hands from the back of the cushions to the front.

“What?” Elizabeth stepped forward and took hold of the worn fabric. “Look, they’re definitely supposed to be removable.” She lifted the front end of one cushion up slightly, revealing a very sloppy looking seam dotted with loose threads.

“Looks like someone tried to sew them on,” Matthew said, releasing his grip and straightening up. “Leave it, someone obviously wanted those to stay on.”

“Are you kidding?” Elizabeth grabbed a rusty pair of scissors from a large glass jar to her left and started snipping away at the threads. “No one’s going to sit on this thing the way it is now.”

She cut the thread away from under the cushions, all the way to the end, then tossed the scissors back into the jar. She leaned down to sweep away some dust and loose thread, then firmly grasped one cushion with each had and pulled.

Emma heard Elizabeth’s scream from the other end of the basement. She hesitated to give the two helpers she had brought a bewildered shrug, then turned and sprinted the length of the hallway.

“Beth?” Emma called out. “Beth? Are you okay?”

She fought her way through teetering stacks of chairs and precariously perched lamps, closer toward Elizabeth. Finally the back of the sofa came into view. Elizabeth stood shaking violently, her back to Emma, her hands over her mouth. Matthew was doubled over on a small wooden chair, his face masked behind his trembling fingers.

Emma slowed her approach to her friends, seeing a wad of stuffing and a cushion on the floor next to the couch. As she neared the back of the couch, she asked, “What the hell hap—” Suddenly she gasped and jumped back, quickly looking away from what lay underneath the discarded seat cushions.

There, surrounded by a mass of loosely packed stuffing, lay a still, pale corpse. It was positioned on its side, enveloped in a thin papery hospital gown. White, wispy hair fell across its wrinkled, lifeless cheeks. The entire body seemed completely devoid of even the slightest bit of color.

The two freshmen Emma had brought down to help entered the prop room and began to make their way into the center of the room.

“No.” Emma turned to face them. “Get Ms. Carr.”

The two exchanged annoyed eye rolls and slowly sauntered back into the hallway.

“Now!” Emma screamed, causing them to turn and give her a vicious glare.

v         v         v

“And you said it just ‘appeared’ here?”

“Yes.” Matthew’s voice quivered as he looked down at his feet.

He, Elizabeth, and Emma were sitting in one of the classrooms on the ground floor of the A-Building. An officer had been questioning them for about twenty minutes while six more policemen were busy searching and taping off the entire basement.

“You’re sure you didn’t just miss it when you were looking down there yesterday?” the officer asked Matthew and Emma.

The two nodded slowly.

“Okay,” he said, getting to his feet and scribbling a final note onto his clipboard. “Well, we want to thank you kids for cooperating with us. We know you must be pretty shaken up, but you’ve got nothing to worry about.” He sounded as though he was reciting something as boring and mundane as a shopping list, not trying to comfort three high school students who had just stumbled across a dead body.

“Thank you very much, Officer Morris,” Ms. Carr said, standing up and following him over to the doorway.

With an empty smile and a sharp nod, he left the room.

The three of them sat there in silence. Other than Emma’s occasional sniffle, the gentle ticking of the wall clock was the only noise in the room.

“My mom’s coming soon,” Elizabeth broke the cold, heavy silence. “She said she can take you guys home.”

“What the hell?” Matthew burst out. “What the hell was that down there?”

Emma rocked back and forth silently in her chair, her hands closed tightly between her knees. After a few moments pause, she said quietly, “They said they didn’t know where it came from.”

“But why the fuck was it down there?” Matthew’s voice faltered as he put his elbows on his knees and covered his face.

Elizabeth was holding herself, shivering. After another long pause of listening to the ticking clock, she said, “They don’t know.”

v         v         v

Matthew looked at his watch. Almost midnight. He rolled over in bed, unable to shake the sight of the corpse from his mind. He reached behind himself and grabbed the television remote from his bedside table. He switched on the T.V. and turned the volume down.

The screen showed a middle-aged man in handcuffs being walked through a swarm of press. Camera flashes lit up the screen as the man was bombarded with microphones and ravenous members of the media.

 “…officers found several pounds of smuggled cocaine.” the news anchor said as the camera switched back to him. “Morris denied any knowledge of the drugs, yet many of his colleagues are now coming forward to say that they indeed knew he was involved in a smuggling ring.”

“And in local news,” another news anchor said as the camera cut to her. “Three high school students found a body this afternoon, while searching for a—”

Matthew quickly pushed the power button after fumbling with the remote. He rolled back to face away from the television. After a few hours of tossing and turning, he finally forced himself to sleep.

v         v         v

“Did you watch the news last night?” Elizabeth asked slowly. She was sitting on Matthew’s bed, flipping through the T.V. channels.

“Yeah,” Matthew said, spinning his chair away from his computer and toward Elizabeth. “But only for a second. I didn’t really want to watch.”

“How much did you hear?” Elizabeth asked, turning to face him.

Matthew shrugged.

“You should have watched it all.” Elizabeth flipped off the television and scooted closer to Matthew. “It might’ve made you feel better.”

“Why?”

“Well, it turns out that the…” She hesitated. Then, “The body… well it came from a morgue.”

“What?”

“Yeah, that’s what they said. They identified it as this old woman who’d been dead for like, seven weeks.”

“Jesus,” Matthew said. “And that would make me feel better, why?”

“Well, I don’t know. I mean, it made me feel better to know that somebody didn’t kill her and put her down there. I mean, she was already dead at least.” Elizabeth gave a nervous shrug, then looked down at her toes.

“Yeah, I guess.” Matthew turned back to his computer.

“Did you see the story right before it?” Elizabeth asked, lying back onto the bed.

Matthew shook his head absentmindedly, keeping his eyes glued to his computer game.

“My God, you missed everything.” Elizabeth said in an exasperated tone. “Remember that cop who was questioning us? He got arrested.”

“What?” Matthew paused his game and turned around again.

“Yeah, apparently he lied on his taxes or something. But that’s not even the best part. When they were searching his house for records or whatever, they found like three pounds of coke.”

“Oh, my God. I did see that.” Matthew said, jogging his sleepy memory of the night before. “And then they said a bunch of other cops started saying that he was a drug smuggler or something.”

“Yeah,” Elizabeth said, nodding. “Isn’t that crazy?”

Matthew turned back to his game a started playing. After a few minutes he asked, “Do they know where it came from?”

“What? The coke?” Elizabeth asked dully. “I don’t know. Probably from Cuba or something.”

“No,” Matthew said slowly. “The… body.”

“Oh.” Elizabeth sat up and furrowed her brow. “No, I don’t think they said. They just gave her name and showed a picture of her. She was terminally ill, lung cancer, I think.”

“What else did they say?”

Elizabeth racked her brain for a moment. “Not much. At the end of the report they interviewed one of the cops who went down to search the basement. He said that after they found out it wasn’t homicide case they decided to hold off on the investigation. Something about ‘the department’s priorities,’ or whatever.”

Matthew sat in silence for a few moments, taking in everything his friend had just recounted. “Do you remember her name?”

“I think it started with a B. Barbara, or Brenda. Why?”

Matthew didn’t answer. Instead he closed his game and opened up a web browser. He typed in “Berkeley High School” and “corpse” into a search engine and hit the return key.

“What are you doing?”

After clicking on an article, he scrolled down on the page, scanning the screen for a name.

“Beatrice Allen,” Matthew said.

“Oh yeah, that’s right,” Elizabeth said nodding. “Why do you care so much?”

“I just want to know why someone put her down there.” Matthew opened a new window and typed in “Berkeley” and “morgue.” He clicked on a link that led him to a map of the East Bay. An arrow pointed to a small dot, which was labeled “Contra Costa Coroner – Morgue,” with a number and address underneath.

            Matthew whipped around in his chair and grabbed his phone from its hook. He dialed the number listed on the screen and put the phone to his ear.

            “What are you doing?” Elizabeth repeated.

            Again, Matthew left her question unanswered. Instead, he waited silently, listening to the phone ring. After about six rings, a weary voice answered.

            “Yes, hi,” Matthew said. “I just recently had my mother taken to your… establishment, and I wondered if there was any way that we could… see her. You see, we ran into a bit of financial trouble and had to postpone the funeral service, but things are back on track now and my sister and I would like nothing more than to see our mother one last time before the cremation… Allen… Yes, two L’s and an E… First name, Beatrice.”

            “What the hell are you doing?” Elizabeth hissed.

            “Thank you so very much,” Matthew said, putting a finger to his mouth to shush Elizabeth. “Yes, I think I would like to come by as soon as possible. Yes today would be fine. Thanks again. Bye-bye.” With that Matthew hung up the phone and returned it to the hook.

            “Are you crazy?” Elizabeth gawked at Matthew as he stood up and grabbed his keys. “Hello? Talk to me, please!”

            “Look,” Matthew said, looking away from the address on the screen and into Elizabeth’s eyes. “I’m going to see her. I just need some closure, and for some reason I think this is how I’m going to get it.” He turned back to his computer and finished copying down the address and directions. He slowly turned back to Elizabeth. “You’re coming, right?”

            She gave a slow, steadying sigh. “Of course.”

            “Come on, you know you’ll love it.”

v         v         v

            “Excuse me… Excuse me.” Matthew raised his voice slightly.

            A stout, unkempt looking man slowly spun his chair around behind the counter. He wasn’t a day over thirty-five, yet gray stubble peppered his tired, waxy face, and the graying hair atop his head was thinning considerably, making him look closer to fifty. As he came about to face Matthew, he propped his feet up on the desk in front of him and lazily removed one of the small white headphones from his left ear.

            “Can I help you?” His voice had an impatient drawling tone, one fitting of a man who’d been working an all day shift at a morgue.

            “Yes, hello,” Matthew spoke up from the other side of the counter. “I had called a few hours ago about seeing my mother.”

            “Oh, yeah, I remember,” the man said. He paused to look Matthew up and down, then added, “You’re a hell of a lot younger than I’d pictured.”

            “Yeah, we both get that a lot,” Elizabeth piped in. “Good genes, I guess.”

            “Right,” the man said, cocking in eyebrow. “How’d you spell that last name of yours again?” he added, taking his feet off the desk and turning to face a computer.

            “A-L-L-E-N,” Matthew recited, as the man hunted and pecked letter by letter.

            “Okay, room eight, end of the hall.” The man said, leaving the computer and replacing the headphone in his left ear.

            After a moment of hesitation, Elizabeth spoke, “You aren’t going to show us?”

            Rolling his eyes impatiently, the man said, “Look miss, I’ve been here since four in the morning. The T.V. in here is busted, the windows don’t open, my boss hasn’t shown since yesterday, and I haven’t eaten anything more than Doritos since last night.” He paused to draw a breath, lean back in his chair, and turn the volume of his iPod up. “So, if you don’t mind, I think I’ll stay here.”

            Elizabeth’s mouth hung slightly agape. Just as she was about to speak Matthew interjected.

            “Ok, that’s fine sir.”

            The man tossed his keys onto the counter. “Room eight, end of the hall,” he repeated.

            Elizabeth grabbed the keys from the plastic countertop and forced a disdainful smile. She then whipped around and walked quickly down a long narrow corridor, with Matthew following closely behind.

            “Can you believe that guy?” Matthew said in a whispered giggle as soon as they were out of earshot.

            “I know! What a jerk. I can’t believe you let him talk to me like that.”

            “Oh… I meant can you believe that he just let us come in here by ourselves…”

            Elizabeth threw Matthew and angry glare and roughly pushed the door at the end of the corridor open. As the stepped inside, they were met with a wall of large, stainless steel drawers, arranged into a grid.

            “Here she is,” said Elizabeth, after scanning the labels on each drawer.

            Matthew stepped forward as the Elizabeth slipped a small key into the lock and pulled the drawer open. A black body bag met their eyes. Matthew slowly drew his hand up to the top and grabbed the zipper tightly. Elizabeth took a deep breath, grabbing Matthew’s free hand.

            “Oh… my…” Matthew looked down into the opened body bag. “What…”

            The bag was completely filled with countless plastic sacks of a stark, white powder.

            Elizabeth picked up one of the plastic bags. “Is this…?”

            “Cocaine,” Matthew finished.

v         v         v

            Back in the car Matthew said, “We’ve got to call the someone… the police, call the police or something.”

            “And tell them what? That we lied our way into seeing the corpse of this old lady and found of ton of coke where her body’s supposed to be?”

            “Well, we’ve got to tell someone!” Matthew raised his voice as he sped off down the highway.

            “Okay,” Elizabeth said, taking out her cell phone. She let out a long, slow breath. “I’ll call the police.”

v         v         v

            “Police reopened the case after receiving an anonymous tip that a large stash of cocaine had been found where the woman’s body should have been. The owner of the morgue, Gregory Morris, was taken into custody after it was discovered that he was related to Officer Joseph Morris. Officer Morris is already facing two counts of fraud as well as possession and solicitation of illegal substances. The head of the police department says that, as far as they’ve been able to tell, Joseph and Gregory were both involved in a smuggling ring. It has been determined that, after accumulating a large amount of cocaine, Gregory Morris emptied a body bag in his morgue and filled it with cocaine. He then hid the body in an old sofa, which he transferred to his brother. It has also been discovered that Joseph had been a member of the Berkeley High School faculty several years ago but was laid off during the teachers’ strike of 2003. Police are assuming that this is how he was able to gain access to the Berkeley High School campus. His motives for putting the couch into the school are still unclear, as he has not been cooperating with police questioning. We’ll be sure to keep you up to date as the story develops. For KRON 4 news at eleven, I’m Pam Moore. Goodnight.”