Dead in a Ditch

It’s a funny supposition, isn’t it? ‘I was worried about you.’ Though of course you were! Worry being part of the human condition and all, worry and where it leaves you, worry and where it leaves the one you were worried about. Theoretically, of course, though I’d never quite seen the sense. ‘I was worried about you… you could have been dead in a ditch!’ Dead in a ditch! Isn’t it funny? I had always wondered about being dead in a ditch… how many times had you been dead, in a ditch? I laughed at my mother when she said that to me, and to the police, and to the jury. No-one else found it quite so funny, though I had a feeling they’d all had some sort of worry about ditches. Worry, remember? The human condition! I didn’t stop laughing.

I wondered what the fascination was with being dead in a ditch. I wondered how many ditches actually existed if it was the prime worry of most people. Why didn’t they all just fill ‘em up? I decided the saying was more to do with the alluring alliteration than any real worrisome worry- it was just easier to say, after all- ‘you could have been dead in a ditch’ – more snappy than  – ‘dead in a hot air balloon careening hazardously down towards a razorblade factory’, though with much less pizzazz admittedly. I did never quite understand it and searched many ditches for bodies before I realised that the whole world was just having me on – the crazy bastards! –  maybe that was where they used to leave the dead people because ditches were difficult to see in from a level type of road, yeah? But then the saying started circulating around and people stopped putting ‘em in ditches because that was where they all looked first. Was it a preventative measure? I decided we needed something a little more up to date and with less creative tedium than ‘dead in a ditch’- why always a ditch? Why not somewhere else? I decided to rectify the problem.

I killed several people and left them in all sorts of places- one in a bakery, one in a church, and even one in my house, where I was quite sure there were no ditches. One of them asked me what the fuck I was hoping to achieve, but I think she realised when I held my hands over her face and then dragged her into the road. I wasn’t very good at killing them first, actually ended up pulling one of the legs off the first one in my attempt to drown him in the bathtub, made me laugh, it was a right palaver! Pretty sure at some point people started to get the message though, didn’t really hear anyone say ‘dead in a ditch’, they started instead talking about some crazed murderer, which was actually pretty hurtful because at the very least I’d have thought they’d start running some sort of story about me and my lack of ditch dumping. I actually started to worry I’d accidentally not killed any of them hard enough and started to come over all vexed. Worry, remember? The human condition! I didn’t stop laughing.