by George BECKERMAN

Mark and Mindy had just ar­rived home from the va­ca­tion of their lives. The on­ly bum­mer was that their prized, one of a kind suit­case was lost. The air­line, how­ev­er, un­char­ac­ter­is­ti­cal­ly kept their promise to lo­cate and de­liv­er it by the next morn­ing. Un­for­tu­nate­ly, the suit­case was in sham­bles. Mis­shapen from the tra­di­tion­al rec­tan­gle in­to a shape more close­ly re­sem­bling an oc­ta­gon. Its hand-stitched han­dle was gone, leav­ing just the rip marks. And not least was that their beloved trav­el bag was cov­ered in what looked to be bird ex­cre­ment. Heart­bro­ken, Mark and Mindy de­cid­ed it was unre­deemable, and left it on the curb, while con­jec­tur­ing that no nor­mal hu­man would want to touch that hot mess, let alone take it home. Less than an hour lat­er, the out­cast case was gone.

At a lug­gage re­pair store, the crafts­man own­er had just fin­ished restor­ing the piece to its orig­i­nal form. Pristine­ly spot­less, rec­tan­gu­lar in shape, hand-stitched han­dle stand­ing tall. As he proud­ly placed it as the cen­ter­piece of the front win­dow, a woman stopped and ad­mired it.

Sarah was mix­ing dry and wet food in­to a hand paint­ed pet bowl while call­ing her dog to break­fast. When Kaf­ka didn’t come, Sarah searched his fa­vorite hid­ing places. Bed­room clos­et, un­der the bed, be­hind the toi­let bowl and fi­nal­ly yank­ing the show­er cur­tain open to sur­prise him. But the bea­gle was nowhere to be found. Un­til… she spot­ted a tail pro­trud­ing from be­hind the liv­ing room couch. Sarah snuck up on the ap­pendage, play­ful­ly grabbed it, then im­me­di­ate­ly dropped it as if it was the prover­bial hot pota­to. Ner­vous­ly peer­ing over the back of the couch, what she saw prompt­ed a blood-cur­dling scream. Kaf­ka was board-stiff to the touch, a.k.a., deceased.

On the phone, weep­ing un­con­trol­lably, Sarah was told by voice-mes­sage that An­i­mal Con­trol was closed for the Fourth of Ju­ly week­end. Al­so en­joy­ing time off were one veterinarian’s of­fice af­ter an­oth­er. There was no chance that Sarah was ready to spend the next three days liv­ing with her beloved but de­com­pos­ing dog. Pan­icked, she de­cid­ed to find a place, any place, where she could de­posit Kaf­ka. And so, she pulled a suit­case from her clos­et. Yes, that suitcase.

Sarah rolled the lug­gage in­to the bus ter­mi­nal and asked for a round-trip tick­et to the Jer­sey Mead­ow­lands where she planned to dump the ca­nine-filled faux cof­fin in­to the same marshy weeds that were al­leged­ly home to Mafia as­sas­si­na­tion vic­tims. While Sarah’s at­ten­tion was fo­cused on pur­chas­ing a tick­et, a hood­ied in­di­vid­ual raced by, grab­bing the suit­case han­dle and fran­ti­cal­ly wheel­ing it out of sight. Mo­men­tar­i­ly stunned, she then ac­cept­ed the sit­u­a­tion with a shrug, re­turned the bus tick­et and walked away.

The now-un­hood­ed thief wheeled the suit­case through the front door of a low-end apart­ment in a di­lap­i­dat­ed build­ing of a run­down neigh­bor­hood. He ex­cit­ed­ly told his wife and child that hope­ful­ly, un­told rich­es await­ed them in­side the latched lug­gage. They looked on in an­tic­i­pa­tion as he snapped it open. A look of hor­ror blan­ket­ed the couple’s faces, while the child was thrilled that his dad­dy got him a dog. The an­gry wife screamed at her hus­band to get that thing out of here, while the bawl­ing child begged his par­ents to let him keep it.

In a wood­ed area just out­side of town, our shov­el-equipped light­weight lar­ce­nist de­cid­ed to do the right thing and give poor Kaf­ka a prop­er bur­ial. When he fin­ished dig­ging the fresh grave, he went to heave Kaf­ka in, on­ly to lose his bal­ance, fall in­to the hole, hit his head and die.

At the po­lice station’s ev­i­dence lock­up room, the sergeant in charge was sign­ing for the suit­case that would be de­posit­ed with count­less oth­er pieces of crime scene ev­i­dence. Mar­veling at its beau­ty, he brought it home, where his wife thought it was the per­fect size to haul their life­long an­tique col­lec­tion. They were head­ing to an heir­loom show where they in­tend­ed to cash in on the col­lec­tion and use the prof­its to build an ad­di­tion on­to their house.

Cop and spouse hit the road in their Ford, the an­tique-stuffed suit­case stowed in the open truck bed. Along the way they hit a jolt­ing bump in the road, which bounced the lug­gage piece up, out of the truck and on­to the street as they un­wit­ting­ly drove on. Af­ter a short while, a wan­der­ing home­less woman dis­cov­ered the suitcase.

The lo­cal pawn shop own­er hand­ed the sud­den­ly hap­py down-and-out woman a stack of bills in ex­change for the an­tique con­tents of the lug­gage. When he told her that the suit­case was of no use to him, she had start­ed to zip it up when she no­ticed the cor­ner of an air­line ID tag stick­ing out of an in­side pocket.

Mark and Mindy were at their din­ing room ta­ble en­joy­ing din­ner when the door­bell rang. Mark went to the front door and re­turned with, yes, the suit­case. The two were amazed, con­fused and speech­less, but thrilled to have their fa­vorite back and in­ex­plic­a­bly in mint con­di­tion. As the cou­ple toast­ed the re­turn, their dog man­i­cal­ly sniffed the in­side of the lug­gage as if he had found the Holy Grail.

Filed under Fiction on December 2nd, 2022

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