Invitation to a Beheading
Hiking today in Griffith Park, I ran into a woman trying to unravel her tangle of small dogs, and when she saw me, she pointed excitedly at the sky. Her English wasn’t very good (or maybe mine wasn’t…), and it took me longer than it should have to understand that she was indicating the helicopters swarming overhead. She played Charades with me valiantly till eventually we established some basic communication:
They’d found a head, in a plastic bag.
This was in the next canyon over. Some dog-walkers noticed their nine dogs (NINE!) taking a little too much interest in the trash they found in the bushes, and when they went to intervene, sure enough, plop, a head rolled out of the bag.
“Male, between the ages of 40 and 60.”
I hope when I die and my head gets ditched in a plastic bag, I hold together well enough that they can guess my age within +/- 10 years.
As the day has gone on, the police have gradually turned up more body parts — one hand, then another hand, then two feet. “The remains are believed to come from the same man,” the paper said. I should hope so!
Art imitates life imitates art: this story is a David Lynch movie; it’s a sequel to the Black Dahlia. Oh, the Black Dalia wasn’t a movie; it was real life. And that’s the crux of what’s unsettling about this story: it belongs on a film screen, not real life.
Friends have already asked me if I’m worried for my own safety, hiking these canyons where bodies are carved up. No, I’m not worried. Maybe I should be, but I’m not. I’m lit up with curiosity about the rest of this story — the story of someone’s very very very bad day.
Apart from the David Lynchian / Black Dahlia-ness of it; and
