A rather puny skeleton squeezed himself out of the cupboard and moved silently around a bedroom. It was a boring job, representing some rather meagre misdeeds needing to be tucked away, but at least he wasn’t locked up and could rove around a bit. He knew of some more burly colleagues whose cupboards were permanently locked, chained and protected by serious legal teams standing in protective readiness. What horrors they were representing was kept firmly under wraps.
The real downside of being a low status skeleton (and who knew, maybe it was the same, or even worse, for the stars of the skeleton-in-cupboard world) was that there was very little to do. He had to make his own entertainment.
Sometimes, our puny skeleton was able to insert himself into the fringes of dreams. He never meant to scare the elderly dreamer, just to take a bit-part in the filmic splendour of the dream world. It was the nearest thing to fun available to a scapegoat skeleton burdened with the sins of the living.
Back in the cupboard, a philosophical mood took hold. What, he wondered, was the endgame here? Would he have to wait for release until his human died and the sins no longer mattered? Was there any way a rescue could be hastened?
A daring thought emerged which soon became a liberation plan. What if the human could be encouraged to confess or put right the misdeeds? A few nicked library books, a couple of rather outré lies about a past relationship, an anonymous note, these were hardly top tier crimes. No wonder there was no need for a lock on the cupboard door.
The puny one planned to tackle the matter of his release through the medium of dream. Elsie Cotter, his human, enjoyed a rich dream life and the skeleton found no difficulty in planting the suggestion of a library book amnesty which was currently (and probably permanently) on offer. Elsie Cotter woke with a determination to do the right thing by the library.
It wasn’t much harder to deal with the anonymous note. Elsie was soon convinced that a confession to her neighbours about allegations made about their son was a fair thing to do:
‘I know it wasn’t him that broke my window, it was me and I was so cross I wanted to blame it somewhere else.’
‘Oh we knew it wasn’t Arthur, but thanks for telling us it was you that sent the note. We thought it might be.’
For the final misdemeanour the skeleton decided to play himself in a dream where he explained that Elsie could help release him by letting her friend Bernard know that she had been married, walked out, but had never sought a divorce.
Bernard wasn’t averse to the idea of living in sin and he and Elsie were soon living happily ever after.
‘No more skeletons in my cupboard,’ Elsie laughed, delighted she had finally secured Bernard and rescued her puny skeleton.
