Being the Murdered Jane Doe

by Cathy Ulrich

The thing about being the murdered Jane Doe is you set the plot in motion.

You will be a something found, half-covered by a tarp, in the damp of an empty lot and its concrete-burst weeds. A shape in the dark, a call to the police, there’s something, there’s something. The sound of sirens winding down. You will be anonymous, unidentified, a face that can’t be photographed, dental records that can’t be found. A medical examiner tsking over what has been done to you.

You will be the way the cynical detective still speaks of you years later, when he’s had a beer with dinner and another, maybe just one more.

Some of them stick with you, he’ll say. Some of them stick.

You will be the clothing you’d been wearing that night, ankle-strap heels, thigh-slit skirt. The way your blouse was buttoned stray, untucked from around your waist. The curl of hair by your ear that you’d spent some time on, the missing earring from your left lobe, the gaudy one in your right that he left behind. The tear in your nylons, the bare spot on your wrist where there might have been a watch or a bracelet.

You will be a silhouette in the newspapers, a sketch, a drawing, a please come forward if you recognize this description.

You will be the name left unsaid, unmarked grave and pauper’s burial. A box in evidence for ten years, twenty. The way the detective digs through it sometimes, the things that were yours in their sealed pouches, the way he holds them like he holds his grandchildren’s hands. The way he stows them back away: someday, the promise he gives your things, someday, someday.

You will be Eighth Avenue Jane Doe. There are other Janes on other avenues, other Janes on other streets, other Janes, Janes, Janes. Your reconstructed faces will flash across screens from time to time, a chorus of Janes, a troupe of Janes. You will all have that same desolate look in your remade eyes. You will all be Jane, forever Jane, always Jane until the end of the world.

You will be Jane and Jane, and somewhere, someone knows you, someone misses you, knows your real name, the sound of your voice, the way your mouth curved when you smiled, someone feels the ache of the now-that-you-have-gone.

Cathy Ulrich is the founding editor of Milk Candy Review, a journal of flash fiction. Her work has been published in various journals, including Black Warrior Review, Passages North, and Wigleaf and can be found in editions of Best Microfiction; Best Small Fictions 2019; Best of the Net 2022; and Wigleaf’s Top 50 Very Short Fictions 2017, 2019 and 2022. She lives in Montana with her daughter and various small animals.