"Where do you want me to put the dead body?" asked my husband one night as we were getting ready for bed.

"I don't care," I said.

"I don't want to put it someplace and then have you yell at me that I shouldn't have put it there," he replied.

"OK, fine," I said. "Dump the dead body on the chair."

"Don't you want it out of sight?" he asked.

"What does it matter? We'll be sleeping," I told him.

"Good point," he replied. He leaned over and started to scoop up the immense duvet comforter that we keep at the end of the bed and lovingly refer to as "the dead body." I'm not sure who came up with the nickname, but it was right around Halloween one year, and we thought that when the duvet was rolled up at the end of the bed, it looked suspiciously like we were trying to hide a dead body inside. Of course, we would never actually hide a dead body in our duvet comforter. That would mess up the duvet, and it's my favorite duvet.

While my husband and I know that there is no actual dead body in the duvet comforter, we have to be careful that we don't call our comforter "the dead body" in front of other people because THEY don't know there isn't a dead body in the comforter. Not that our friends would ever think that we routinely hid dead bodies in our comforter. I'm pretty sure, if asked, they would think we'd do something more practical, like hide it in a freezer. But either way, it would require some explaining if I asked my husband to move the dead body while we had company over, especially if it was our friend who is a cop.

Naturally, I realize that most people don't name their duvet covers, and if they do, they probably don't give them macabre names like "the dead body." But as my father always said, I'm a unique individual. Of course, my dad named his first car "the death trap," so you can see where I might get it from.

Meanwhile, back in the bedroom, my husband seemed to be struggling more than usual with the weight of the dead body.

"Is there an actual dead body in here?" he wondered. "Because it weighs a ton. Have you killed any appliance repairmen or tax collectors lately?"

"I have never actually killed anyone," I protested. "And you know that appliance repairman died of natural causes."

He groaned and yanked the dead body off the bed and then threw it onto the chair where the weight of it caused the chair to shudder, then collapse.

We both stared at the pile of comforter on top of the busted chair on the floor.

"What the heck?" I wondered. "I think there's something inside the dead body!"

I reached down to the comforter and started to unroll it. I tensed my body, hoping that a real dead body didn't tumble out. But fortunately, as I got it open, I saw that the only thing rolled up in the comforter was another comforter.

I snickered. "Good news. It's not an actual dead body. I must have accidentally rolled up one of our regular blankets inside the comforter when I made the bed this morning."

"Sure, honey," said my husband. "Tell it to the judge."

Tracy Beckerman is the author of the Amazon Bestseller "Barking at the Moon: A Story of Life, Love, and Kibble," available on Amazon and Barnes and Noble online! You can visit her at www.tracybeckerman.com.

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