Swim in Sediment
by Gary W. Conner
Is someone sitting on my chest?
As his lungs demand yet another grab at oxygen, he forces himself to sample only a small part of what passes for air in this tiny place. While the mouthful still tastes mostly of oxide and death, he finds comfort in the fact that the intense burning in his chest has subsided somewhat. He tries to calm himself, so that he might assess this brand new situation.
“My name is Chris Conyer.” The words are barely more than slight and hollow rasps within his throat, but instinct tells him to first attempt communication, to determine whether he alone faces this predicament. “Can you hear me?”
He is not rewarded with even an echo of his own words. He has drawn an involuntary dose of air, and he chokes it out yet again. He seeks out his arms and finds feeling, moves each one about in turn, feeling out his new quarters. He finds that he is mostly enclosed within a few small holes in what he can only think of as earth — he knows he’s planted beneath an awful lot of something, and he next realizes that he will probably suffocate within minutes.
Oh, dear God, not suffocation! Never that! Please, please, God. Never that.
Sucking air slowly through lips barely parted, he tries desperately to find clean air to soothe his screaming lungs.
Am I buried alive?
He tries to bring his arms across his chest inside the space he thinks a coffin must allow. When his hands, barely underway, quickly strike the rough ceiling, he realizes that a coffin can be made from many things.
• • •
“Mrs. Conyer. Do you have your Best Customer card?”
Gail giggled as she set her purse down on the counter, just beyond the belt. “I'm afraid I forgot it, Mr. Madison.”
Ben gave her a petulant look, then proceeded to bag her purchases. “Guess I’ll have to give you my best pricing, then.” He winked at Gail before turning his attention to Victoria, quietly asleep in her child seat. The seat took up almost half the shopping cart, but Ben was able to fit the bags in. He hummed a few bars of a sleepy dirge, then looked back to Gail.
“Comes to just under forty dollars, Gail.” Ben stood just outside of the beam cast by the fluorescent bulbs hung above the register. “Did he give you enough?”
Gail swallowed a strange lump that was forming in her throat; it tasted mostly of fear and anger and rot, and she had a hard time getting it down. She managed a smile. “Yeah, yes.” She found herself leaning across the counter, nearly collapsed, then hastily collected herself as best she could. She offered Ben the proudest smile she could muster; it seemed to make a difference. She fished two twenties out of her purse and handed them to Ben, muttered thanks, then grabbed the cart and made her way out into the parking lot.
Once at her car, she unlocked the rear door and flipped it open. As she transferred bags from cart to cargo space, she tried hard not to look at the bag already in the car. The brown paper bag, displaying some sort of greasy dampness at its base.
• • •
• • •
Gail went upstairs to the bedroom, the one she'd shared with Chris for four years. Four years of agony and hell. She quickly banished the thought and returned her focus to the mission at hand. Salvation. In the master bathroom, she kneeled in front of the vanity and opened the single door. She used the pliers to remove the trap, busting a knuckle in the process. “Dammit!” She sucked at the slow trickle of blood from the skinned joint, then stood, careful to keep the trap level. Once she was erect, she pulled the plunger to plug the sink and turned on the faucet. She held the trap beneath the flow, directing it through the pipe and forcing out any contents. As she suspected, as she hoped, it was filled with a good deal of hair. Chris had been steadily losing hair ever since she'd known him.
Before the sink filled, she shut off the faucet and replaced the trap. She drained the sink, careful to keep any hair from getting away. Then came the meticulous process of separating Chris’s hair from her own.
• • •
“Victoria? Oh my god, Vicki?!”
• • •
She looked at the tools she'd brought from the garage and selected the shovel and a pair of rough leather work gloves she'd purchased earlier in the day. She found a spot far enough from the tree to avoid roots, yet close enough to afford the birds some sense of cover, protection, and she began to dig. Nothing too deep, as a large hole was unnecessary. She was satisfied within minutes, after only a modicum of effort.
Gail threw the shovel aside and went to the wheelbarrow. She picked up the small bag of cement cradled in the bottom of the cart’s mouth and set it aright so that she might cut open the bag, which she did with a small knife produced from a jeans pocket. She dumped half of the contents into the wheelbarrow, then paused to assess the product of the effort. She stared for a moment, lost in an odd concentration, then shrugged and dumped the rest of the powder into the barrow. Next, she fetched the half-full bag of sand left over from Vicki’s sandbox — a sandbox she had yet to set foot in. Using one knee for leverage, she flipped the bag in her hands and allowed the remaining sand to flush quickly out of the bag and mix with the cement powder. She threw the bag aside and picked up the nozzle of the water hose, wincing slightly each time the random spray from the bad washer hit a part of her. She squeezed the nozzle slowly, finding just the right amount of pressure, the right spray pattern, before she aimed the nozzle at the pile of sand and concrete dust in the wheelbarrow — she didn’t want to send tiny particles of either ingredient sailing into the air, looking for a home in her child’s lungs.
When she was satisfied that the wheelbarrow held enough water, she grabbed the garden rake from the ground and began to stir the slop. Soon, she was happy with the consistency and she laid the rake aside, maneuvered the wheelbarrow closer to the hole she'd dug.
Breathless, she sprawled upon the lawn for a few minutes, staring up at the sky. For some reason, perhaps some cultural programming, she'd expected dark clouds to gather over her ritual. She found that she was a bit disappointed with the clear blue that filled the horizon.
Before she could allow such thoughts to consume her, she rose and located the brown paper bag. The one from the old lady on Linden Avenue, the one that she'd paid fifty dollars for, the one that might — pleasegodpleasegodpleasegod — might solve her problems. She sat by the hole, crossed her legs, and willed herself not to call that hole in the ground an open grave. It’s just a hole. That’s all.
Gail closed her eyes and unfolded the top of the bag, dying a bit inside at each tiny crinkle. When her hands remarked that the job was done, she leaned her head over the mouth of the bag and then opened only one eye. The dark throat of the bag convinced her to open the other and, when she did, nothing jumped out and bit her. No cops came running down alleys and flying in helicopters to arrest her and feature her on some Fox network exploitation. There was still only the slight breeze, the woman, the tree, the child… the hole. The bag. The bag, and the doll.
She drew a deep breath, then plunged her hand into the bag and brought out the doll, careful not to dimple its soft clay surface, damage its features, dampen its power.
She admired it for a moment before becoming once again sickened by its purpose. This time, she avoided vomiting. Drawing quick and shallow breaths, Gail lowered the doll into the hole, careful to place it face-up.
Your face must be the last face it sees, or it will not work. Mind me, girl.
Gail shook the old woman’s voice from her head.
Victoria began to thrash and squabble in her confinement, and Gail walked over to her and kneeled. “Shh, shh, baby. Mommy’s here.” She instinctually rubbed her child’s head, never feeling the minute snapping sensations through the thick gloves.
Once the girl was again quiet, Gail stood and focused on the next ingredient: a sandwich bag, rolled and carefully sealed with spit, lying almost hidden in the thick grass.
She picked it up and grabbed the seam, shook it to unroll it. She held it up to the sun to admire her handiwork: twelve long, fine hairs, all a deep black, all mostly fresh from her husband’s scalp. She kneeled again at the hole, carefully removed most of the hair from the bag — she couldn’t get it all, not every single strand, because the gloves limited her sense of touch. But she got enough.
She stretched her fist out over the hole and loosened her fingers. She watched as the hair drifted slowly down to rest atop the clay doll; she became momentarily fascinated with the way the sunlight bent the color, swore that it was not at all black, swore that it might even be blonde — the exact color of Victoria’s hair. She shook her head again, clearing thoughts once more, then put a gloved hand to her forehead.
As she closed her eyes and then opened them once more, her vision focused on a small, fine hair stuck to the coarse finger of the glove over her hand. She threaded it out with the other hand and eyed it closely; black. Chris’s hair. She sighed, then stood and filled the hole with cement, watching the small clay mockery of her husband slowly disappear beneath the liquid entombment of a cement forever.
When the hole was filled, she stuck a short pole into the center of the mixture and eyeballed the plumb, then hung a small bird feeder on the hook that protruded from one round portion of the post. She looked at Victoria to offer a smile, a warm condolence, but she found only a scream.
• • •
• • •
Struck by inhuman inspiration, Gail ran back outside, to the grave that her husband’s soul was locked within. She found that it was still quite damp, still quite malleable, and she set Vicki to the side before she yanked off the gloves and started ripping into the earth with her bare hands.
• • •
• • •
• • •
The ground is unsteady, and reverberations sound throughout his extremities. Suddenly, there is light from above — not much, but enough to raise in Chris a wild glimmer of hope. Then the hole widens, and widens again, and Chris is looking at the blue sky high above, his daughter safe in his arms, and he sucks in a great whoosh of clean air. He stands, and begins to laugh wildly.
• • •
•
© 2002 Gary W. Conner, all rights reserved
Gary W. Conner’s work has appeared in Gothic.Net, Songs from Dead Singers, The Edge: Tales of Suspense, and Whispers from the Shattered Forum, among others. He has work in the anthology Beyond the Dust, due from Flesh & Blood Press in June, and is part of a three-author collection (Denying Death) due in trade paperback late this year from House of Dominion. This is his second appearance in 3LBE. For more information on Gary’s work, visit his web site.