I got too busy to write a daily post, so I am trying a new draft of a horror/suspense first chapter I have been working on. I previously published another version, wrote a lot more, then trashed it for something more subtle. If you are looking for the daily post, you can skip this. If you feel like dropping me a note on how well this works, that would be nice. Or don’t. Also cool.
***
A shoe stuck out of the rolled-up tarp. A white Adidas women’s tennis shoe splotched with dark stains. White, frayed laces untied and dangling. The tarp was black on one side, army green on the other. Probably two-feet thick all rolled up—something had to be in the middle of it. Ropes criss-crossed the tarp, one of them brown and probably a half-inch thick, the other white, maybe a quarter-inch thick.
The light of the rear porch from the neighbor’s house illuminated the tarp through the slats in the wood fence. When Benjamin took breaks, he watched mist glide silently across those slits. He stood in packed dirt and red clay, a loose pile of that off to his side. A dark figure loomed behind, breathing rhythmically, grunting sometimes when he heaved a large shovelful out of the hole. Sometimes, Ben heard the figure’s shovel come whooshing down then splatch into clay. He winced, certain that the blade would strike him, carve into his side or back, scoop out his insides.
He faced the shoe as he dug. It stuck out at least six inches beyond the tarp’s end. It had to be attached to something, but that part was in the dark. It had to be a leg. Right? He squinted, tried to make out the form for sure. If not a leg, what? Overhead, the half-moon’s light came diffused through the light fog. Too little light to make out the leg. Or whatever the foot or the shoe was attached to.
“Keep moving,” the figure behind him said softly.
Ben cut into the dirt and clay, heard a clink and metallic scratching as he hit rock. He edged the shovel around the rock—it wasn’t too big. He pushed under it and levered it out, putting it on his small dirt pile. A light wind gust swept over them, chilling his exposed, sweat-covered back and chest. Movement caught his eye; he paused and looked across the yard. Grapevines grew on the back fence. He could barely make out the shapes of some of the large leaves, but he heard them rustle in the gust, saw waving blackness. Sometimes, when it rained or when the Gulf winds were high, the leaves waved up and down, down and up, up and down, opening and shutting like alligator jaws that yawned after him, then snapped closed. Were they yawning after him now? Could they separate from the fence, take on embodied form, crawl and slither through the grass toward him?
The grass. The grass was also moving, undulating in a side-to-side wave. Or was it? That darkness and fog had texture—they were not flat darkness. They shifted into waves and shapes then receded again. Snakes? Were those snakes moving through the wet grass?
“I said keep moving,” the figure behind him said, slightly louder this time.
Emilia wore shoes like that one. Just like that one. Yes, Emilia. Emilia Saenz. Ben would hear the front door creak open, plastic grocery bags rustle, keys jangle, large loop bracelets clink, and then her voice: “Ben-hah-MEEN!” He would come out of his bedroom or the kitchen, and the smell of her perfume would have already filled the living room. She would be slipping her shoes off—those white Adidas—and see him, then say, “Ay, mi amor! Ven acá para ayudarme con estas bolsas.” And after the bags made it to the kitchen table, she would say, “Ándale. Abrazos!” and fold him into a big hug. She had creamy white-brown skin that always smelled of lotion, usually cucumber melon. After hugs, it was, “Tienes hambre? I am going to prepare the dinner.”
Then one day, she did not come to their house. That day, he ate cold cereal for dinner. That day, Dad got home after ten pm, found him asleep on the plush sea-green couch, said to him, “I didn’t buy you a bed so you could sleep on the couch. Get your ass up and get to bed.”
“Emilia didn’t come,” Ben had said. “I wasn’t sure what to do.”
“You don’t know how to walk your ass into your bedroom?”
Ben had just looked at him, studying his father’s chiseled face, waiting to see if a flash of anger was coming.
“She isn’t coming anymore.”
“Oh.”
“Another girl will come. Now go to bed.”
He had obeyed. Now he could not see his father because they worked back to back, but he could feel him, sense his shifts in mood, guess when he would talk by the sound of his soft grunts or the pausing of his shovel. Ben had to keep moving at least just enough to keep Dad from turning.
“When you play outside, you take this big stick,” Dad had said to him once as he handed him a walking stick. “You walk the perimeter of the yard.”
“Perimeter?” Ben had said.
“Next to the fence all the way around the yard,” Dad had said with an eye roll. “You tap the ground in front of you with the stick. If you hear a rattle, you back up slowly.”
“What is the rattle?”
“It’s a rattlesnake. It has venom in its teeth. If it bites you, it can kill you.”
Snakes were coldblooded—he learned that from his home-school lessons. Would they like the cool? Were they out here now soaking up the fog, gliding through the grass, looking for something to kill? He could not remember if they were mostly awake at night or during the day, and now that seemed critically important.
Something dark flitted over him, and he looked up. A bird? At this time of night? No. It wasn’t a bird. It made no sound and jerked too quickly in the air, jerking left and right, diving, climbing, diving again. It disappeared in the fog, then jerked out of it, then shifted back into it.
“What’s that?” Ben whispered.
“I said not to talk,” Dad replied.
Ben scooped another shovel.
“What’s what?” Dad whispered.
“Flying around.”
“A bat,” said Dad.
“A bat?”
“They come out at night. They eat mosquitoes and other bugs.”
“How can it see in this fog?”
“It can’t. It uses sound to find the bugs.”
“What?”
“Is this necessary?”
“Will it bite me?”
“Dammit, Benny.”
Ben fell silent. He dug some more, his arms aching. He stared at the shoe.
“Why is there a shoe sticking out of the tarp?” he said at last.
Dad took a deep breath and stopped his shovel. Ben could feel Dad turning around, and he braced himself. Why must he ask things? Why could he not keep quiet?
“There’s no shoe sticking out of the tarp,” Dad said at last.
Ben froze in place. He stared directly at the shoe, felt Dad’s tension behind him, started to open his mouth, then shut it. He heard Dad’s shovel cut into the dirt again, so he dug his into the dirt.
A cloud of fog drifted over them—the bat, the shoe, the tarp, the grapevine leaves all disappeared. He couldn’t see even the dirt pile next to the hole. He breathed in deeply, felt the moist air fill his lungs.
Then he heard a whisper: You too will disappear.
He froze, shovel cut into the clay, all around him fog. It was not Dad’s voice.
You too will disappear.
His heart beat faster and faster, starting as a dull thud, then roaring in his ears.
The fog will lift and you will be gone. Dissolved. Invisible. Like air.
He trembled while otherwise holding still. He wanted to yell, but Dad would hurt him for that.
Dissolved. Just like me in this hole. A vision of a face cut through the fog, half eaten, maggots streaming from its half-eaten nose, eyes black like coal, hair partially gone, ears half chewed away.
Ben started to breathe faster and faster getting ever closer to hyperventilating. “Dad!” he finally croaked.
“What?” Dad hissed.
“Did you hear a voice?”
Dad didn’t answer as he cut the earth and shoveled two more loads out of the hole. “Tell you what. I’m done with my part. I’ll take over your part. You can go back to bed.”
Ben tried to dredge up saliva in his mouth, tried to swallow, but he could only nod, knowing Dad wouldn’t see that at all. He climbed out of the hole, then stumbled forward, his legs knocking against the tarp and the shoe. Something clutched his calf—an iron-tight fist, it seemed. He opened his mouth as if to scream but suppressed it.
“Be quiet,” Dad said responding to Ben’s trip and the crunch of the tarp. “Get inside. Hurry up before you wake up the whole damn neighborhood.”
Ben jerked back from the tarp and the grip relaxed. He walked quickly across the yard and porch and nearly walked into the door. He opened it in a rush but shut it quietly, Dad’s voice ringing in his mind. The fluorescent lights were on in the kitchen, glowing softly. Ben gulped air and felt his heart rate coming down.
Then, he heard something. Soft at first.
“Ben-HAH-min!”
Then growing louder. Repeated over and over. Coming from the front room where Emilia used to greet him. Ben crept slowly from the kitchen to the living room and clicked on the light. Nothing. And now, no sound.
He walked back to his bedroom, changed out of the clothes he had pulled on earlier and back into his pajamas, and sank into bed. He had a nightlight by his bed, and he clicked it on, then stared at the ceiling. Dad came in about forty-five minutes later, and Ben heard Dad pad softly across the carpet to the master bedroom. For another forty-five minutes, he fought the urge to close his eyes. In his mind, he could see that face and that shoe, hear that voice. He did not want to close his eyes and have those images become more vivid. More, he did not want to close his eyes and disappear.
***
His Smile Lit Up a Room and Other Things to Say at My Funeral 