‘How far down should I go?’ Marla thrust a shovel into the soil, her breaths hung visible the night air. It was Autumn and the wet leaf litter crunched noisily underfoot as she took pause, attempting to stamp some energy back into her legs.
‘I don’t know is 12ft a thing? Am I going to be a skeleton?’ Andrew’s lingering soul spoke with a whisper. Watching his still warm corpse being buried wasn’t shocking him as much as he hoped it would.
He took a moment to consider himself and noticed some dried blood that was thankfully obscuring his bald spot; Marla must have dropped his body while attempting to lift it into the boot of her Hyundai Getz. Come to think of it, this was the first time that Andrew had really seen himself outside of a mirror or photograph; he looked tired.
‘I mean, yes eventually you will, but not one of the stand-y’ up and walk around ones. Well I suppose unless a necromancer finds you, or if Narughul, bringer of plague, succeeds in enveloping the world within the dance of death. But yeah, everyone becomes a skeleton eventually.’ Marla lent on her shovel and let out a yawn, the headlights of her car throwing scattered light and shadow into the bushland of Banlendup state forest; It was a windless night, holding a brisk cold eager to cling to idle movements. Andrew’s new form glowed with a pensive almost-green coloured hue.
Taking the shape of a 1961 Australian penny, the patina coated disc containing Andrew’s soul pulsed with a flickering glow as Marla, eternally nonchalant to the macabre, took a break from digging to loop a cord through a small hole in the coin and dropped it around her neck. Taking a seat on Andrews corpse she sighed and looked up at the stars.
Current time, and relativity, were a puzzle to Andrew.
Through fog, coloured with a faint wisp of panic, the last moments that Andrew remembered fully was that of Marla’s concerned face as she was placing his still beating heart into a wooden chalice.
Sometimes practical skills don’t gain enough recognition, any person that can darn socks, build a wall, or capture life essence holds a great life skill and although Marla was ‘rationally adjacent’, it was pretty clear that she was rather good with a knife and a shovel.
‘Well,’ the failed cultist began with an exerted nudge, rolling dead Andrew into his new home. ‘I haven’t buried anyone before, but I think that was pretty well done. Some of the forums I go on say it’s the hardest part after a sacrifice.’
‘Did…Did it work then?’
‘The hole? Well yeah, it goes down.’
‘No the sacrifice’ Andrew attempted a sigh but found that a coin is quite unable to.
‘Not sure…’ Marla pondered while beginning to shovel dirt back into the now occupied hole. ‘There was supposed to be an overflowing of blood cascading out of the soul chalice, I spent a year carving that by the way, but it’s a one use kind of thing so I probably broke it saving your soul.’ pausing for a moment she muttered the word fiddlesticks under her breath .
‘Now this “save” word you mentioned,’ Ignoring Andrew’s question and thumping the small mound of leftover dirt flat, Marla walked back to the car, leaving her shovel behind. Sitting down she attempted to start the engine and was greeted by the groan of an underpowered starter motor, ‘Ahhh…..Flat battery’. Slowly she rested her head upon the steering wheel and for the first time in a long while, she let herself cry
J.McCray
2019
Sunday Short Stories 