Quick note: This is a horror short.
Sunday.
Work on a Sunday was never going to be an enjoyable prospect, but another shouting match with the site foreman if the roof wasn’t ready for tiling tomorrow would have been more unbearable than anything that you could imagine.
You’ve felt rushed all day, Mistakes to fix, warped joists to replace, everything still incomplete seemed to stretch onward and into the far distance; what else was there to do but keep working though? You’re here, it’s not raining, and honestly it’s quite peaceful to have the whole site to yourself.
The emptiness of the worksite seemed echo with each of your hammer strikes; the whole estate, totally abandoned, felt absent in a way, at rest…
You may even be the only idiot out here today.
Just a bit more.
The scaffold on this section of the roof had been taken down prematurely, but it’s not really too much of a problem. It’s fairly easy working up on the battens and you’ve never fallen before. The gentle wind, the overcast shade of a quiet morning, You feel quick, your work becomes a flurry of rushed movements. Skipping and dancing across the roof, you work through lunch, you don’t even stop for a smoke.
The thoughts of 3 o’clock grow nearer and nearer, gotta be home by then, can’t miss the footy; finished or not you’re not missing another game.
Standing and attempting to stretch out a knot in your back, you arch upward toward the sky and bellow out an exaggerated yawn, a full day spent on the roof had made you weary. Shuffling to find a more comfortable stance your boot leaves the truss and you spin sideways.
You fall, landing hard on the fascia.
The skyline blurs as you feel a crunch from your ribs and the air quickly leaving your lungs. Slowly you tip backwards, rolling off the beam and slumping towards the ground below. Your reach scrambles for the edge of the roof but can only clutch at absent air as you feel your whole body begin to shake with panic.
Thump
Blackness coils inwards and the world becomes clouded, your thoughts, reduced to a trickle, are intercut with flashes of stirring pain that asails you and prevents you from taking in the surroundings.
Adrenaline builds and you feel the heat of the afternoon against your shirt, a dampness unremembered seems to have soaked it through. Your whole body seems to pulse in a tremble as your heart grows quieter and the spinning world finally returns to stillness.
Moving to stand you feel held in place.
Tentatively you try your arm and a forigen twitch brings with it a shattering pain that burns its way upward into the hollow of your skull. Looking down, you see a buried length of rebar standing proud through your shoulder; blood, neatly coating this bar as if some macabre glaze, trickles down past your arm and onto the freshly graded earth below.
You move to shout but a second gout of pain rockets up your spine and cuts your crying to a pained whimper. Straining against this agony you look down and see a second piece of metal jutting from your thigh, a meter of rusted iron held fast to the ground below you; reaching for your other leg you see it lying crooked and without feeling, it looks mangled beyond recognition.
It is then that you bring yourself to cry.
…
An hour passes and you regain consciousness.
In a moment of lucidity you see the hammer that you’ve had since an apprentice laying some 300mm from your right hand. Why did you hold onto it as you fell? Why didn’t you just throw it to the side and use both of your hands to regain your balance? It lays next to you, undamaged from the fall but full of old scars from daily use, so familiar to hold, to swing, but now so out of reach.
The dull ache now grows with each heartbeat.
Trying to lift your shoulder up the rebar proves almost impossible as even the smallest movement tears agony across your chest and legs. A stabbing pain in your ribs rebukes any attempt at sitting upward and you feel as though a knife has been pushed deeper into your side with every shallow breath.
Everything burns, an electric contortion of pain that shakes you again and again with each passing second, a building pressure blooms iridescent but never seems to release. You cough dark blood onto the ground beside you as the day suddenly seems to grow cold. Sweat stinging your eyes you gather yourself for another attempt to pull upward from the rebar, Tensing with an inhuman scream you draw yourself slowly upward, the ridges of the rebar ticking against every nerve as they pass. Something pops in your side and a well of pressure is released, your strength is torn away as if the ground had opened and swallowed you whole. You fall backward, landing upon the dirt with a hollow, hopeless sting.
The pain is too much.
Banging your head against the ground below you, you scream in agony and pray for unconsciousness, words no longer holding any meaning, you can only yell and yell until blackness finally covers you in merciful relief.
You manage to wake twice more before the Sun rises.
J.McCray
2020
Sunday Short Stories 