Inconsolable » Squid [Holes]

17: Begrudge

The ending of this chapter contains a scene of a character suffering through an anxiety attack, which my be potentially triggering for readers with the same affliction. You have been warned. Proceed with caution.

He stabbed the tip of his shovel into the dry lakebed and used it to aid in standing to full height. He grumbled as he felt pops race up and down his spine. It eased some of his stiffness but not enough. Of course, after all this time Squid was used to the work that went into digging day in and day out but this was different. They dug deeper, dug harder, and lifted more as they ran back and forth from the dump site where they piled the extra excavated dirt. It never ended.

The holes all blurred into one, quite literally as they expanded X-Ray's, Armpit's, and his old holes as the week wore on. The holes became on massive crater as they chipped away at the edges and sifted through the dirt to be sure that they didn't miss anything. Not that they could with The Warden, Pendanski, and Mr. Sir all breathing down their necks and checking each wheelbarrow before it was carted away. The only thing Squid had found were rocks, roots, and maybe a tooth but he didn't think about the latter too long.

The Warden became impatient over time. At the start she had arrived early in the day and stayed as long as they did, calling off their shoveling when the sun began to set. They were awarded with extra juice and shower tokens as incentives to work harder. He even got somewhat regular doses of his insulin back—supervised by Mom of course. And it was welcomed with open arms, until they came up empty handed time and time again. Squid figured they were chasing after a dream. It was a one-time fluke that Caveman of all people would find something. As X-Ray had said, they'd all been there longer than him and they hadn't found a thing. He refused to get his hopes up for a pipe-dream. Not again; he'd learned his lesson last time.

The Warden, on the other hand, handled it much differently than he did. She began to arrive late and leaver earlier, seemingly frustrated with how long they were taking to find more of...whatever it was they were looking for. She barked orders, hovered over their backs, checked the dirt they'd already combed over two times, and tapped her turquoise-studded black boots on the ground as she surveyed the large hole they dug. But that was when she was there.

When she wasn't, and Mr. Sir and Pendanski lead the other tents away to their holes, D-Tent took their time. Their sleep-deprived bodies wouldn't allow them the power to stab their shovels into the dirt. But when the sun peeked over the horizon, outlining an odd thumb-shaped mountain in the distance before it was covered by haze, they went back to digging. Stabbing the earth, heaving the dirt away, scraping through the mounds in the wheelbarrows, and taking it away only to do it all over again.

The Warden didn't seem too fond of the repetition either, Squid noted. The one time they took a break, a well-deserved break in his mind, was the wrong time. They lounged around the large hole, some sitting at the bottom to bask in any sort of shade they would find, some sitting atop with their legs dangling above their heads, shooting the breeze and lamenting on forgetting what lemonade or ice cream tasted like. It was enough to get Armpit to his feet, dashing for an unoccupied hole to relieve himself. When they had to go, they had to go; after all, they had plenty of holes to choose from. Maybe he drank too much water or maybe he found something interesting while away, but The Warden had showed up before he came back and she wasn't happy about his break.

Squid looked away when The Warden struck Armpit. He heard Armpit's groan of pain, heard his heavy body fall to the ground and watched as The Warden tossed a pitch fork back on the ground as she muttered about them being given too much water. He couldn't claim that the actions surprised him; he'd been around Camp Green Lake long enough to know that The Warden was like the rattlesnakes that inhabited the dry lakebed. Interesting to look at, downright vicious when provoked. All the girls in his life seemed to be the same way. He grunted. Guess he had a type.