Closure

5

The shovel lay exactly where she left it that morning. She shoved the candle and matches into her underwear's waistband, then picked up the shovel and ran for the cemetery. It was dark now. The moon hung high in the black sky like the bulging eye of a hanged man, staring down on Clara with sorrowful judgement as she strode toward her husband's grave with a spade clutched tightly beneath her white knuckles. This time, Clara had no hesitation, no second thoughts, no reservations, no ceremony. Quickly and with determination, she drove her spade into the dirt. Each thrust of her shovel was agony. The rough, wooden handle tore open the scabs and sores on her fingers and palms until blood oozed out and trickled down the shovel's shaft.

Her muscles screamed louder with each inch of her descent. Pain seared throughout her body as though her blood were boiling inside her veins. Her arms, her legs, her back, her heart, all burning with unfathomable agony. But her mind remained resolute, never losing her focus.

Thunk.

On the brink of collapsing from exhaustion, just as her head began to swim, she heard the sweet, dull sound of her spade striking hard against a semi-hallow object. Clara dropped to her knees. She swept away the film of dirt covering the casket's lid with her raw, bleeding hands.

Dull varnish reflected the milky moonlight. Clara sat atop the casket and panted like a thirsty dog. She reached for the shovel. Though it felt like it weighed a thousand pounds, she managed to heave it out of the grave. Clara shoved the edges of her feet awkwardly into the grave's dirt walls, and though it felt like it weighed a million pounds, she dug her fingers beneath the casket's lid and heaved it open.

Robert did not look as he had before. His few remaining handsome features were gone. The skin on his face was no longer bloated, but had burst like a rotting watermelon. The cracks in his skin looked like canyons, long and deep ravines of flesh. The matter within these ravines looked white like pus, only the pus was moving. Wriggling. Squirming.

Maggots. Hundreds, thousands of them. Tens of thousands, all bulbous and agitated. They crawled out of his skin's cracks. They squirmed beneath his eyelids and squeezed out from between his gnawed lips, marching down his neck and beneath his shirt collar. His sallow, sunken skin appeared to vibrate as maggots danced beneath the canvas of rotting flesh.

Clara sat beneath the pale moonlight and stared with horror at Robert's putrid remains. She watched as her husband was being consumed, eaten by a hoard of disgusting and greedy creatures. Her shock evaporated instantaneously, and she shrieked at the sight of her husband's defilement.

"No, no, no!" she muttered dumbly at the maggots. "Get out! Get away from him!"

She tried sweeping them away with her hands, but few moved at all, using their tiny mouths to leach onto Robert's flesh. "Go away!" she shrieked. Horror washed over her like bathwater. Worst of all, Clara felt helpless, unable to alleviate her husband's slow consumption. She needed them to go away, to leave her husband alone, to stop disturbing his slumber. Her mind was clouded by panic, and only one remedy came to mind. She lifted the tattered tails of her dress and reached into her underwear for the candle and matches.

The match popped and hissed as it was struck. Its small flame danced in Clara's eyes as she guided it toward the candle. The match's flame gently licked the wick. Slowly, carefully, Clara tilted the candle downward and eased its flame toward the hair rooted in Robert's pasty scalp. The moment the burning wick singed Robert's hair, a geyser of fire erupted from the black candle.

Clara fell backwards, watching dumbfounded as the pillar of flame shooting up from her hand rose so high that it crested the top of the grave. The grave shook violently. Clumps of dirt were rattled loose from the earthen walls and tumbled down on top of her. The black candle remained clutched within her hand like the crooked hilt of a sword as boiling wax dripped down, coating and scalding her skin. She struggled to sit upright, holding the candle's enormous flame at arm's length so as not to scorch her own face.

"Robert!" she screamed. "Robert, I'm here! Say something!"

And he did. The flame extinguished. The earth quit quaking. For a single, agonizingly long second, Clara sat beside the motionless corpse of her husband as pale moonlight washed over them. Then, the corpse moved. His spine creaked like a rusty hinge as he slowly bent at the waist, lifting himself upright. The clumps of hair still attached to his scalp smoldered and smoked. Dozens of writhing maggots spilled out of his ears and wriggled between his lips. His eyelids lifted to reveal eyeless sockets now filled with bulbous larvae. His mouth hung open, spilling out a heap of agitated maggots and uttering a low, pained moan.

When Robert spoke, Clara's eyes slumped lazily and she fainted. His spine unhinged and the two of them were left laying inside the coffin beneath the pale, dwindling light of the moon. Laying between them was a smoking, shriveled lump of black wax.

Robert's message was brief, but it was enough to send Clara past the limits of her sanity. Her mind frayed, her heart broke, her spirit extinguished as she listened to her husband's final words from beyond, "Please, please let me rest."