Walk With Us (#Wattys2017)

Mud & Masks

I bolt out the door, clutching my coffee in my hands. The cup scorches my palm, and by the time I reached the parking lot, I have to pass it from one hand to another. I'd forgotten to grab a sleeve. Or cream.

At the edge of town, a clinking noise behind me catches my attention. I glance over my shoulder. The streets are usually deserted at this time of morning, as all the folks going to work have gone and the rest don't need to be up and about yet. Behind me are a good half-dozen people, all staring at me.

Each wears drab clothes that look to my uneducated eye like they belong in another century. Mud covers them from head to foot. Even through the grime, I can see their flesh is grey and waxy.

I drop the paper coffee cup on the street. The dark liquid splashes out, drenching my left tennis shoe. The puddle of brown spreads out at my feet.

I blink.

The street is empty except for Elisa who stands in the doorway of the café, too far away to make out her expression. She ducks inside the instant she notices me watching her.

After several successive blinks, the emptiness remains. What the hell was that? Those people couldn't have been real.

My face is reflected in the puddle of coffee at my feet, and I avoid my eyes. I glance back at the store, but Elisa's face isn't peeping from the window, and I assume she didn't catch me dumping the coffee.

Plus, she had been acting odd. I can't make time for someone else's problems. I've got my own to deal with.

I jog down the road out of town. Each time one of my feet hits the gravel, memories stir. Jen in the passenger seat of my car, laughing with a flush of drunkenness to her cheeks. Elisa with that tightlipped smile. My father and I clinking glasses, rum and ice swirling in his glass, mine filled with coke. My girlfriend, Tessa, grabbing the radio dial, her mouth in a grimace that dared me to object. The couple in white, out on the marsh.

This last image surfaces again and again, something in it nagging at me. Those figures are a blur in my memory, but I struggle to make it clear, to put together the puzzle. They were what caused Elisa to change. Only after seeing them did I start hallucinating mud people.

They started this, and between the past I can't face and the disturbing events of the morning, they are an oasis of peace.

I want to see them again. I need to see them again. My body hums as if invisible strings tie me to the clearing, and someone is plucking at the strings, reminding me every moment.

Partway up the gravel road out of town, I stop. My breathing rasps from me, and I bend, hands on my knees to catch my breath.

Coffee stains, a trail of brown drops, climb my legs over my blue pants.

They were wearing white.

They'd been all in white, standing out in the marsh. I'd tried navigating the grassy swells amid the muck and ended up covered in muck up to my knees. That's when I didn't wind up falling into the murky water which gathered in pools between grassy banks and wind-ravaged trees. Who wore white out there, and how did their clothes remain white?

I trudge along the path, not wanting to reach the clearing but craving it at the same time. What if they're there again? What if they aren't? Which do I hope for? I have no reason to fear the couple, but before the sweat from my run cools, their image rises in my mind. This time they shine like angels out in the dingy marsh. I shiver.

The invisible strings binding me sing. I will dance to their tune. I have to. I begin a slow jog.

When I come to the clearing, no one is there. I pause to gape. Out where they were standing, is standing water and a few banks of foliage off to the side. They should have been buried up to their thighs and covered in mud.