Snow ✓

The Burial

Mat awoke, head pounding with a sharp pain, like someone was tickling his brainstem with an icepick. On his back, he stared up at the star-speckled sky, still golden at the edges, and tried to remember why he had ever lain down in the dirt. He breathed deep and a sweetly sour stench hit him like a soft slap. His sore body protesting the entire way, he hoisted himself up into a sitting position and reached out to support himself. His hand squelched, he turned to look and saw his dead grandmother, gazing sightlessly up at the same stars.

He gurgled a groan as the ill events of the day came crashing back, and before he could lean all the way over, he retched, spewing bile down his front and onto his grandmother. He wiped his chin on his sleeve, stood, and made himself stare at what felt like the rotten fruit of his impulsive labor, a decade in the making.

An ache settled in his chest, and he carried it to the beach where he stripped off his shirt, dropped it in the surf, and began rubbing away the crust made of dirt, blood and vomit from his skin. He gingerly touched his battered face and realized that his left eye was swollen shut.

It occurred to him Snow was gone—taken, and it hit him like a pebble in a snowstorm: the ache yawned, the blood ballooned, but he was numb; her absence felt distant, unlike that of his grandmother, the proof of which caked his skin.

He remembered rocking her as he beat away the flies, pulling her closer despite the stink of her ripening, when he spotted the vultures circling. Eventually, they had gone in search of easier prey. It was then that he had returned her to the dirt and lain down beside her, too tired to move.

He scrubbed and scoured, the cold seizing up his limbs and the saltwater stringing his open wounds, until he was raw and pink all over.

On his way back, Mat took a detour to the shed where he grabbed a shovel and the wheelbarrow. Every step felt labored as he pushed it toward the old woman, slumped like a slumbering animal in the dark. Arms shaking, he lifted her into the wheelbarrow and let out a whimper when her head rolled back at that impossible angle. He shoved her chin into her chest.

The moon was full and red, as if it sagged with blood, and it was on the distant satellite that he trained his eye as he pushed her body about like a brush pile up the slow slope to the top of the crags. There, he dug and dug until the moon had slunk to the other end of the sky. By the time he finished, he was even more exhausted, and his arms buckled as he heaved himself up and out of the grave. Then, he stalled, taking deep gulps of the night, trying to catch his breath, regain his strength.

He closed her eyes with dirty fingers and a vow to settle her into the earth soft as a mother lays a babe into a cradle, but when it came time, he could not lift her. He ran a shaky hand through his hair and paced, hot tears spilling into his cuts. He ultimately decided he couldn't get her into the ground fast enough and tipped the wheelbarrow to dump her into the grave like manure. A sharp sob and curse escaped him as her body tumbled into the hole that was half a foot too short. No hesitation--he quickly picked up the first shovelful of dirt but his arms bent beneath the weight and it fell back onto the heap, so he took to his knees and began shoving the dirt into the hole.

When it was done, he sat beside the mound of dirt and stared out at the black waves that caressed the shores of the only place that had ever felt like home, wishing he were dead.

Unwilling to spend the night inside the cottage, Mat slept on the crags. At sunrise, he planted himself at the foot of the porch steps, willing his feet to make the climb. The sky was a sickeningly bright blue by the time he finally built up enough courage.