TotenFolio

The ground lurched beneath Snatch and he stumbled forward several steps before the ground punched him in his jaw. He recoiled from the pain and reached up to his chin.

A line of blood trickled from his chin.

It took a couple of seconds for Snatch to piece together what happened. When the ground moved under him, like someone snatching a rug from under his feet, he fell. The ground hit him, or he hit it.

He blinked a few times and rolled over to look up at the sky. His head swam and sweat pooled in the small of his back. The humidity hung over him and threatened to choke him if he did not stand up.

He rolled onto his side and pushed his arms beneath him. His palms dug into the field’s dead grass and dried, brittle briars. He pushed up enough for his legs to slide beneath him and he stood up.

He swayed side to side and looked up at the sky again. He squinted at the stars, sure that just moments before, they were much brighter; now they were tiny pricks of pale white light, barely enough to find the ground from so far in space. He sucked a deep breath in and wiped a hand across the bottom of his chin.

The scrape burned from sweat on his hands and he scraped his teeth together in a grinding motion, like a cow chewing its cud.

He returned his focus to the far end of the field, where he knew his sledgehammer waited.

He took another step toward it, and again, the world trembled under him. He blinked and looked down, and realized he stood ten -no, twenty – feet tall.

The ground flew away from him as he grew taller and taller, and his head throbbed again. He could only guess that the top of his head finally bumped the sky. He squeezed his eyes shut and swallowed hard.

He opened his eyes and realized he was still sprawled out on the ground, with his bloody chin buried in its own little impact crater.

He pushed himself away from the ground and waited for the dizziness to pass before he attempted to take another step. The treeline on the far end of the field appeared so much farther away with each step. He turned to look back at the farmhouse, and for a moment he considered returning home to rest.

The farmhouse seemed to be miles away and the trees on the other side of the field seemed just as far. Snatch stood stranded in the middle of the field, with his heart slamming against his ribcage and sweat pooling at each roll of fat on his stomach, his fat waist and his thighs. Sweat saturated his coveralls and Snatch smelled livestock.

Confusion clouded his eyes and his brow dropped on his forehead as he considered the smell. No livestock lived on the farm, or anywhere close to the farm.

He lifted an arm and smelled the bush of coarse, tangled hair in his pit. He smelled like an animal, he realized.

He needed his hammer. Without his hammer, he could not function. The dizziness, the fear, the falling, the delusions – they all came to him after losing his hammer. He convinced himself that the hammer staved off the sounds and the sights he experienced, even though they weren’t there.

He took another step toward the treeline and coughed into the night. Sticky phlem and thick saliva sprayed out into the humid air and spread out in a warm mist. He watched it with his gray eyes as the night swallowed his cough and choked the sound.

He muttered under his breath.

Every sound seemed muted in the night, and he contemplated screaming with all of his wind to break the bubble of silence that draped around him. He kept his composure and wiped his bloody chin.

Snatch blinked and realized the treeline sat only a step away from him. He looked up and down the treeline and caught sight of his sledgehammer propped against a nearby tree.

“I told you it was here,” he said to the dead mouse and the Reaper, even though they weren’t with him. Somehow, he knew they heard him.

He grabbed the handle of the hammer and swung it up onto his shoulder.

A scream ripped through the night like a sledgehammer through rice paper.

Snatch let out a choked gasp and turned toward the farmhouse. The scream echoed in his head and bounced around in his ears. His eardrums rattled back and forth and his teeth hurt.

The scream.

It was Danielle.

A single question ran through his head.

“Who is Danielle?”

“What?” Snatch asked himself. He shook his head to clear his thoughts and rushed across the field.

He staggered, stumbled, tripped and dragged his way across the field with all the speed he could muster up with his heart protesting and his weight dragging his feet two steps behind his brain. The sledgehammer flopped side to side on his shoulder and his fingers wrapped tighter around the rough wood handle to prevent dropping it.

“Danielle?” he called out through the humid Louisiana night.

He reached the house at his full speed and dropped his sledgehammer to put both hands out against the side of the farmhouse. He slammed into the side of the house and stopped with the thud of his fat against the wooden board siding of the walls.

His head swayed on his shoulders and he felt the rising of food from his gut, which made him wonder when he’d last eaten. He fought it down and swallowed the spicy upchuck in the back of his throat.

A grunt dragged past his lips, straight from his chest, and he turned to grab his sledgehammer. He dragged his free hand along the side of the house to maintain his balance and ripped open the back door.

He stumbled over the threshold and found Laura standing in the kitchen with a mite-eaten broom in her hand.

“Oh, Edgar,” Laura said. “I came in looking for you, and saw a snake crawl under your stove.”

Snatch stood in the doorway with his sledgehammer thrown over his shoulder and his gut heaving from his sprint across the field. Sweat dripped down his brow and from the tip of his nose.

He stared at Laura and curled his lips up to show his yellow teeth. He almost spoke, but Laura tilted her head and said something first.

“Edgar?” she said.

Snatch exhaled through his nose; his nostrils flared and drips of sweat splattered away from the hot flow of air.

“Is that blood on your hammer?”

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Tagged Edgar Snatch, Reading, short story