No Trouble

The dirt was gritty between her fingers as she dug, scraping against the wooden handle of the shovel and the soft skin of her palms, coating them both in black earth. Sweat made tiny rivers in the lines of her hands, drawing the mud deeper into her pores, staining the topography of her body.

Making her a map.

Look, the dirt seemed to say, you are here—but she knew she was lost, even so. The only way her compass pointed was down.

She kept digging.

All around her, tiny life forms wiggled and crawled their way through existence, balking at her intrusion. They squirmed away from her shovel, retreating from the light. Still, she broke heedlessly through their netherworld, dislodging the rocks that sheltered them, headlong in her pursuit.

Above her, the sky was dark.

Each time she threw more dirt up behind her out of the pit she had made, the wind threw some back, until the air around her tasted like soil. Still, she kept digging, panting her way through every inch. Hair fell into her eyes and she pushed it back, over and over again, leaving her brow marked with a line of earth.

The stars came out above her, but she didn’t see.

“She’s dead, Ella, dead. Gone, buried. You can’t bring her back with this crusade.”

Every swing of her arms was a blow against the words ringing through her memory.

“You know what he was like, you know what he did to her—”

“That doesn’t mean he killed her.”

“Then where was he? When she fell, when she lay at the bottom of those steps in a twisted, broken heap, where was the man who promised to take care of her? Why didn’t he hear her calling for help?”

“Honey please, I can’t listen to this again—”

“He would have heard her, even over the sound of the shower. He would have heard her scream.”

“You don’t know that.”

“I know he pushed her, Mom. He beat her, and he pushed her down the stairs, and then he took a shower while her brain slowly drowned in its own blood,”

“Ella! Please! Stop this now, I can’t hear this anymore—”

“There was still time to save her."

"I can't-"

"You’d rather let him cry fake tears at her funeral? Let him walk around with that ring on his finger? Let him live in the house where he killed her?”

“Maybe if there was some proof—”

“Her bruises were proof! Years of them!”

“Ella, sweetie, they found nothing. No blood on his clothing, no sign of a struggle.”

The dull thunk of metal against wood reverberated through her bones, bringing her back to the present. She dropped to her knees, scraping at the soil with her bare hands, letting the grime coat her fully, breaking her nails against the ground. The casket lid was heavy, and her arms trembled with effort as she lifted it free.

Her sister’s face was pale in the light from her phone, the skin too thin, a dull gray-yellow like old candle wax. Her hair lay flat and lifeless, but it was soft as she touched it with one gentle, dirty finger.

The body was much the same, its limbs pale and drained, the abdomen slightly swollen. Over the chest, a hint of mottled green where veins had once been. A pool of darker color beneath the collarbone.

Moonlight glinted on metal as she took out her syringe.

The plunger pulled up slowly. At first, there was nothing, and then a ripple of dark fluid crept into the barrel, thick as syrup. The acrid smell of formaldehyde hit the back of her throat, sickly sweet. She didn’t stop until it was full.

When it was done, she looked at her sister’s face for a long moment. Her cheeks were concave, lips pulled taut over teeth that looked too large, the eyelids closed and sunken in. Over her right ear, a small depression. She shut the lid.

Earth clung to her like a shadow as she rose from the ground.

It was much easier to fill the hole than it had been to dig it. The dirt seemed to long for itself, rushing to fill in the gaps she had left, settling into place with a contented sigh. She stamped it down carefully, laying the sod back into place, pushing at the edges until the grave looked undisturbed. She left a fresh bunch of tulips under the headstone.

She popped the trunk of her car open and light flooded over the stains in her jeans, the mud on her sneakers. She placed her medical bag down carefully next to a stack of men’s dress shirts, shimmering in their soft plastic sleeves, hangers emblazoned with a bright red heart on white crinkled paper: We Love Our Customers!

She drew one closer, a crisp oxford button-down in burgundy plaid, the plastic whispering as she folded it back. A few dots of blood went on the underside of each cuff, hidden within the lines of the pattern, barely there at all. A few more went beneath the collar, one under a button, just where a cleaner might have missed it. In the distance, a sweep of headlights made her hold her breath, but they were gone before she had finished capping the syringe. She tucked the shirt back into its protective shell, shut her trunk, and drove home.

“Ella, you didn’t have to do this.”

He scrubbed his hands through his hair, face half hidden in the shadowed doorway.

She smiled, sadly.

“I wanted to. I know she used to pick up your shirts, and with everything happening, I thought you might not have remembered—it’s right on my way to work, so it’s no trouble.”

The hangers swung from her fingertip, glinting beseechingly in the morning sunlight.

“Well, I—you’re right, I had completely forgotten.” He gave her a rueful shrug, letting a touch of sorrow crack into his voice. “Thank you.”

“Like I said,” she held the shirts out to him, “it was no trouble.”

He took the offering, their hands never touching. She watched the shirts pass over the threshold, into his arms. Into darkness.