The Dark Thing
By: Sherrie Hurd Hyatt
Tags: Grief, Short Story, Darkness, Pain, The Mad River

A neverending plight of something gone terribly wrong

Upon the hill in the midst of a long summer rain; puddles form and reflect a melancholy scene. A female figure is hard at work at the task that lies before her…unfinished…always unfinished.

The wind blows, it howls but it doesn’t cover the strain in her voice. The grunting and moaning of her desperation as she digs deeper and deeper into the soil of the cemetery. Her fingers are calloused, hard-worn from night after night of unearthing the dark thing.

She stops. There, in the mud so dark, she stares down at what lies in the hole. Her heart sinks, then flies high above the knarled treetops. Her tears fall down dirty cheeks, washed only by the falling rain.

She crouches down and reaches into the earth. Twitching fingers, shaking knees-she is tired from too many sleepless nights of dreaming of this point in time that reverberates and repeats itself.

The dark thing is pretty, it shines in the light of the nearby streetlamps. It twinkles in the prism of the raindrops. The dark thing stares up at her and she stares down into its depths. She pulls the thing to her chest, against her heartbeat and weeps.

“I shall not let you die. I shall not hide you away from myself. I will not let you be known to the others, but I shall protect you…here.”

She grasps the edges of the dark thing and releases a hot breath. The mist of her soul wafts up and up and then dissipates between the drops of rainfall.

“I shall not lie…I shall not hide but I shall bind my lips and take forth my tongue to protect you.”

The dark thing doesn’t speak to her at all. It settles within her hands and is quiet as quiet things are therefore it is not alive nor is it dead. The dark thing offers no comfort for her soul. It might as well be a text, a book, or a document. It is a picture, a window, and a projected image.

It cannot speak nor can it deliver what the girl needs to be fulfilled. The dark thing stares upward from within the clear blue of its soul, and it remains silent. It is hard, it is solid and it is expected. The dark thing is what it is and it is no more than that.

The girl screams and holds tight to the dark thing as if it were the only thing in which she could steady her rambling mind. She glances down in pure desperation and caresses the dark thing. Her heart breaks and melts into her chest. Her soul is barren, numbed by the intensity of the pain.

“Oh, how You hold me still.”

She lays her dirty cheek against her prize letting her matted red hair flow over its unforgiving edges. She cannot hear it nor can she feel its arms around her. She can only feel its pain that remains alien to her even now. A pain that drew her to the dark thing in her first moment of love.

Still, on her knees, she takes one more look at the dark thing in her hand and then she replaces the object into the dark hole. The mud pools up between her fingers and reclaims the dark thing for its own. She smiles to hide the hellish pain inside and then she picks up the spade to resume her work.

Quietly and painfully, the girl buries the dark thing. Tomorrow she shall dig this hole again…as all the nights before and all the nights to come until the dark thing is nothing more than tattered remains of what she could never have….until it is gone from her mind until it is dead to her.

The rain falls harder sweeping around the lone figure. Deep within the ballroom of souls and among the cold tombs; the sounds of the night join the constant loud thumping of the broken girl’s heart….

…and she bends to her task.