BIG EMPTY

BIG EMPTY
by Aria Braswell

The Big Empty smelt like the color black.

It sat out back behind the farmhouse and was deep as anything could go.

Mama didn’t think it smelt like I thought it did. Still, I wasn’t allowed anywhere near it.

Sammy said it was a tar pit, like the kind that mammoths used to die in way back when. But I didn’t believe him. I knew it wasn’t. I knew what it was. But he didn’t believe me when I told him.

I liked to go poking at it with a stick, see what I could draw out. Fishing, I called it.

Things liked to appear in there. They would float up from the bottom whenever a new something was forgotten. I liked to sit by the inky black and wait to see the things that people tried to forget.

Gold wedding bands, the sad sort of books where dogs die, love letters, photos still in their frames. A whole car floated up from the bottom once, front all busted up, windshield bashed in and gone. A crib too. An entire grand piano. All covered in black bubbling liquid schmoot from the pit. I fished out a stuffed bear once. I wanted it for myself badly. It had a red heart button sewn on its chest and a ribbon tied round its neck, and was just the best thing I ever saw, but no matter how much I rinsed and rinsed the inky schmoot wouldn’t wash off. I ended up throwing it back in before it stained my bedsheets and Mama caught on I’d been fishing again.

The worst day at the pit was the day the man in the grey cap arrived.

He was dead when he floated to the top, bloated all to hell, lips blue and cheeks puffed up. I knew he was dead, cause some of our lambs would freeze come winter and so I knew what dead looked like. I could hardly see his face and knew he’d grow to be a real stink, but when I poked him with my stick, his eyes shot open, white against the black. He shouted out, real loud, and started to flail and sink and bob up and down again over and over. He was beginning to make a real mess of things and I let out a shout myself in shock.

Then, all of a sudden, he was coughing and sputtering and splashing and wiping schmoot from his eyes and paddling for the bank. I watched as he pulled himself into the weeds, rolling and choking, and I was sure he was going to die all over again and I was gonna let him too. It’s wrong to be dead then come back to life. That goes against nature.

Mama would’ve said only Jesus could go and do a thing like that, but I didn’t even believe in Jesus. I wouldn’t dare tell Mama that though, less I wanted to lose the skin on my ass.

After a while, the man in the grey cap stopped making any sound at all and went to laying still on his back and I thought at last it was over again. I trod over with my stick to poke him, just to make sure one last time, before nudging him back into the schmoot so the vultures couldn’t find him. But he moaned as I stabbed him in the ribs. I stood a moment in my disappointment, as he very slowly turned over and propped himself up on an elbow to ask me a question he deemed important.

“Where the hell am I?”

“The Big Empty.”

“What?”

I tossed a hand out over the pit. “You’re something someone tried to forget. Also, you’re trespassing on my family’s land.”

“Why the hell would you say something like that to me? I’ve just…” But his words stopped short. His voice was the type that sounded like it’d come from far far away, like the people on black and white television programs.

“You asked.” I never lied to people. Even if it might’ve spared their feelings. I don’t like sparing people’s feelings. I like to watch what knowing the truth looks like in people. “I’ve never seen a whole person come up before.”

The man looked at me blankly. I think he must’ve been quite dumb.

“Are you still dead?” I went at him again with my stick. “You were, when you got here.”

“Dead? No. My name is Wallace Flint. I live in Sussex.”

I’d never heard of Sussex before. It sounded inappropriate. I don’t think Mama’d want me to say it out loud.

“You don’t live anywhere. You’re dead. I saw that you were dead.”

“I…” The man stumbled up to his feet. He was taller than I thought he was. “I need a bath. And a telephone.”

I peered back over my shoulder at the farmhouse. I’d sure be in trouble then, bringing a stranger into the house, letting them take all their clothes off and turn our bathtub black with schmoot.

“We don’t have either.” I told him. “We have a bucket. And a trough in the barn.”

The man looked at me in disbelief and shook his head, followed by something under his breath. I supposed he was accepting my terms because he rose to follow me. I led him in the back way just in case Mama was washing dishes at the window.

“Why would someone want to forget you?”

“I beg your pardon?”

“That’s why you’re here ya know. That’s the kinda stuff that comes here, to The Big Empty. Stuff that other people wanna forget.”

“Maybe I’ll be able to tell you after I’ve had a rinse. I seem to have forgotten, myself.”

The man sat in the trough in his full clothes and I fetched a bucket. It was freezing but he dumped it over himself and started scrubbing.

“It ain’t gonna come off, ya know. It never comes off. The schmoot. It stains.”

I brought him another bucket anyways and he doused it over himself. The black only smeared but stayed the same, just as I’d said it would. Grown ups never listen to me. Grown ups are the dumbest things in the world. He took off his hat and tried wringing it out under the water. That’s when I saw the peculiar thing that brought him here.

“Ya know, there’s a hole in the back of your head?”

His hands flew up and into it. I expected him to cry out in pain but he just felt along the edges of it carefully, and then stuck a few fingers inside. The hole was as big as his hand, and mostly empty, not a lot of brain left in sight.

“No wonder you can’t remember anything. You don’t got a brain anymore.” I fetched another bucket of water. When I got back, the man was still sitting in silence, feeling around inside the schmoot stained walls of his skull. I couldn’t tell the look on his face.

“What’s your name, kid?”

“I ain’t gotta tell you that.” I added water to the trough then flipped the bucket over and sat on it. “Mars.” I said anyways. “Short for Mallory. My pa used to call me Mal, and then Mallo, and then Marshmallow, and now I’m Mars. But he’s dead. Like you are.”

“But I’m not dead, am I? I’m sitting here, talking to you now. I can feel this water and I know it’s cold…”

“Who said the dead can’t feel? Ghosts’ve gotta be moanin about somethin. And there’s a hole in the back of your head. That sure seems like a thing of the dead to me.” I then got to thinking, I didn’t really know all that much about how The Big Empty worked, or how a man could be dead when he got here, but now up and walking around.

“What country is this?”

It was my turn to look at him blankly. “This ain’t a country, Mister. It’s my family’s farm.”

He let out a loud sigh and said, “Is the rest of your family just as infuriating as you?”

I think he meant to be teasing me but I didn’t have the time for it. Not when Mama might come out back and see me talking to a stranger in a bathtub with a hole in the back of his head. Mars Elizabeth Janey! I could hear her saying. You’re in the biggest trouble o yer life!

The man’s hand floated down from the back of his skull to lay in the cold cold water.  “Alright, suppose I am dead… How did I end up here?”

“I told you. You’re somethin someone wants to forget.”

“Who?”

“Well, me if you keep on askin questions I don’t know the answer to.” I scowled and he let out an uff. “Why does it matter anyways? You’re here now. Well, what’s left of ya.”

He looked offended by that one and decidedly put the cap back on to cover up his missing skullery. “What’s that mean?”

“Well I reckon you’re only a piece o’ what you were before. I doubt someone’d like to forget all a ya. That’s an awful lotta forgettin to do. Maybe just the bad parts came here, to The Big Empty, and the good ones are still wherever you left behind…” Then I rose an eyebrow at him and smiled slyly. “You ever stared into The Big Empty?”

“Of course not.”

“I have… It’s the only water you can look into and not see some sorta reflection coming up the other side. That’s how I found out what it was… What I was.” I stood from my bucket and found my reflection in the rusted metal of a shovel that leaned up against the wall of the barn. “See, my brother, Sammy… he looks into The Big Empty and sees a tar pit. Like the kind in La Brea. The kind he’s read about in books. He doesn’t even look for himself starin back, up outta the schmoot. He doesn’t even notice things like that. Things like not being able to see your own reflection…

I go lookin for things like that though. But when I look into The Big Empty, I see nothin. Just darkness. Nothin tellin’ me I exist. That’s the thing about existin, isn’t it? Our version of it’s only a reflection of how other people think of us, how we think of ourselves… You look into most pools of water and you get a clear picture of what you think you are. But you stare into The Big Empty… and you see that it’s deep, dark. There’s nothin in there to tell you what you are. You just gotta hope and pray that you’re still there, tell yourself you’re still up on the surface somewhere, looking down into that pool, cause if you’re not, you’re already somewhere inside it. When you stare into a place like that, it ain’t hard to forget yourself. You stare into The Big Empty and only it stares back.”

I itched my chin and kept my gaze locked on my own two eyes in the shovel.

“And when you come up from the other side, you’re all covered in schmoot and no matter how hard you scrub and you scrub, you find that you’re stained with it. And you carry it on your skin and in your mouth and nose all the time. It fills you up. The Big Empty. You feel it there, you don’t need to see it reflected in your eyes to know what sits behind them. No picture of your face in a pool of clean clear water will ever show you the kind of truth that sits behind your eyes, where The Big Empty sits.

It fills itself up with it. All the things about our lives that break our hearts and make us real real sad. That’s the kinda stuff you find in The Big Empty. Things you wanna forget, but sit inside you deep and black and cold.”

The stranger was sitting silent in the makeshift tub but I didn’t say anything much more. Didn’t have to. I knew he’d go stare into the inky black pitch next chance he got and he’d realize all the same things about himself that I did when I looked inside.

I’d leave him in the barn then to try and remember himself. Mama’d be putting dinner on soon and I wouldn’t be caught dead late. Before I left out the back barn doors, I caught the flash of my reflection once more in the cool silver of that shovel, skin all stained with schmoot, just the same as I’ve always been, since I came up the other side.

And I headed for the house.

Fiction © Copyright Aria Braswell
Image by Arek Socha from Pixabay