LITTLE BONES
LITTLE BONES
by Jessica Sarlin
Catherine moves aside the wooden planter. She hates the dark. She will go quickly, though. She just wants to check.
He is asleep, but he might be angry if he finds her. Even though she could easily explain. She just wants to be sure. To be sure it hasn’t come alive again. She needs to check to make sure it is still there. Dead.
She scrapes at the black earth. Her breath is ragged, excited. She is sure she can be done before he senses she is not beside him, before the bed goes cold on her side.
The trees groan overhead.
At last, she finds the box. She will not take it out. The lid is intact. That was enough for her, last time. This time, she needs to see. She needs to see the bones. It is the only way to be sure. Her fingers are raw and numb, but she thinks she has time to pry the top off. She will hurry.
The lid wriggles and comes away like a rotten tooth.
It is too dark. Catherine leans into the grave and squints. The bones are there. She checks twice.
A knot in her stomach releases. She peers harder at the arrangement. The pieces. Maybe, the memory of what is there will be enough for the next time. She won’t have to sneak out in her nightdress while Asher is sleeping.
There they are. The white sticks laid out, like a ritual, like a table set for a hopeful occasion. The cap and dress are there, as well, moldering, but otherwise just as she made them.
Of course, for a human baby.
Not for whatever Asher called forth on his own, using his seed and some damp earth. Mixing it together with worms and greedy wishes. Whatever dark magic. She hadn’t wanted to hear the rest. She stuffed her ears.
He said it was a gift for her. She wanted a child, after all. Had cried hot tears about it. Had lost her own babies in blood, month after month.
But this was something else.
A stranger, at best. At worst, a wax doll or some hairless wild animal, shrieking and biting and grabbing the air. It turned away, rolled from her arms onto the floor, resisted her warmth. Catherine tried, Asher knew. In the end, she could not love it, could not like it as much as a blistered rash.
When it died, the relief was like that. A clearing of skin.
Asher mourned and Catherine pretended. A new fear emerged. Could Asher’s tears call it awake again? He made it with his body in the first place. Seemed likely it might follow his wants. The thought ate her up day and night. She needed to check. To make sure.
Not for her sake alone. What if his experiment – his mistake, if she’s honest – was exposed and spread? What would it do to the world if things could be made and not stay dead?
If the bones with their sacks of dust could somehow scratch and scramble their way up and into the clean night air, what would it mean? For all of us.
But Catherine sees the bones. They are still there. All is well.
Fiction © Copyright Jessica Sarlin
Image by Racheal Parkinson from Pixabay
Jessica Sarlin (she/her) is a freelance writer and artist from New Jersey. She loves dark things that are also sweet and vice versa. Her recent work can be found in Door Is a Jar Literary Magazine, Earth: Elemental Cycle Book One (Eerie River Publishing) and The Saturday Evening Post (New Fiction Fridays). Learn more about Jessica at https://jesssarlinwriter.wordpress.com.
