She Has A Broken Thing Where Her Heart Should Be - J.D. Barker Page 0,133

that pain just washes down the drain, replaced with the most incredible euphoric sensation. So brilliant, it defies description. I imagine you’d like to feel that? Rather than those horrible ants?”

Elfrieda nodded quickly, tears streaming from her eyes.

“Tell me, Elfrieda, where can I find the others?”

This time, she did tell him. She told him all she knew. She didn’t know where they all were, only Dewey Hobson and the Brotherton woman, and that would have to do.

When she finished, when David was certain there was nothing else to gain, he smiled again. “Good. That’s very good. We’ll be leaving then, I think.” He turned, started for the door, then paused. With his back to her, he asked one final question. “Tell me one more time, what will happen next, after we go?”

Elfrieda Leech took a breath. “When you leave, I’m going to wait three hours. Then I’m going to take the gun, put it in my mouth, nice and deep, and pull the trigger.”

“How many seconds in three hours?”

“10,800.”

“It was a pleasure knowing you, Elfrieda.”

“You too, David.”

The three intruders left then, leaving her bedroom door open. The dead bolt slid back in place at the front door. She had no idea how they had gotten a key.

Sitting on the edge of the bed, Elfrieda Leech remained perfectly still. In her mind, she began to tick away the seconds—10,800, 10,799, 10,798…the clock on her nightstand whirring along with her, the click of plastic on plastic as each minute fell away.

3

My shovel struck the top of my father’s wooden casket at a little past three in the morning, and by a quarter after, I had cleared away the entire surface. Although I had only been four when he died, I remembered the casket. The black wood had been polished to a bright shine, so much so I could see my distorted reflection in the finish from my seat next to Auntie Jo in the front row. Someone placed a rose on top, and I thought for sure Auntie Jo would knock the flower off since there wasn’t one on Momma’s casket, too. She didn’t, though.

That black shine was long gone, the bare wood showing through in spots, the metal of the hinges and latch rusted. The wood had begun to rot, and with a little pressure on the blade of the shovel, the screws pulled right out and the latch popped off.

Who put the flower there, Auntie Jo?

Some asshole.

If I stopped moving, I knew I wouldn’t go through with what I needed to do, so I didn’t allow myself to stop. I didn’t allow myself to think. Instead, I lowered myself into the small space I dug out to the left of the casket and jammed the edge of the shovel under the lip of the lid. Although the rain stopped, puddled water soaked through my shoes, and when I pressed down on the handle of the shovel, when I leveraged it with my weight, water squooshed between my toes and I wondered what it would be like to sink down into that mud, to disappear within the earth.

The top of the casket snapped open with an audible pop! There was a rush of air both in and out of the casket, matched only by the deep breath I sucked into my lungs and forced back out.

I tossed the shovel out of the hole and wrapped my fingers around the lid of my father’s casket, prying it open against the weight of more than a decade.

I’m not sure when my eyes closed, but they did and they didn’t want to open again, but I forced them anyway. When they did, I found the courage to look down into the box.

My father was not inside.

I don’t think I expected him to be in the casket. At some point while digging, I began to tell myself he wouldn’t be in there, and as I repeated that mantra, it became easier to fill the shovel, easier to dig, to keep going. Seeing the empty casket, though, knowing for sure, that brought the tears and I collapsed in the hole, water and mud soaking my jeans. My hands gripped the side of the empty casket, my body quivering, and my mind so filled with thoughts I couldn’t make sense of any of them.

I buried my face in my filthy hands and cried, all the emotion of the past hours coming to a head.

When I finally brought myself to look back inside, I was certain he had