TrunkThe bouncing made the space feel smaller. Carl remembered his older brother, Jackson, tying him to a tree and leaving him alone. Nightfall and his mother’s determination finally found him. Her shaming voice of disappointment, Jackson reddening, grounded.
The impossibility of now, no mother-referee, running out of air. Scream another muffled chance, not wanting to seem desperate or needy. Then the dark tunnel collapsed him: not just the dark of the trunk but the darkness of all things, all vision. Nausea, spit, drool. Loss of consciousness. Carl, dead as no breath makes us, coffin-made in the still unopened trunk. A.S. Aubrey |