BURY YOU

It gave me such a shock when you clawed your way out of the ground and appeared in my garden.  I had forgotten I had buried you there.  Luckily I was planting new shrubs in the flower bed at the time and so had a spade in my hand.  I swung it round and cracked open your skull.  While you lay there, I stripped you of your armour of grey flannel suit and shiny, creaky shoes.  I wanted you to be cold, because you made me feel cold.  I tied you up and I set about digging your grave.

You regained consciousness as I pushed you into the hole.  You lay on your back and stared up at me silently as I began to rain the mud over your body.  How ridiculous you looked, all wet and dirty, trying to spit the soil from your mouth and call for help, but you couldn’t.  I’m sure you remember that I had no dignity and couldn’t ask for help either.

The last thing I covered was your face.  I wanted to remember a new expression on it.  You see I was a child and you enjoyed yourself so fully.  Now I’m grown and you’re an old, dead thing trying to resurrect itself.  I see no trace of your smug expression now, I only see you choking and dying as I consign you to obscurity again.

I pour the cement and lay out a patio.  I keep watch through the long, lonely night.  There is a gun in my hand, loaded with a single bullet.  It is for me if you manage to come back because I can’t do this again.  Surely the deep hole and concrete will prevent your return, but I can never be sure, never know if evil can really die.  I like to think of you rotting down there, of the worms eating your flesh, of your body disintegrating, the putrid chemicals seeping into the earth and making the world what it is.