And Stay Down

Prompt from DailyPrompt.com

It’s the middle of November and I’m trudging through three feet of snow because, much to my dismay, bodies don’t just bury themselves. But they’ll dig themselves out if the damn miasma gets to them before I do.

Fucksake.

The old cart rattles behind me. Used to be a milk float. Now it’s a corpse float. Maybe it’s not such a shift; trawling the streets in the early morning picking up empties from the curb. At least it’s fitted for the snow and potholes. And you don’t need a licence to drive it, so my daughter Jen can help out. Stealing time from her revision to scrape money for tutors. State of life.

I do the walking and handling. Thirteen’s too young to be cramming fresh bodies into the back of a cart. I let her stay hunched up in the front with her headphones on. Is she listening to study podcasts or that angst rock which is all the rage with the kids? No idea. Doesn’t really matter. So long as she keeps her respirator on right.

Mine fogs with each breath, making it harder to distinguish the pale bodies from the snow. Sometimes they’re completely covered, a mock-burial which provides no protection against them rising and trying to force their way back inside. I have to stop by the flag, a scrap of plaintive red fluttering for attention, and dig.

Fucksake.

Digging things up to bury them. That’s my life.

Walk six miles through snow, digging up and dragging and stacking limp flesh bundles which would’ve been people maybe six hours ago. Now they’re trash to be hastily gotten rid of. So I walk and dig and drag and stack and we drive back to the processing centre to chop them up and put them in boxes and bury them for good.

And then I do it all again in the evening.

Fucksake.

I should’ve studied harder. Back when there was a future. Or maybe that would’ve made it all hurt more, knowing I’d followed the rules only to have the world yanked out from under me.

How many of these poor sods followed the rules? Now they’re dumped on the curb, naked and feared and dead. Waiting for me. A dropout who gave up on theatre to work in his dad’s milk delivery business. Back before the end. Back when we had cows and theatres and people walked the streets barefaced and blithe.

Almost a decade, now. I can barely remember a better reality than this shithole.

Fucksake.

Is it better to make your mark on the world then watch it wash away, or toil without a trace?

My sigh fogs my respiration. My trowel gropes through the snow for the waiting body. My body aches, all the way down and back up again.

Fucks. Sake.

Prompt was the first sentence.