Weed flung a shovel full of coal into the maw of the furnace and slouched back to the supply bunker.  He leaned into his shovel, sliding it under the pile with practiced ease.  A push of the handle, a vertical wrench and he had another load.  He straightened to just the right angle that would allow him to carry the coal with the least fatigue to his back.  He had the technique down pat.
 
He tossed the coal straight forward, flicking the shovel.  Turned.  And began again.  He tried to remember things.  There didn’t seem to be much to recall.  Eat, work, eat, sleep – then do it again.  Nothing made sense but he couldn’t find the energy to care.  
 
Ruby light glared from furnace doors.  Weed squinted into the glow and shoveled coal.  On either side indistinct shapes did the same.  Now and then one cried out with pain, babbling words that froze his heart, though he could not understand them. 
 
Soon enough, Weed’s shift ended.  He handed the shovel to another vague shape and headed back to the grotto.  Bent figures moved in the shadows, never speaking.
 
In the grotto, he took his place at the table.  Brown soup again.  He sighed and picked up his spoon.  The man across from him ate soup with mechanical efficiency.  He had a shock of dark hair; his eyes were pools of no particular color.  Weed’s glance roved from man to man.  None spoke.  His spoon continued its motion, unnoticed, a bleak cycle exactly like the others at the table. 
 
The stone floor quivered to the boom of great hammers.  Thin shrieking noises filtered through the thick air.  The screeching sounded almost human at times, especially when it rose and fell, as if torn from a throat already raw from screaming.
 
Time seemed rooted in the very rocks. 
 
Change came without warning.  An old man wearing a soiled robe met Weed at the grotto entrance.  A blocky creature of knotted muscle loomed to one side.  Yellow eyes glared from under a black helm.  Weed backed a step, raw terror rising in his throat.  
 
“You,” said the old man.  “Come with me.”
 
The old man frightened him even more than the sallow-skinned guard.  Out of fear rose unreasoning anger.  “I ain’t et yet.”  Whining truculence was normal for him.  His voice rasped and the words were scarcely understandable, even to him. 
 
“No matter,” said the old man.  “T’were better so.  Come along.”  He turned and stalked out of the grotto.
 
Weed stumbled after, impelled forward.  His thoughts lurched, half-drowned in a sea of sluggish fear.  The guard fell in behind, sparks crackling from iron-shod feet.
 
He was led up flight after flight of chipped stone stairs, then along a corridor pierced at intervals by doorways exuding a pale red light.  At some openings there were panting sobs, as if a victim had a moments respite from the torturer.  From others came shrieks of ultimate, hopeless pain.  He hurried forward, almost treading on the old man’s heels, straining to escape those bitter sounds.  He’d heard them all before.  Terror bubbled and swelled in his chest.
 
“Here,” said the old man.  Weed stopped on the threshold. 
 
“Come on.”  The old man’s touch was gentle, but persistent. 
 
“Where — where am I?”
 
“The Chamber of Sorrow.  A place for the dead to find repentance.”
 
“I — I’m dead?”  Weed’s voice cracked.
 
“Have you not suspected it?”
 
Weed shook his head.  “No — I — no.”  He wanted to vomit, to rid himself of the ice clenched around his heart.  Nothing came up.
 
The old man seemed to know his thoughts.  “Relax.  You’ll be dead for a long time.”
 
In the midst of lifeless black iron and oiled gears lay a sturdy wooden table.  Its top was stained and chipped.  Leather straps were bolted to it.  Weed lunged away from the all too familiar table.  An identical one occupied one room of the basement apartment he lived — had lived in.
 
The guard gripped Weed’s tunic and slung him onto the scarred wood.  The old man secured the straps and stepped away.
 
Into Weed’s mind came the image of a girl wearing a white dress with red polka-dots.  Terror clawed at his heart.  Inarticulate sounds dribbled from his lips.  He wanted to faint, to run away, to escape a black tide of foreboding.  It seemed as if impenetrable walls of glass hemmed him in.  The image of the little girl slowly disappeared.
 
The old man stepped back into view.  Weed shivered as the man guided certain machines into place.  “Do you recall the girl’s name?”
 
“N-no,” croaked Weed.
 
“I think you do.”  A glistening arm tipped with a steel blade snapped into position alongside another equipped with electrodes.  The old man adjusted a lever and flipped a switch.  “The torture you inflicted on the girl will be done to you.  Torment will continue until you repent for your crimes.”
 
“I’m sorry!” screamed Weed.  “I’m sorry!”
 
“But you aren’t.  Not yet.”  The old man walked away.
 
Weed wept and pleaded and swore that, as God was his witness, he was truly sorry for what he had done.  Only machines witnessed the child-killer’s screams.
 
He awoke on his cot.  It was time for work.  Groaning, he got up and hobbled out with the others.  His body shrieked with pain.  His mind whirled.  The torment remained sharp and hard and clear.  His tongue worked back and forth, seeking teeth he no longer had.  There were buds there; the teeth were growing back.  
 
Oh, God.  His body was being healed.  He was being readied for more torment.  They knew about the others.  All seven.
 
“Get to work,” snarled a guard.  Weed hurriedly scooped up a load and tossed it in the furnace.  “I’m sorry,” he said aloud, testing the phrase for credulity.  Not good enough.  How does one learn sorrow?  Practice.  His tongue fretted at rapidly growing teeth.  Practice, practice. 

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©2011 J.R. Hume

JR Hume is an old Montana farm boy who writes science fiction, fantasy, a little horror, and the occasional poem.  He lives in Colorado with his wife and one small Schnauzer.  The Schnauzer is in charge.

I was plowing, looking over my shoulder, watching the gulls swoop in to collect bugs and worms in the freshly turned dirt. An eyeball rolled into view, staring up at the sky. I knew it wasn’t a marble. Eyeballs look like eyeballs.
I stopped the tractor and got down to look. Yep. It was a hazel colored eyeball. I climbed back on the tractor and finished the plowing.
I wanted off that damn farm. Too small to be profitable, too large for a hobby farm, the place sucked up all our time and energy. Josephine had her raspberry patch, her chickens, and a huge garden. She was deaf to the siren song of warm places, where it never snowed and you hired someone else to do the chores. Land prices were up. I wanted to sell out, move away, and never come back. But, she loved her life — refused to consider selling.

Late one evening we were down at the end of the garden, by the small alfalfa field. “I never want to leave here,” she said. “I want to be buried here when I die.”

“Well, all right then.” I didn’t think; just gripped my shovel with both hands and swung for the back of her head. I reckon it was a home run.

Burying Josephine was a job I really wanted to do right. The plan was to put her six feet under. Tradition, you know. Tradition and getting those staring dead eyes as far down as possible. Too bad I ran into a layer of hard pan clay and had to settle for three feet and a few inches. I know where I buried her. You don’t forget a thing like that. It was right out there in the field by the house, just beyond that clump of willows. I don’t know why the trees are still there.

My old man left them when he cleared the ground and I never got around to taking them out.

I plowed the field the next day. Nothing odd turned up.

I filed a missing persons report with the sheriff and mooned around town looking like a kicked dog. Folks remembered that Josephine wasn’t from around here and wondered if she’d run off home. I said I didn’t think so. Her folks were dead and she loved the farm, y’know.

Deputy Jackson showed up one day to ‘look around’. Deuce Jackson finished high school a few years ahead of me and he’d been a deputy ever since coming back from the Army. We both belong to the Chalk Mountain Sporting Club though we seldom hunt and fish together. He clumped through the house a bit, which didn’t take long. I heard him open the gun cabinet and fool around with my rifles. I went out on the porch with a pitcher of sweet tea and a couple glasses filled with ice. Soon enough, he came out.

“Hot ain’t it? Especially for this early.”

“Yep. Hotter’n I can remember. Want some tea?”

We sat there in the shade and talked hunting until my friend Harley showed up. Me and Deuce had to go out and admire the new engine in his truck and listen to Harley tell about where he got it and how hard it was to install it.

Deuce left after about an hour of shop talk. I walked him to his car. “I reckon she ran off,” he said. “Was you two havin’ any trouble?”

“No. Maybe I was just blind to — to whatever was wrong.”

“Hard to tell about a woman.” He shrugged. “Maybe she’ll turn up.”
Two days later I went out to the garden to pull weeds. I jerked a creeper out of the ground and damn near fainted dead away. A clean, white jawbone was tangled in the roots.

Flesh don’t rot off a jawbone, or any other bone, in couple weeks — not in the sandy soil we got around here. Had to be from some other poor soul. Maybe an Indian buried a couple hundred years ago. I tossed it in the burn barrel and went back to my weeding. Ten minutes later I stepped on something that cracked and broke. Another jawbone. At least, I thought it was a different one until I went back to the burn barrel and the first one wasn’t there.

Deuce was right. Josephine was turning up.

I lit a fire and watched the jawbone burn. Didn’t do no damn good. Jawbones appear regular. Josephine has a sense of humor. Vertebrae fall out of hay bales. Intestines turn up draped around fence posts. Burning them does no good. I twisted my ankle on a hip bone last summer — same one I found and put in the fire two years before that. But I keep trying.

Alfalfa grows uncommonly well in the little field. My neighbors comment on it all the time and ask what I fertilize it with. It’s just good soil, I tell them.

I can’t sell the farm. I do my chores and read about places where people sip pina coladas and bask under a warm tropical sun.

Josephine keeps repeating herself. I don’t know how that works. I might have scamped a little on the grave, but I damn sure didn’t cut her up and scatter the parts willy-nilly. No, sir. She was in one piece.

______________________________

©2011 J.R. Hume

JR Hume is an old Montana farm boy who writes science fiction, fantasy, a little horror, and the occasional poem.  He lives in Colorado with his wife and one small Schnauzer.  The Schnauzer is in charge.