Breathing
by Mab
The makeshift floats bumped awkwardly against him as he carefully towed his burden through the water. He was cold through now, the numbing cold that sent a man's balls crawling up into his body. But then, he could have been swimming through gentle tropical waters and he would have felt that tense withdrawal. Any man who swung loose and easy when he was disposing of a corpse wasn't any man that Jim wanted to emulate.
It made no matter that she was dead. He still towed her face up, hand across her jaw in the approved life-saving manner. His own breathing rasped with effort, but if he listened carefully, below his breathing and the quiet splash of his movement through the water, he could hear that other breathing, feel the warmth like a pale sun shining though heavy cloud. Later. His mind had to deal with this first. Housekeeping, as it were. He smiled without humour and stopped in the dark water.
Jim's fingers were clumsy, and it took time to undo the caps. His floats were about to turn into weights. Once the caps were all off, he pushed the bleach and detergent bottles under first, the water's entrance into them making a noise like a thirsty man gulping water. The big petrol can attached to her feet with electric flex was harder to submerge properly, and then just went under suddenly, taking her down to rest blanketed in silt.
Such a long swim back to shore, back to the car that stank of her, that was filled with the stench of madness and desperation. Such a long drive back, too, past the motel. He'd said 'the first motel they came to', and that meant they were there, he could just turn towards the breathing and be gone from here, but he kept going; he had a job to do first.
The car jolted over the rough ground, and when it was finally so caught in the dirt that it couldn't go any further, he turned off the engine and got out. The air was brisk and scented with pine; the living sap in the trees, and the dead, aromatic scent underfoot. And when this was real, he had turned back to the road and run, run so hard, his feet pounding against the tar-seal. Now, he turned into the forest instead, still running, until he ran in perpetually blue-lit night.
Jim halted, rested against a rough-barked tree. He could hear the roar of water, echoing up through a gorge, and he followed the sound. He saw the edge of a cliff, and a small figure lying on its stomach, chin resting in his hands, looking down over the edge to the foaming water below. He approached quietly, but his son knew he was there. Robbie was a sentinel, too.
“Hi, Dad.” The greeting was abstracted and sing-song, the kind of hello he used to give his father when he came home in the middle of a favourite tv show, and William Ellison would be too tired to protest the lack of attention. He dropped to lie beside Robbie, looking down into the gorge to see what he saw.
“Hey. How ya going?”
“Okay.”
There seemed to be little more to say. He knew this place. He looked down the same cliff that he had seen once before, when he had been given his options as a sentinel. To be, or not to be. Always a hell of a question. Robbie sighed. His son looked tired, and he felt a quick current of anger. He was a little boy, he shouldn't be here, in this place where Jim had never found anything but questions. Even if he wouldn't have known of Robbie's existence without it.
“You sure things are okay?”
“I guess. I just come here and think sometimes.”
“What about?”
“Stuff.” Jim wished that Blair was there. He had the knack of getting people to talk.
“So, what are you looking at?”
“The river. It goes really fast. And I'm waiting.”
“What for?”
Robbie tensed beside him. “Here they come.”
The water was a long, long way below, but they could both see. Jim picked out two shapes in the swirl of current, river debris, swept along like skin bags of sticks. Dead animals, a jaguar and a coyote. They floated to a side pool, and turned dizzyingly in the current, the slack bodies twisting this way and that.
Jim looked down in horror. He swallowed and asked, “Do they come by like that a lot?”
Robbie watched the movement with narrowed eyes. “Most times.” He turned to look at Jim. “They'll stop some time. Won't they?”
Jim leaned his chin on Robbie's shoulder, rubbing his nose in the silk of the child's hair. “When you're ready for them to stop.”
The little boy's voice wobbled. “I want them to stop, now.”
“You're not ready yet. Maybe you should stop coming here for a while.”
Robbie squeezed closer. “But then I won't see you.”
“I know.”
“Can you ever come visit, Dad? You know, for real?”
“That's complicated, buddy. You know that.”
“I miss you.”
“I know.”
Robbie took a last look down the gorge. “I guess I should go home, now.”
Jim kissed him, a quick brush of lips against his boy's shaggy hair. “Yeah, you do that.” Robbie stood up, not at all concerned by the drop before him, and then he turned to walk away, saluting his father with a vague wave as he disappeared into the trees. Jim watched and listened until he was sure he was gone, until he could hear nothing except for the night sounds of the jungle, and the roaring of the river, and the gentle susurration of breathing underneath it all.
He looked down once more. The corpses still jerked and curled, trapped in the eddies, but he ignored them. He leaped off the cliff, diving down, hands outstretched, and cut into the water like a knife, let the current batter him down before he rose again, into the quiet of his bedroom. The display on the clock read 2:58 am, and even his sight couldn't discern much from that pallid light and whatever other light crept through the gaps in the blackout curtains hung against the window.
He didn't need to see, anyway. He could hear Blair breathing.
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