Lament for the Afterlife

by Lisa L. Hannett

  Across the grounds, Pearl has taken her guide by the hand. Some have reached their destinations; Elizabet and Agnes are now presented with boxes. All of them, singing. Calling out for new life and a skin full of freckles.

  Theexhumer stops at the foot of a grave. Up close, the plinth proves to be decorated with a flock of swallows. A good sign, Swan thinks. A symbol of motherhood. Her throat constricts.

  Will it be enough?

  The soil is loose; a regal brown, thank Themarys. This one hasn’t been buried long. Swan fidgets with her veil. She sticks a corner of it in her mouth, hoping to generate some moisture. All around the cemetery, Thevessels raise their voices, pitching them to fill the up and down worlds; projecting their summoning-songs from this realm into the next.

  “Now is the time for singing,” Theexhumer says, passing Swan a wooden box.

  Grasping it in both hands, she wiggles her numb feet, burrowing them into the life-giving earth. Tears fill her eyes as she releases the brass latch. Her song had been so beautiful. She’d practised so hard. Without it, what good are such tools?

  The hinges creak as Swan lifts the lid; the box exhales lily-scented perfume. It is upholstered with plush crimson, possibly velvet. She has never seen anything so luxurious.

  “Now is the time for singing,” Theexhumer repeats, then collects a spade from behind the marble plinth.

  Tears plink with metallic splashes as they land inside the box. One drops on the knife’s silver blade, the other on the fork’s steel tines.

  Such precious bone handles will be destroyed in the dirt. Swan takes both utensils in one hand; working from tip to end, she individually polishes them with her flimsy skirts. Not clean enough, she thinks. Any paint left in the bristles will ruin a brush’s point. Starting again, she methodically cleans knife and fork until the hem of her garment is snagged into webs.

  And again, until cutting edges gleam.

  And again, until Theexhumer tires of Swan’s stalling and starts to dig.

  I can’t do it.

  The knife rasps along the plinth’s edge, growing sharper with each stroke. Swan’s arm jerks back and forth, a canvas-stretching rhythm. She closes her eyes briefly, ignores the ache in her throat, pretends that’s all she’s doing. Beginning her next tribute to Themarys, preparing the surface upon which she will paint.

  Magenta will do nicely as undertone, she thinks, but her imaginings vanish when she feels the knife warming in her grip. A foothill of dirt has accumulated beside her: Theexhumer’s task is nearly complete.

  Swan sneezes out a kerchief’s worth of grave dust. Her eyes redden beautifully as they water. The air smells of silverware and worms; all around her, it rings with Thevessels’ arias, their cantatas, their recitatives, their fugues. Summoning-songs tear through the cemetery’s atmosphere, accompanied by the shrill of knives on tombstones.

  This must be a nightmare. Thevessels conclude the first round of their songs and Swan has yet to sing a single note. Air wheezes in and out of her lungs. In and out, in and out—quickly, try again. No sound follows no matter how she forces her breath. She grows lightheaded.

  Below, Theexhumer straightens and seeks a way out of the grave.

  Ohmarys, Ohmarys, Ohmarys, Swan prays. How will the soul know where to settle, if I don’t sing it home?

  Theexhumer hoists herself out of the dark trough carved in the earth. Swan worries at her lips, bites at them, swallows.

  Please let this be a nightmare. Oh, please.

  Theexhumer brushes chunks of soil off her shroud, then gestures at the open grave. Swan leans over the verge, paralysed at the sight of her life bundle. So shrivelled. So exposed. So silent.

  Sing, she tells herself. Sing now.

  The cemetery is quiet. Thevessels’ songs soared while knives pierced decaying flesh; they crescendoed while forks crushed rotting bones; but now they have hushed to sonorous humming. It is impolite to chew with mouths open, but humming is more than acceptable—songs mustn’t be broken until final mouthfuls are swallowed.

  “Eat that which is good, and let your soul delight itself in fatness,” Theexhumer says, gently nudging Swan closer to her meal.

  What am I supposed to do? she wants to ask. But words don’t follow her mind’s directions. Her mouth freezes in a pinched ‘o’ shape, tries to make a ‘w’ sound.

  Air escapes out the aperture of her pursed lips—and is followed by a tiny, musical breath.

  Swan’s heart flutters in her chest, beating her into swift action. Thank Themarys! She takes a quick swig from her vial of tears, grabs her knife and fork, and lowers herself into the open grave.

  Her whistle is sombre and wavering, its tempo leaden. It falls from her lips like a reluctant secret, a heavy oesophageal echo. Pinched, the cadences of her summoning song are unrecognisable; the tune sounds like a dirge as she slices into Lacunaic flesh. Between bites, her whistle wavers with thoughts of baby girls. Swan gulps down a crumbling tendon.

  Are lyrics needed to lure spirits into our bellies?

  So hard to whistle with a mouth full of corpse. Swan thanks Themarys for the gatekeeper’s gift and takes another sip from her lachrymal vase. Salty tears sting the insides of her cheeks; her whistling melody falters more than it soars. So hard.

  Three times she cycles through her summoning-piece—the one she once sung so beautifully—repeating it until all the tender bits are settled in her stomach. Silence greets her when at last she stops whistling. Silence and empty skin.

  Clutching the utensils, their handles unrecognisable with mud, Swan grips the grave’s ragged lip, braces her feet against its crumbling walls, and hoists herself slowly up. The effort leaves her breathless, lying on the patchy grass, half in and half out of the earth. Across the cemetery, she sees Elizabet, covered in dirt and freckles, returning her dinnerware and its gorgeous box to Theexhumer at her side. Her cousin looks stunning, bespeckled with child. She seems lighter, more confident; her spotted feet glide over the uneven ground as though

  she’s walked it a thousand times.

  Swan resumes her whistling. Of all the girls, if Elizabet is freckled then surely it isn’t too late for her. Happy Elizabet, she thinks, watching the Newmother drift away. I wish she had said goodbye.

  Her whistling grows more fervent. All around, Thevessels pepper with spots, replace their cutlery, and float along the path home. Even Pearl, the youngest proving Themothers’ faith warranted.

  No tans so far, just freckles, thank Themarys. A mottled harvest of baby girls. Swan imagines Themothers’ joyful faces as their pregnant daughters descend, leaving no fodder for the Lacunae. She stares at her skin. Is that a dot on her knee? A smattering of deep brown on her wrist, a spattering on her thigh? Swan wills freckles to appear.

  She whistles and whistles. The only spots she sees are blue, swimming in front of her eyes from lack of oxygen. Too soon, the cemetery is vacant.

  Theexhumer sidles over, places a calm hand on her shoulder. Reluctantly, Swan lets the sound die. The utensils slide from her fingers, rejoining the body that had made their fine handles.

  Night has fallen. The time for quickening has passed.

  Swan shrugs Theexhumer’s hand off, turns her back on the woman’s sorrowful expression. Three plots away from her own, a similar play is being enacted. A waifish girl—Swan can’t remember her name—sobs the final notes of a lullaby while her guide prises the knife and fork from her slender fingers.

  That waif is too thin to bear girls, Swan thinks. Her song always falters in the downworld; it’s rumoured she hasn’t a taste for it.

  Up here, the girl’s allotted carcass is picked clean.

  And still she sings. And still she remains as pale as Swan.

  Why was she chosen this year? The question is plain in the lines creasing Swan’s brow as she watches the girl refuse to accept defeat.

  “It is not for us to decide how, or for whom, salvation will come to pass,” Theexhumer says, replying as though Swan has spoken aloud. “Our ta
sk is to ensure an opportunity is unearthed, nothing more.”

  “This?” Swan’s voice rasps, resists each syllable. “Salvation?” She shakes her head. Emptiness consumes disappointment and leaves her feeling almost nothing. Loss is more palpable than hope, and more confusing. If she’s not to be Amother, if she’s not to paint, then what point is there in being “saved”?

  Theexhumer reads the girl’s despair; recognises it as a mantle she herself has worn many times.

  “Such thoughts are best left in the downworld, Swan.” No longer Avessel; this failure has stolen her past accomplishments and has left only her name. “In time, you’ll see things differently. Now come.”

  Stepping around piles of dirt and bones, Swan lets her new sister slowly draw her toward the nearest cluster of mausoleums. The path is black, difficult to distinguish in the moments between boomer flashes, but Theexhumer’s footsteps are assured. She moves swiftly, confident that the childless girl will stay close if only to avoid being alone. Eyes cast down, Swan negotiates the route, from rough patches of midnight blue scree across colourless flagstones, into the depthless ink clinging to the crypt’s facade.

  She slips into shadows as if into a new robe. Darkness is a comfort; it conceals her unfortunate skin more effectively than any winding sheet, any uniform. Tears warm her cheeks, erasing ceremonial spots. The tomb’s chill is pervasive; Swan is soon shivering uncontrollably.

  “Here,” says Judith, offering a swathe of dusty grey fabric. The pads of her fingers, rough with calluses, scratch as she unlaces Swan’s white corset and replaces it with Anexhumer’s garb. The veil is unpinned, a hood lifted in its stead. A shovel is placed in Swan’s shaking hands.

  “Come. We must gather bones and fill the graves before dawn. There’s bodies aplenty next field over that need preserving once the skybunker girls have their way with them. It won’t take long, but watch your step—you don’t want to get caught by an earthsplosion.”

  Swan nods. Swallows and swallows but despair is lodged firm in her throat. She clutches the spade, knuckles white, feet rooted to the floor. Looks at the flecks of paint around her nails and wonders how long they’ll take to fade.

  “What colour is morning here?”

  Judith pauses. She looks outside, away. “Vibrant enough to shatter dreams.”

  Swan sniffles. Ohmarys—and stops. No more prayers, not to them. Seven coddled Marys: never alone, always singing. What can they do for her now? They’ve given nothing but the residue of hope, drier than the paintbrushes she’ll never again touch, emptier than her womb.

  Shuffling toward the tomb door, Swan turns away from blessed, familiar dark, and steels herself for the bleakness of a bright future.

  “On yer average day,” say the Broom, “what kinds of dust will ye find in my pan?”

  [Wait for the kids’ little faces to scrunch, pondering; give their eyes time to roll left and right, up and down, seeking answers in empty air; let their ’winds (if they should have them) scroll through the wonderful nonsense of imagination—and then prompt them, again, to speak. This kind of to-and-fro story will not work without their input.]

  “On yer average day,” say the Broom, “what kinds of dust will ye find in my pan?”

  – ’wind-flakes!

  – shells!

  – flowers! [Make clear: the Broom cannot remove what was never there.]

  – pebbles!

  – bones!

  – grey fingers, toes, bums, willies … [Rein them in before they get to “pooh!” else the game will be lost, the tale unsalvageable.]

  “And what do I do with all this scat?” ask the Broom. “When I sneak out my cubby and onto the street?”

  – sweep!

  – sweep!

  – sweep!

  “No,” say the Broom. “I brush, scrub, scour, clean—but only them grey ones sweep.”

  [“Why does the Broom waste all his time cleaning,” the oldest will inevitably ask, after their younger siblings’ ideas have all dribbled out, “when he could be making a difference?”

  For the record, “Everyone has a job to do” is the only response children of all ages will eventually accept. Run through the list of occupations one might have; get the kids to join in. Encourage them to make things up, new and ridiculous professions: roller-skating waitresses, nannies with magic-flying umbrellas, chefs with famous restaurants, etc. Ask them what they’d want to do, if they weren’t to be soldiers. After, don’t say “anything is possible.” Smile and nod and tell them the plain truth: “Everyone fights in their own ways.”]

  ‘Shelter stories’; variation on ‘Blackout

  Entertainment for Young and Old’

  ‘The Broom’s Tale’, Bibliotheca 33.5130° N, 36.2920° E

  Before he found clippers in the kitchen junk drawer, Peytr used to sit on the edge of Amelia’s mattress once a week and bite her nails down to the quick. It often made a mess of her fingers and toes; blunted from all the glass, his teeth had clamped and torn more than nibbled. But he’d persisted, sucking rubies from her cuticles, gnawing hangnails and tips until they were raw but clean. Spat-out shards became new petals on the flowered bedspread. They became extra crunch on the floor.

  Amelia never complained.

  Nowadays Peytr does a tidier job. With metal and experience, he keeps her from looking so much like a corpse, yellowed claws growing long after death. Quickly, he clips and clips, while crescent buds bloom red and white. He snips, aware he’ll never be quick or precise enough.

  The shrillness of her nails pushing, grinding, erupting in millimetric surges keeps him awake.

  Some nights, curled on a divan he’s dragged near her bed, Peytr suffers the noise of Amelia’s decay. The skin warm but crackling, flaking in parchment pieces. Her blood stagnating, resonant purple pools chilling the caverns of her heart. Air clotting in her lungs. The soul rattling under her ribs, scratching, clawing, trying to hitchhike its way out on her breath. He presses an ear to her slow-rising chest, the tempo of her life never changing.

  Her pulse whispers. His shouts.

  Most nights, Peytr reaches for the mortar and pestle. Crushes a quarter bomb, or a third, or an eighth—as small a cut as he can manage, since Amelia’s stash, like its maker, is on the decline. There are about twenty full hits left, maybe three or four times that much if he’s stingy. To beef up each dose he breaks filth from his ’wind, crumbles it into the mix. With unsteady hands he scoops the laced glass, grinds it into his gums. The effect is almost immediate. Sucking relief through his teeth, Peytr feels heavy. Grounded. Even with the added word-boost, he never takes quite enough to get cloudy anymore. He hasn’t been above the strato for, oh, nine? Ten years? Maybe longer. Keeping track is too hard, so most of the time he doesn’t bother. All he knows is he hasn’t soared— He doesn’t soar. Even when he bags cheap nicks from passing dealers—dealers who haven’t passed his way in just about as long as he can’t remember—Peytr rarely gets higher than the rafters. More and more, the shards weigh him down. He sinks onto the couch, leaden, solid. Dreaming of mountains and stone and silent blue oceans, shipwrecks pummelled to sand in the deeps.

  He wakes sometime later, early.

  At the first hint of daybright, snuffers clank down the Gorge Road in twos and threes, extinguishing flambeaux. They snort and hock silt onto the gravel as they pass. They laugh at mumbled jokes. Peytr always misses the punch lines.

  Against pale morning, darkness coalesces into silhouettes that slink around the cabin. At the first snuffle, Peytr sits on Amelia’s bed and holds her hands silent. He lifts his feet off the floor. Severs connections. As herdboys paw empty plastic bags on the stoop, muttering and pissing on the weathered planks, Peyt stares at the doorknob, expecting it to turn. It’s hard to see in the dim; the windows are plastered over, caked with grime and fallout. He watches the painted posy on the porcelain handle, waiting to see the violets and bluebells move. The door’s dead-bolted, he tells his racing heart. They couldn’t get in if t
hey tried.

  But the greys sneak in all the time, his heart replies, without ever explaining how they get back out.

  When Amelia starts to smell too ripe Peyt fills a chipped pottery bowl, washes her body with bare hands and soap. Shampoos her hair with lemon and vanilla, resisting the urge to bury his face in those sweet-scented strands, the way he used to, before, when they were more copper than white. In winter he piles on the blankets, dresses Amelia in flannel and fleece; in summer, she sweats naked under a thin cotton sheet. He constantly touches without touching her. Damp skin slides over bone when he kneads her limbs, when he rolls her from side to side to prevent sores. Propping her on pillows, he pries her jaw open, presses the rough slab of her tongue with a finger, strokes water and potato soup down her throat. Once, he tried starving her awake. Almost two weeks, nothing but clear liquids. Useless, of course. The only differences were in the jut of her bones and the complete absence of shit. Hungry or full, she just lies there with eyes shut, filling bedpans, soaking nightgowns.

  Afterwards, he cleans her creases. Wrings the sheets. Hangs them from empty racks in the rafters. Tucks a spare blanket around her.

  Years have withered Amelia’s slack muscles. Time and slumber have leached the plump from her hips, the pert from her breasts, the promise of life from her belly. Not that it matters, Peytr supposes. Amelia is far too old for children. Forty-five and dormant, bleeding only from the cuts he’s chewed or clipped from the tips of her. She is too flat, now, for the roundness of love and sex and babies. She is all planes and angles.

  Out on the front porch, Peytr rocks on his heels. Eyes the jagged horizon. Rolls a full bomb around on his tongue. His ’wind is listless, heavy with thoughts of bedpans and food-tubes and dogs and shallow, panting breath. All morning, he’d sat and watched Amelia’s veins pulse in her temples and neck. In the silence between nail clipper snips, he counted the seconds between beats in the translucent skin of her wrists. Convinced the throb was flagging, Peyt dug into his stash of painkillers and found something to thin her blood. The pills’ expiry date was illegible, but the clear blisters and foil were intact. He’d popped three from the package; they’d crumbled to chalk in his palm. Mixing the powder in a small cup of water, he’d made a slurry he hoped Amelia could swallow. At worst the sugar will do her good, he’d thought, massaging the sludge down her throat. When her mouth was empty, he’d stood. Dusted off his hands. Walked into the living half of the room, plucked a dusty globe from the ceiling rack, and took a full sugar-hit of his own.