Mike Omer - In the Darkness

He pushed the door and walked into the pub, sat on a stool, jaw clenched in anger. This was how every day ended. His entire body clenched tight, as if about to explode. It only became bearable after a few beers.

For the past few days, he’d begun drinking earlier than usual. He’d done his job properly, but at the end of the day, it didn’t matter, did it? Failure was still failure, even if it wasn’t his fault.

The barman didn’t even ask him what he wanted anymore. He just nodded at him and poured his beer. He’d become a regular.

“Hey,” a woman said as he emptied his first glass. “Don’t I know you?”

He was about to shrug, to shake his head, to tell her that no, she didn’t. He glanced at her, and the words died on his lips.

“Yeah, I know you,” she said brightly. “You . . . we went to the same school, right?”

“Debra?” he asked, not believing.

Was it really the same girl? The lovely, pure girl he’d fantasized about in all those long classes? Same lips, same nose . . . but that was where the similarity ended. She was almost skeletal, her cheekbones protruding sharply. Her hair, once a cascade of curls, was a tangled mess, looking almost sticky. Her skin had a strange tone to it, oily. And her eyes. They were so . . . dull.

“That’s right.” She smiled, happy to be recognized. It probably didn’t happen too often. “How have you been?”

It took him a few seconds to figure out she didn’t know his name, which was no big surprise. He bought her a beer and casually mentioned his own name as he told her a dumb story about a letter that he’d gotten from school. He saw the relief in her sunken dead eyes when she caught it, didn’t have to skirt around it in her conversation, calling him babe and dude .

She was impressed when he told her what he did, and it made him feel better about himself. When he asked her what she’d been doing, mentioning he’d heard that she was in California, she looked away. She talked vaguely about a good job she had there and an asshole boyfriend. But now, apparently, she was done with both the job and the boyfriend. And California, as well.

“I was actually just about to get on a bus,” she said. “Maybe tonight.”

“A bus where?”

She shrugged. “Who knows. Somewhere far. I need to start again. Clean slate, you know?”

“Yeah.”

“What I really need,” she said, “is some time to think.”

His body clenched as if she’d kicked him in the gut.

“I know exactly what you mean.” His voice cracked, and he stuck a hand in his pocket. The plastic bag almost felt hot to his touch. He’d bought it a few months earlier and carried it around, thinking of it as just one more fantasy. He never believed he’d have the courage to use it. He opened it, sliding out one round pill into his palm.

She had to go to the bathroom a few minutes later, perhaps to avoid the apparent lull in conversation. When she was gone, he took his hand from his pocket, palming the pill. He glanced around, already drenched in sweat. No one was looking. One quick move and the pill was in her half-finished glass. It seemed to take forever for it to dissipate into nothing. Any moment the barman or one of the people around him would ask and point at the fizzing pill.

But no one did.

She was half out of it by the time he told her he’d give her a ride to the bus station. She confessed she didn’t have money for the bus, and he shoved a hundred-dollar bill into her hand, which she took without complaining, stuffing it into her pocket, clearly used to taking money from men she hardly knew.

Her eyelids were half-closed within seconds of her entering the van. She never even noticed the crate in the back. The digging implements.

For a moment he considered dropping the whole thing. His heart thumped so loudly it almost sounded as if it were plugged into the van’s stereo system. But his mind was already in high gear, imagining the act. And she’d asked for it .

He drove them to the nearest location. It was dark, of course, but he knew the way. He stopped the van a few yards from the pit’s location. He got out, taking a small LED light and a shovel with him, and walked to the pit, finding the mark he’d left there. He shoveled off the sand from the pit’s cover and removed it. Just looking at its yawning dark abyss made a shiver run through his body. This was actually happening.

He opened the back of the van and pulled the crate out. He dragged it through the sand, already regretting not parking the van closer, its back pointed at the pit.

Next time , he thought, and it startled him. There wouldn’t be a next time. This was a onetime thing.

Then he strode to the front side of the van, opening the passenger’s door. He unbuckled her seatbelt, smelling her as he leaned across her body. She smelled of perfume and rot, and he shuddered. She muttered as he helped her out, and he half cajoled her, half dragged her to the crate.

It had always seemed like a huge crate to him, but now that he needed to push her into it, he realized how small it was. Why had he never searched for anything bigger?

Because you never really thought you’d go through with it.

He began shoving her inside. She muttered angrily. He pushed harder. She started to resist, but he forced her with all his strength. She shouted faintly, but there was no one around to hear. She scratched him, whimpering, and he gave her one final shove. She fell inside, hitting her head, crying. He closed the box just as she reached out to grab the edge, and the wooden lid hit her fingers. She cried again, pulling the fingers away. He latched it shut.

Pulling the crate into the pit in the darkness was the hardest thing he’d ever done, and he almost fell inside himself as he did it. When it finally tumbled inside, he heard her muffled shriek. He was breathing hard from the effort and the excitement.

Shoveling the soil on top of the crate, he quickly saw the problem. There wasn’t enough soil around to cover it easily. He should have brought soil with him. Stupid. Stupid!

Instead he shoveled soil from all around, trying to keep the surface uniform so that it wouldn’t look strange come morning. He used large rocks lying around to fill the empty space, and they landed on the crate with a loud thud, eliciting more screams.

He worked hard, not daring to stop. Soon, he couldn’t hear her screams anymore, and he regretted it. He wished he could still hear her. He wished he could see her terrified face as she thumped on the lid. But of course, that was impossible.

And then it was covered. He was about to explode. He needed release.

It took only seconds, and the feeling that followed, that complete, wonderful nothingness, was the best thing he’d ever felt. He stared ahead at the dark, empty road, the silhouette of the closed gas station, the starry sky. He wondered how Debra was using her time to think.

His eyes focused on the gas station. He hadn’t been worried about it earlier; it was closed. But now it hit him. What if there was a security camera there?

It would have night vision capabilities for sure. And if, by chance, it was aimed at where he was . . .

He swallowed. How had this never occurred to him before?

And the answer came to him again. Because he’d never really thought he’d go through with it.

He considered digging Debra up, telling her it had been just a joke. He’d drive her to the bus station, put her on a bus to New York. The woman was a drug addict—no one would believe a word she said.

But they might. And if there was footage . . .