Prose

Digging Ditches

written by: rloyst

Digging Ditches
A man is ready to dig a hole. The air fades into tranquility as the loving Sun embraces the horizon one last time. The sight is magnificent, and the rosy rays compliment the passing clouds of tonight's thunderstorm with a certain divinity. Darkness is coming. The man silently enters his backyard and looks to the bedroom window. In one hand he bears a shovel, and in the other a bottle. Noxious fumes emit from the half-emptied container, and he staggers across the uncut grass using the tool to support his posture. The neighborhood is silent, and the sky is clearing; but, some metaphysical fog hovers over the roof of the building in front of him. It calls to him.
He is answering.
A young child embraced the same Sun now fading early one spring afternoon. He walked out of his house and smiled, enjoying the warmth of the air. It was a convenience he rarely experienced. Living on Lake Eerie was as it is on most bodies of water, except for the cold arctic winds that traveled south from Canada nine months of the year. The boy ran around his parents' yard dodging crickets and mosquitoes. His mirth and excitement made his parents smile momentarily. But concerns about an unknown future haunted them. They left their son playing in the yard, and stepped inside to discuss a difficult decision.
The neighbor's property offered a new prospect of adventure for the boy, and he decided to explore it. As mariners set sail westward so long before, and pioneers mapped America's primitive wilderness, so too he desired to go outside of his limited world—outside of the confines of safety. He had taken the first step into the unknown, and he was determined to return a hero.
But under a pile of leaves preserved by the winter's static two feet of snow, a surprise lay in ambush. The boy, now at a full sprint, leaped in an attempt to clear the obstruction, but his young legs did not offer him the necessary leverage. He tumbled into the pile. Fear did not take him, for he loved to play in the leaves last autumn. But when his knees rolled over during the last moment of his makeshift cannonball, a pain struck him hard in the shin. He began to cry, and jumping out of the pile revealed a river of blood flowing from his lower leg. It formed a red delta between the toes of his right foot, and the sight frightened him.
The tears in his eyes clouded his vision, and his mind raced desiring sympathy. But his parents were not around. He was alone in this strange new world, and no one would ease his pain here. The sorrow turned to anger, and he tore at his face to clear his vision. A jagged stick extruded from the previous year's abscission. He took hold of his assailant. It was heavier than he expected, and was twice his height; nonetheless, he succeeded in throwing it across the yard. Surprisingly, he found the action diffused some of his anger, and his elation forces a smile across his thick cheeks. The pain in his leg was no more due to the wonders of a new discovery. He unearthed the treasures of adrenaline—an El Dorado. Craving more of the ecstasy, he rushed to where the branch landed. He stomped and jumped in excitement, watching underfoot as the villain was shattered into twigs. But it was not enough. Rustling through the remaining pieces to find a suitable tool, a shard gave him another way to release his rage.
He was unsure of what he would do, but instinctively he started clawing and stabbing at the ground beneath him like a beast searching for grub. The mud was easy to manipulate, as only just recently the snows of March disappeared. His bleeding shin tinted the nutrient-rich soil, and the sight further fueled his tantrum. The odd feeling of the dirt caching under his fingernails began to bother him, but he could not err in his mission. After some time, the hole was now the size of his head, and he sat back to admire his creation.
Poking the bottom of the hole calmed his racing mind, and his aggression soothed as the chemical imbalance of his blood stream began to stabilize. But he noticed this, and was unsatisfied with the brief feeling. He wanted to sate his new hunger. He glanced desperately around the yard, and out of the corner of one eye the child noticed a fledging garden. Picking himself up was a difficult task, but he considered the dizziness only a challenge-a summit to conquer. Marching forward, he came upon the neighbor's budding gardenias and kicked them. Once some of his high returned, he started rummaging through the area and uprooted everything his small feet come into contact with. But his small body could only support so much of the hormone, and he finally fell over in exhaustion. Underdeveloped petals lay beneath his nose as he rested on his face, and enjoying the smell he drifted out of consciousness.
He awoke abruptly to the screams of the elderly woman who plotted the garden. He snapped to attention and began to cry once more out of fear. The blood on his leg hardened during his slumber causing him slight discomfort, and he screamed for his parents. They came quickly to see what caused the disturbance, and when they realized what took place they rushed next door. Apologizing many times over to the woman, they offered to pay her for the damage. They see that their child was frightened and injured, so his mother carried him back home to mend the broken flesh. He was scolded and warned never to do such a thing again. That is was wrong, and he owed the woman an apology. But the boy was shy, and he refused to talk to the cranky neighbor. Instead he went to his room and did not emerge for days.
The man is now surrounded by the night, and his hands quiver with anticipation as the weight of the shovel shifts between them. A black mustang sits in the driveway, but it does not belong to him. Overcome with anger and confusion, he leans on the handle and pushes the spade deep into the ground for the first time. The Earth breaks beneath his might and the aroma of healthy grass escapes from the soil. It surrounds him entirely, silently pleading for mercy. These wafts of gaseous life—its hidden essence, unknown to the average man—sicken him. Yet he relishes the anguish of it, and takes a moment to bask in the genius of his design.
The shovel pushes him backward, but he commands it to comply. It lends him meaning in this senselessness. It guides his blindness and deafness like a seeing-eye dog through a world of shadows and silence. This tool would be the rifle used to fire a shot in anger against a world of injustice.
Logic and reason have left him alone on the shores of his singular, secluded-island society, and blackened fury suspends his conscious understanding of the world around him. It will embody everything that he once was. Every negative thought and emotion locked away in the recesses of his unconscious mind will be released with this one action. He is no longer aware of his surroundings. He exists now only to hurt and destroy, scribing his misery on the pages of history. It will be the perfect hole—a masterpiece.
He is only an id.
The boy that once was is now thirteen. The tantrums of his childhood were quelled long ago. Shortly after his episode, the family moved south. The bitter winters of the North remained only distant memories, but the newly titled teenager clung to them painfully. Many of his childhood friends' lives were now mysteries to him. There was no way of contacting them, as he was too young at the time to think of asking their addresses before he left. In his new home he was considered different. Few people talked to him, and those that did usually picked on him or hit him. He once fought back, but a teacher discovered the violence and the school authority punished him for it. He sat in suspension, watching his peers walk past the office. They made faces at him, and he found out afterwards that the boy he attacked was related to the principal. He was the only one condemned to the academic prison. He hated the workings of the small town.
But his father signed him up for baseball. Since he enjoyed playing in the past, he was looking forward to something he could make his own. Pitching came easily to him. When he was ten, his father saw that he could already throw over fifty miles per hour, and had amazing coordination batting from both sides of the plate. His eye was keen, and his form fluid. The man trained his son well. But, on the day of the boy's first practice, his coach entered the field with someone at his side; it was his son. The boy pleaded for a chance to pitch, but his new "team" was comprised of students he went to school with, and they chuckled at the thought. The coach gave the remaining in-field positions to his son's friends. He was diminished to the inglorious outfield, and he hated it. Practice after practice, game after game, the rage built. But he tried desperately to withhold it.
One day at a practice preceding a playoff game, he stood outside of the dugout holding his bat in hand. Slowly, he dragged it through the well-maintained diamond. Chalk and dust flowed from the tip of the bat, and it attacked his nostrils as if out of spite. Before he knew what came over him, he began to upset the field. Starting casually at first, he eventually worked his way up to a rapid, coordinated motion. The dent in the clean dirt widened, and he started to expand its scope to the third base line. His coach was in right field performing fielding exercises with the rest of the boys, so he was oblivious to the amateur landscaping taking place. When the boy deemed the hole adequate, he took a seat next to it and judged its potential. Surely, it could have caused someone in flight to trip. He enjoyed thinking about the prospects.
He returned solemnly to the dugout to gather his equipment. Attaching his worn-out mitt to the metallic bat's rubber handle, he threw the two items over his shoulder and grabbed his bag. Opening a nearby gate, he left the field—and a ridiculous dream—for good. In his mind, he was the victor.
In a stupor, the man reuses the familiar method to make further digging easier. The hole is shallow and could easily be refilled if he only possessed the motivation to stop. But he does not. He gouges at the Earth deeply and passionately, using the spade like a pickaxe. There is no time for rest, as at any point he could be discovered by his fiancé. Luckily, however, the consistency of the tough, red Carolina-clay is different today. The heavy, summer thunderstorm that swept through the area earlier that night morphed the solidified ground into a river of blood, visible even under the limited luminescence of a crescent Moon's gaze. It reminds him of the flowing delta. With each advance the Styx stains his clothes and clots his boots, but the satisfaction of reaching his goal far outweighs the irritations.
Yet an obstruction halts his progress. The shovel strikes a large rock, and the downward force of his body weight is deflected back into the handle. It causes the man's hands to numb, and he stops momentarily feeling the shockwave pass through his peripherals. When it reaches his brain, his knees waver and one gives way, sending him crashing to the underground. It is a dangerous warning—still, some Gaean spirit urges him to cease the sacrilege. But from the darkest recess of his now-abyssal heart, vehemence bursts forth. He curses loudly, unable to access the vocabulary required to express his disgust. He damns the rock, and the ground, and the Earth. And he finds no peace until the shovel's aimless jabs loosen the small boulder. He removes it from its resting-place and heaves it mightily across the river.
He is Charon.
The confusion of adolescence leaves the young man in his high school years. The teenager finally assimilated into the new culture on a basic level. His handful of friends was outcast from the society as well, but they all held a common bond amongst themselves. It was their subculture against the world—their local, dysfunctional world. No one bothered them anymore, as maturity finally found its place in the minds of their oppressors. And finally, in their senior year, they decided to get away from that confined, boring town. Los Angeles was the plan, or San Diego. They would go anywhere urban; anyplace far away from there.
The semester was coming to an end, and graduation was approaching fast. It was time for every high school student's dream. To perform an amazing senior prank that trumped every action of their predecessors. The boy and his friends planned for weeks. When the time came, they were ready.
It was late on a Friday night. The school's seasonal sporting event came to a conclusion, and athletes, parents, students, and faculty were walking to their cars to return home for the weekend, blissfully content to work five and enjoy two. The boy and his cohorts, however, were not taking the night off. They lay in wait, weighed down by their supplies, behind the soda and snack machines. Anticipation gripped them. They were anxious, and they were paranoid. But they were also excited.
The campus grew quiet as the last echoes of the night-shift janitor's boots faded away with the change of days, and the pre-morning fog and mist filled the open-air walkways between wings of the school. A nearly full moon paled the area, providing the perfect grey haven for their deed, and the wind whispered affirmation to the teens. It gust through the small niches of the building, and the audible silence of midnight crept along the parking lot. They emerged from hiding, and set out on their quest.
Some of the kids ran saran wrap across the entryway of the school's office, and others spray painted their graduation year in black on the grass of the middle courtyard. They did not permanently scar the property. They were having fun. The misfit from the North was using a battery-powered drill to remove bolts from the bases of outdoor lunch tables and social benches. When the others succeeded in creating an extra appendage on the school mascot of the Spirit Wall with a can of shaving cream, they returned to him for their final task. Half of them climbed to the roof of the cafeteria, while the others began lifting the benches and tables one by one. After some time, they succeeded in relocating the furniture. The rest of the boys climbed up, and together they arranged the benches exactly as they were below. They thought to bring up the garbage cans for added élan, and do so despite their fear of lingering too long.
When they were satisfied, the kids returned to the ground to glean the remaining supplies. They start to run off into the night, but one of them tripped over a hole in a fresh construction site they missed earlier. The others did not notice, and continued their fleeing. Drill still in hand; the young man attacked the hole out of irritation. The dryness of the recent months made the ground crack under the high speed of the bit. Stricken by inspiration, he began drilling small holes throughout the area. Some fifteen minutes later, he ran heavily through the area causing the top layer of clay to cave beneath him. He laughed hysterically at his genius. But before he could enjoy the addition to the gang's work, a hand grabbed his shoulder. It wheeled him around effortlessly, and moments later he was staring face to face with a police officer. He could not say anything; but, he really did not have to.
The back of the police car smelled of liquor and vomit. Previous occupants must have clawed at the seats and windows, for there was damage all around him. The windows became opaque when confronted with the luminescence of streetlights, and faded back to limited transparency only in the darkest of areas. He could not even see the path the vehicle was taking. He had no idea which station he was being taken to, but he was sure his parents would be disappointed.
When they arrived, an officer finger printed him and took him aside. After constant questioning and threats of reviewing surveillance, the teen finally caved in and tells the men who accompanied him. He regretted it at first, but quickly changed his mind recalling they left him alone on the campus. He was prohibited from attending graduation, but they reduced his other punishments, and allowed him to call his parents.
The turncoat continues to dig his hole. His appearance is now horrific. The clay covers him from head to toe, and his war against the yard will not end. Beowulf would stand down to this daemon dripping in the blood of life. It is difficult to see over the top of the ditch, but overhead he notices the sky is starting to brighten. Speed is his friend now. The material he is shoveling changes slightly while he descends further into the strata. Richer and darker crust is chipped away and tossed aside in showers of disgust. He is frantic, but still no more aware of his actions. Another shock dulls the nerves in his hands, but this time it is accompanied by a loud clang. Falling to his hands and knees, he clears the epicenter of the disturbance and finds a city waterline. With a smile he attacks it. After repeatedly pummeling the metal piping with the shovel and blows from his boot, it starts to leak. The pressure is building underfoot, and he lets it continue to do so for a short while. Finally, he jabs once more and an eruption of water soars into the air as expected.
The sight of this brings a tear to his eye; he could not have planned it any better. The walls smooth under the bombardment, and he tells himself this is, indeed, his masterwork. Snapping back into his unreality, he continues digging before the water prevents him from going any deeper.
He is not finished.
The young man who suffered so much was now out of his parents' house. His friends moved away long ago, and they refused to associate with him after his betrayal. He was, at long last, alone. He enjoyed this. Juggling jobs, he supported the self-destructive habits he acquired during the time spent with his so-called friends. His apartment was meager, and his car was held together by the dust that covered it. He worked nights and slept days. Vampirically, the man despised the Sun and all that dwelt beneath its falsifications. Living in a city, he appreciated the steps and stones of urban civilization. He bathed in the darkness that inhabited its alleyways, and clothed in the corruption inherent in the free market. He knew his place in the classes of society, and left important decisions to people more qualified than he. They claimed to know what was best for him, and he took their word for it.
He receives a call from his parents one day, and they invite him to dinner. Out of habit, he appeased them and got in his car. It took a few tries to start it up, but he managed to make it onto the freeway. The drive there was silent, as everything in his life was anymore. Cars flew by him, and he shrunk back behind the wheel to avoid being seen. Fear was all that he knew now. He was afraid of what may happen to him today.
His parent's familiar faces answered the door, and they urged him to come inside. The table was already set, and the food steamed on the counter. After a cork was popped, and his glass was filled, they sat down to talk. Only he did not participate. They told him of what had been happening with work and the bills. They talked of politics and sports, and their friends' wild escapades. When they finally prompted him about his own activities, he shied away from the truth. His lies were badly formed, and he lacked any sufficient dialog to even form half of a discussion. His parents consoled him, and asked him to stay for the night. No excuse came to mind, so he hesitantly agreed. They happily moved into the living room to watch a movie. But after thirty or so minutes, the young man excused himself from their company. Exhausted and intoxicated, he went to the guestroom following a loving good night from them.
But sleep would not take him. He tossed back and forth across the unfamiliar bed, and when he was sure everyone in the house was asleep, he left the room. Stopping by the kitchen, he borrowed a bottle of his parents' wine and went outside to sit on the front porch. Their yard was very well maintained; his father enjoyed tending to the property. The uneasy feeling in his gut was still not satisfied, so he decided he would leave. He tossed the bottle over the railing and watched it shatter on the paved driveway before going back inside. On his way to his shoes—which he foolishly left in the dining room—he grabbed another bottle. This time, it was the remainder of gin from a recent party. He tried to get his shoes on standing up, but stumbled to the stairs and decided sitting was a better idea. Shushing the air, he cracked open the door only enough to fit through, and shut it behind him.
The car door was difficult to unlock, and the man's key missed the hole multiple times before making goal. Climbing in, he disregarded his seatbelt and forgot to completely close the door behind him. The revving of the engine squealed and sputtered, and he is gripped with the fear that he may wake someone. But no one seemed to notice, and the cylinders under the hood began pumping.
Putting the automobile into what he thought was drive, the drunken man backed into his mother's BMW as he heavily kicked the gas pedal. The front of the vehicle folded in on itself, and shards of glass from the headlights spewed in all directions. They mingled with the wine bottle's remnants. In a panic, he changed gears to drive away. But some of the glass shards under his tires were big enough to pierce the industrial rubber, and the vehicle spun across the driveway. After knocking over the mailbox, he unintentionally started performing donuts in the front yard. The tracks of his wheels left muddy indentations in the well-to-do lawn, and when he finally slammed on the breaks the area looked like a series of crop circles. For the first time in his life, he was not proud of the hole beneath him. He got out of the fallen beast, and started home on foot refusing to accept whatever fate was sure to befall him when his parents discovered the mess. With this on his mind, he never looked back.
The man finally finishes destroying his own yard. The hole is now complete. He throws away the shovel, and takes a seat to embraces the sunrise for the first time in many years. The cigarettes in his pocket call to him. But when he removes them from his coat, he sees they are falling apart for obvious reasons. Grogginess sets in, and his soaked, muddy clothes feel heavier than any weight he ever bore. First, he removes his jacket. Then, his boots. He still feels heavy, so he strips away his jeans, as well. His exposed legs buoyantly float on the thick mud, and the scar beneath his knee from childhood seems satisfied when he glances at it. He thinks back to only six months ago as he realizes…
He is an artist.
For the first time in his life, the now grown man was happy. By some random chance, a woman whom he knew from high school approached him at the local grocery store. She smiled and greeted to him very warmly, taking notice to the wine bottles he was carrying. Having never really socialized much, especially not with the opposite sex, fear gripped him—as it usually would. But something about her made him feel at ease. He tried desperately to let go of the wrenching feeling in his gut, and said what he could to appear friendly.
"Someone special coming to your place, tonight?" She winked, looking at his left hand and seeing his fingers barren.
"Oh," he lifted the bottles, "no… no. I was just going to spend the night alone, and I figured I'd relax."
A look of compassion came to her face, and she said, "That's a shame." The two were now walking in unison to the checkout lane, and when they came upon it the man motioned for her to go ahead of him. She thanked him and started placing the few items in her basket on the conveyor belt. "So, I'm not doing anything tonight." She casually remarked from the side of her mouth, "Maybe you'd like some company? We can catch up. I haven't seen you in forever."
He was shocked at the proposal. Unable to find words to answer, he simply nodded and grunted. She giggled slightly and proposed, "Okay, I'll see you around eight?" He nodded again. When she saw no inkling of a response, she asked, "Could you give me directions?" He felt foolish.
The night went smoothly, and the woman interested him. He wished he knew her better in his youth, and decided to stop at nothing to be with her. They began to see each other regularly, and she seemed to fall in love with his awkwardness. He lost his desire to destroy himself, and a few months later they decided to move into a home together. Little things bothered him about the workings of their relationship, but he disregarded them. He was simply happy to have someone who loved him.
The man and his masterpiece now hear the ambient sound of police sirens echoing through the area. His sensibility has returned, but it is too late. He hears his fiancé screaming at him from the house, and the voice of another girl baffled by what happened. It was not what he thought. The irony of his self-imprisonment scratches the surface of his psyche, and he finds himself rather in-tune with the ground he strove so hard to destroy. The Earthen smell still calls out to him, but it is different now. It weeps. Despite his repeated offenses against it, the natural world is willing to accept him once again.
He wants it to take him back to his childhood—to a time when he appreciated its potency. When life was beautiful, before hatred gripped his heart and fear consumed his mind.
He wishes it would restore their relationship, and all relationships he long severed. The friends he left in the North, and those whom he betrayed in high school. His parents whose life he complicated beyond the management of any reasonable individual. His true love, whose heart he now destroyed out of a false accusation. He wishes all of these things, but unfortunately they do not return.
He pleads it to give him another chance, to restore his dreams… to find a way out of this predicament. Clawing at the smoothed walls he thought beautiful only hours ago, he slides back to the bottom of the hole. He never thought to bring a rope or ladder. No thought ever stuck him, at all. He was incapable of thinking all night, due to his liquid courage. He took everything for granted, and did not appreciate the love that still existed in his life. He failed to recognize it, and turned against it out of suspicion.
But at long last, his true desire manifests. The one wish that matters is fulfilled. He knows now that he has been digging the holes in his life deeper and wider. The permeable soil of his soul was uprooted so many times; it could no longer bear life. Reflecting on his past "creations", and the false joy he felt from them, he begins to weep. Anger, isolation, rebellion, and retreat were his tools. The cruelty of others motivated him. And now, the bottle guided him. He never once accepted responsibility for his actions. He refused to trust another human being. He drove away his natural connection to life, his peers, and the Earth long ago. His existence is, and always has been, a charade—torn away from nature's loving embrace. He is an animated corpse, walking and destroying everything that resembles life in his path.
He is ready to die, and had been waiting to dig his own grave all along.