Flash Fiction: "Mud"

Out of the mud two strangers caught me splitting wood. Except it wasn’t wood I was splitting. It was Jeremiah. Pieces of his skull, some still fresh with bits of skin and hair, skipped across the watery rose-colored cement. One chunk landed just at the edge of the driveway, right where the sludge from the rains began. The dirt road that used to lead up to the old Missouri farmhouse had all but disappeared from the recent storm.

“How ya doin’?” asked the man, the toe of his boot nudging a gooey chunk of Jeremiah’s leg bone poking up through the muck.

Rain that hard can make the dead rise. I wished now I had put Jeremiah in the box with his sister, but I wanted the bones to wash clean in the holy water that began falling from the sky the day Jeremiah took his last breath. Who knew the strangers would appear? No one ventured out in weather like this.

“Hello?” he asked again.

He stopped at the end of the driveway and peered at me under a visor he made with his hand, shielding his eyes from a slant of sunlight pushing through the clouds. The other man waited few steps back, his right hand stuck deep inside his trench coat, fingers probably clutched tightly around a gun. I know mine would be if I was in their shoes.

“Can I help you?” I asked. Maybe they were just looking for directions. Maybe they would turn around and leave quietly—and alive. The voices had stopped after the last kill. My service was complete.

“Yes. We’re looking for a young man and his sister. The boy escaped last week from a state facility housing juveniles. And the girl, well, we’re not sure if she came willingly or forcibly.”

“Are you the law?”

“No. We’re private investigators hired by the family,” shouted the second man, his voice getting lost in a rush of wind that carried the promise of more rain. Thunder followed.

The first man kicked again at the tip of Jeremiah's leg bone. He hitched his trousers and bent down for a closer look.

“I saw them!” I yelled quickly. It worked. The man whipped up faster than a guillotined hen.

“Where? When?” He started walking briskly in my direction, his city shoes clicking on the wet pavement.

“Whoa! Stop right there, mister, or I’m not tellin’ you anything.”

“Okay, easy guy.” He held his hands up and spread his fingers wide open like a kid about to get the belt for raiding the cookie jar.

“I saw them. The boy, he was dragging the girl by her arm. She was crying. Crying. Crying. He just laughed. He had mean eyes, that one. Evil. They were hitch-hiking north along Route 17.”

“Did you talk to them?”

“No. He’s not right, that one. Bad. He come from bad seed.”

“Did you tell anyone you saw them? The police? Anyone?”

“Why? What he done?”

“That’s confidential, but there is a substantial reward for the person or persons who turn him in.”

“Turn him into what?”

The stranger looked back at his partner and shook his head. “Just let us know if you hear anything,” he said. He stretched his hand out with a business card. I didn't budge and he stuck it between the fence pole and t

“Will do. Y’all have a nice day now and watch out for the mud. You never know what you might find in there.”