Swelter and Shade

SHORT FICTION

by Wendy Nikel

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We used to live in the city, until the day Mr. Fitz’s A/C died in a traffic jam. By the time they found him and pried his car doors open, the old man was dead, the back of his head melted to the leather seat.

Mama’d been wanting to move to the country for some time, on account of how dirt don’t hold the heat like asphalt. It’s cooler, she said, drawing out the word like it was a cube of ice melting on her tongue.

Papa’d argued that, in times like this, it made little difference, but apparently having his boss boil to death in his Porsche changed his mind.

They found a cabin outside of town, half-shaded by dried-up oaks. It looked like someone’d just up and deserted it, leaving behind a scraggly cow and two chickens in the three-season room opposite the front porch. The animals couldn’t stand the heat much better than us, but Mama had high hopes that someday, the weather would break, and we’d be glad that we’d kept them.

Papa set up a swamp cooler in the bedroom, where the fan blade and water pump noises would combine in mocking laughter. We die, you die. We die, you die. They’d shudder and fall silent, and I’d lie on the floor, where it was cooler, counting and silently pleading: one… two… three… four… until they kicked in again, drowning out the whisperings coming up from beneath the floor—the ones that Mama said were just my ‘magination.

When the first chicken disappeared, Papa assumed it’d wandered off, but by the time the second one left, we knew it wouldn’t have gotten far. Papa soaked his clothes in the dirty bath water and set out to look for it.

Mama wouldn’t let me near the window. Don’t you remember, she asked, how that schoolyard bully would burn ants under a magnifying glass? I made a game of it, then, like “the-floor-is-lava,” except this time, it felt more real, with the heat rising from wherever the sun touched, bleaching out the floorboards and forming brittle splinters.

Papa didn’t return, and the next day, the cow went missing, too. Mama fumed and fretted and paced and finally gripped me tight and told me to stay inside no matter what. She soaked her clothes and covered the VW’s windshield and promised she’d be back before morning. I sat in the corner and listened to her roar away over the chortling of the swamp cooler.

The sun stretched across the floorboards.

The whisperings beneath them grew louder.

The whisperings were just chicken-scratchings. That’s all. Nothing more.

Mama’d told me to stay inside, but my mind wandered to the front porch, to the crawl space beneath it where a chicken, searching for a shady reprieve, might have slipped. It’s cooler in the dirt; isn’t that what Mama’d said?

The whisperings were just chicken-scratchings. That’s all. Nothing more. Nothing but chickens, trapped beneath the porch, trying to shuffle their way out.

But as those chicken-scratchings grew louder, till my ‘magination made them sound like words. Words like hungry. Words like alone. Words like never and coming and back.

Words like cool.

I pressed my hands to my ears. Stupid chickens with their stupid chicken-scratching, why couldn’t they just die already and leave me be?

I know Mama’d told me to stay inside, but as the swamp cooler chortled and the chicken-scratchings whispered, I started wondering if someone skinny and scrawny like me might fit beneath the floorboards, too. Not for long—I’d be back before she knew it—just long enough to catch that chicken. To make its scratchings shut up.

The doorknob had been in the sun’s rays; it was hot to the touch. The heat poured over me like a wave when I opened the door, and I almost turned back. But I could stand a little heat—just a little—till I got to the crawl space. It’d be cooler there, after all, in the dirt.

Mama’d told me to stay inside, but in the shade, I could almost stand it. And when I reached the porch, I lay down on my belly and peered down into the crawl space.

I couldn’t see any chickens. I couldn’t see a thing. So I scooted myself down a bit further. Just a bit further, where the dirt was darker. Cooler, too, just like Mama’d said.

I scooted in deeper, sinking my fingers in the shaded soil. Thinking how nice it was to be out of the sun. Thinking that maybe I’d stay down here for a bit. Not for long—maybe just till nightfall.

My eyes adjusted, and I spotted something down there. Something shifting in the darkness. Something too big to be a chicken. Somethings, with human eyes.

Pale, icy hands reached out from the gap between the dirt and the floorboards.

I panicked. Backpedaled. Tried to scramble back out. But the soil slumped beneath me, crumbling. Giving way. Sliding me closer to those frosty-white hands.They pulled me down – those hungry, cow-stained fingers—dragged me down with them into the earth. They closed around me, surrounding me, muffling my screams until there was nothing. Nothing but the dirt… so dark and so very cool.

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