Buried alive, where I belong, I close my eyes and try not to think of those who are trying not to think of me. I hold my breath and try to stay quiet, but thoughts keep crossing my mind and I shudder silently, my head knocking very softly on the wooden roof of the coffin. I know I need to be down here, six feet and counting as the dirt is piled up above me, holding my breath and only hearing the heartbeat in my ears and the occasional ragged gust of air I have to release. It's harder for me to hear them working up there but with every shovel-full I'm more and more compelled to reach out and smash my fists against the ceiling, roar and thrash
He'd been about five when his second mother arrived. Nobody really told him anything, just that his mother was gone and that she wasn't coming back. He'd accepted it and was given a new mother to replace her. She fed him, cared for him and loved him just as well as his first mother.
She was soft and warm, she wore nice clothes, she helped him read and she gave him books. He was raised well, with good manners. He was intelligent and caring and was doing well at university, but when his second mother was hit by a car he was left alone without replacement and he didn't understand.
Rain on a cold mire and the man drags his stick about in the waters through which he cannot see. He prods and strokes, a constant frown under rumbling skies. A darkness is covering the land, a storm without end, and he searches.
The body lies beneath the surface, asleep in the muck. Its eyes and mouth are wide open, its clothes are dark with the murky water and mud. Men drag through the wet, metres from its position, their sticks groping against logs and sludge.
Women wail and kneel on the drenched grass, pulling at their hair as the heavens shudder and roar above them, flashing and cracking in the night.
The whale falls, its body only seeming to move by itself as its fins are slowly buffered by the water through which it drifts. She holds to her friend as he gradually tumbles deeper and deeper into the darkness of the ocean. His eyes are closed and she closes hers, pressing her cheek against his side, she weeps silently.
Others gather, clutching to the great whale as it slowly dives past them, they gently bite, tear and rip at his cold flesh, avoiding her spot against him. They swirl about the body, a growing community, watching from a distance then joining in, finding a place to hold to. They are all dragged down.
Years pass as the whale a