The ants found me before my parents did, drawn to the sticky sweet blood dripping from my head onto the stump, following the line of my chin. Suicide is nothing to fuck with. I know that now.
I had been drinking peach schnapps and getting gradually braver and more depressed. I looked out the window for the umpteenth time at the ugly sharp stump three stories below. It taunted me.
When you’re a child and you wake up in the middle of the night to the sound of your parents fighting, it might last a minute – or ten - but it feels like forever. You creep out of your bed to the mouth of the stairs.
Then you retreat, then creep forward again, this time bolder, down a few steps. But you run back to bed when you see a stomping figure cross the base of the stairs, bellowing and waving his arms. The sound of your mother being slapped sends a jolt through you. Should you go help her? But you are only five. What if you get hit too? What if he kills her? What if he kills you? These thoughts swim in a circle of anxiety until exhaustion steals you back to sleep. A slamming door makes you stir, but you do not come to the surface.
I’m the caretaker in a very small rural cemetery. This job is passed down through my family but I’m afraid if I don’t have a child soon there will be no one left to keep watch. To put the dead back to rest.
This is a tough job for one person. They won’t stay dead. They won’t stay in their graves. For some reason the land here is strange, and anyone buried here wont stay resting for long. The cemetery doesn’t see many new burials anymore, but that’s a good thing. Only members of certain very old families maintain plots here. They don’t visit much.
