Stirring awake my eyes start to crack open before immediately snapping shut again. The eyelashes that had been glued together rip out of place and tear the skin of the eyelid as they stay tangled in the dried liquid. My mouth opens gasping for air as I choke on specs of dirt that line my throat the taste of copper lining my mouth like a layer of cement as a warm liquid continues to drip in from the creases of my lips. I choke on the sound of my call a small screech like a perishing bird crawls through my throat like a fire. The strong taste of copper and the new hardened layer covering my body indicates blood, and a lot of it. With a lack of sight and the feeling of fresh blood flowing into my nose and shorting my air supply I wretch my body up, heaving into a sitting position as another muffled groan escapes my lips.
I had moved too fast and another rush leaves my head as I’m painted a bright red yet again and I feel my head begin to spin. The nauseous feeling in my stomach spins as I start to wretch, my body attempting to reject the blood that had pooled in my stomach. This again only lights a fire in my throat as my eyes are thrown open each eyelash feeling as if it was torn out one by one as my eyes start to water. I can feel the tears race down my face and seeing them fall in an almost black combination of blood and dirt. As my throat burns and my dignity lay scorn I glimpse at the dirt walls around me and the blue sky above, distant sounds of a highway.
As my head starts to calm I chance turning my neck to my left a throbbing pain shooting through my spine leaving an echo of aches from my tailbone to my skull. My eyesight is still bleary and it’s hard to find any distinct features of the pit I’m in, my proportions are still off but I believe that if I stood up I may be able to reach the edge of the dirt walls. Slowly my legs start to fold in trying to support the weight of my body as they scrape against the dirt below me. As I start to place my feet solidly on the ground my left ankle crumbles beneath me, a sharp pain springs from the base of my ankle through almost my knee that causes more muddled tears to gather in the corners of my eyes. The ditch is very, very familiar. A hole about seven feet deep and five feet wide just large enough so a person can’t escape but just small enough the opening is easy enough to hide.
The location was very odd, only about one hundred feet from a state highway that was always buzzing with loud noises and aggravated calls from foul mouthed drivers, it was the perfect place to make sure no one would hear the screams coming from the hole. I was too naive, too confident that something like this wouldn’t happen to me. How many people do you know that would dig their own grave? It was confusing to say the least that I ended up in this predicament while the original target of Mrs. Marriott's dog still roamed free yapping away. How could I miss that a seven by five foot hole was way too big for some small chihuahua? Hopeful and excited thinking I guess, it was supposed to be a prank.
“Matt? Carlyn? Aden?” my voice croaked. The feeling of my throat ripping through to my lungs, my usual joking tone dying off with the exhaust that was layered thick as my mom's frosted cupcakes, my voice revealing my actual state. Leaning on the dirt wall half standing up with a leg hovering off the ground I stare up at the sky, a few leaves from branches dangling high above the edge of the pit. There's no crunching of leaves or snickers coming from the edge. Just the roaring of vehicles in the distance and the pounding in my head. My hand reaches up to my head, it's not nearly as round as it used to be. There's a small indent in the bottom right of my skull that feels extra sticky like a thick caramel sauce. Whoever had caused that damage certainly wasn’t Matt or Carlyn, both were lightweights that could barely hold their backpacks in high school.
But then there was Aden. The hot tempered, power hungry twisted soul of Aden Carrings. A local hero, a volunteer firefighter whose temper was as red hot as the flames he so willingly ran into. It's hard to remember the events just prior to waking up in the pit but I can vaguely remember me and Aden hanging out on our own for the first time in a while. It was almost always all four of us but me and Aden had a silent agreement that Matt and Carlyn could get a little too friendly sometimes. So what had I done wrong? Why am I here in a hole that I had helped dig for a chihuahua, my favorite shirt torn and stained and my limbs all screwed up. What anger could I have caused anyone enough to beat me to near death, most likely fracturing my ankle, denting my skull and just generally trying to destroy my physical body.
I thought hard as I could on the topic. My head still spun and my body begged me to lay back down, everything seemed fuzzy from the night before, a television gone static because the satellite fell off the roof again. Except this time it feels like I’m the one that fell off the roof. Carlyn should have noticed by now that I’m gone though, the meticulous blunderhead had a habit of barging in on my room all the time because she thought it looked too messy, surely she would have noticed I never came home? The more I thought about the situation of last night the more my eyes started to close.It was, almost, unbelievable how tired I ha-.
The snapping of a branch causes my eyes to become alert again and I stumble pushing off the wall and falling onto my left ankle causing another animal like cry to come out. I never thought I’d be so comforted to hear the snapping of twigs in a creepy forest surrounded by blood. The question it came down to was, was the person that found me here to finish me? And if they were here to help me do they or do they not have some water I could have? My eyes were frantic as they surveyed the edge of the pit for danger, my entire frontside exposed and vulnerable as my muscles couldn’t find the energy to heave themselves back up. The sound of walking had stopped but that didn’t mean my heart had stopped pounding in my chest. Whatever blood that was left I could feel and hear pounding through my ears
A sudden crunch sounded again almost like gunfire in my ears, even overpowering the highway as an unfamiliar face started to creep over the edge of the pit. A small black nose followed behind the brown eyes of the man and with one twitch the dog let out a howl that seemed to bounce off the pit walls and only added to the pounding in my head. It seemed odd that this stranger had been so excited to find me, even jumping down into the pit with me gripping onto me as his clean tears fell onto my shoulder, his body shaking with only what I could assume as sobs. Leaning back he had a beaming smile on his face and a scruffy beard that now had leaves and blood caught in it. His tears were real but his eyes were happy as he gently clung onto my arms supporting me. He kept mumbling over and over about how much he had missed “His lovely Adelaide,” and the more he surveyed my position the more tears sloppily ran down his face in crooked lines.
He was too young to have lines that deep in his face, to look so tired when he was most likely still in his early thirties. It would take me over a year to find out that I was the reason behind these deep stress line around his face. Then it would take me almost two years to remember that this man was my fiancee of eight months at the time. My case though would not make it to court for at least four years after I woke up in that pit. Every visit to the courtroom was terrifying as I had to relearn what had really gone down that night four years ago every time. The prosecutor not leaving out a single detail. It had not been Aden, how could Aden have committed this crime if he was dead in another pit only fifteen feet away. And no, those pits weren’t recently dug as a joke to kill off a neighborhood dog and freak out the locals, the digging had taken place almost ten years ago and someone else had used them as an opportunity. It was in that courtroom where I had to learn my story again and again, the poor innocent damsel who thought she was helping a stranger, who thought that her and her old friend from high school were capable of making right decisions after a very drunken reunion.Turns out a drunk Aden wasn’t quite as strong as a sober Aden as both of us were taken from the bar parking lot by that creature.
My therapist said that recognizing my torturer and Aden’s murderer would help me heal but I don’t believe anything can change that. It’s not a face of a grisly man that glares at everyone around them, it's not a hated neighbor or childhood enemy. The creatures a thing I spent my whole life trying to make laugh so hard they peed and spent nearly all my time with. It's easier to turn this person into a creature because that way when I see it in my nightmares it is fictional. A simple story that can be replaced with the big bad wolf and I’m the little red riding hood that ran away. Ignoring my stare from the prosecutor's end of the courtroom the creature is able to ignore all the damage it had done to my life. Aden’s life. It continues with its life knowing that the job was only half done, it's claiming that its not mentally stable for the death sentence. I can't help but feel tears run down my face, taste the salt this time instead of the blood soaked ones that I adorned that day.
“Sentenced from 45 years to life.” My heart drops with the gavel. “The case of Carlyn Tull vs. Adelaide James is closed.”