I watched her struggle for life.
I knew I couldn’t let her live.
I went back into the house and picked up the maglite. The batteries were low from using it to illuminate a mirror ball on New Year’s Eve, and it cast a suitably dim glow on the leaves outside. It had just rained for the first time in over a month in Texas, and I couldn’t tell whether the golden leaves on the ground were glistening with blood or water in the eerie torch light. I found the shovel where I’d dropped it during the struggle, but when I looked where the body had been, my stomach lurched. It had gone.
This meant I had to track her and kill her. Not what I was planning for the evening at all. It meant she had more life in her than I’d anticipated. Not good news. I played the feeble light around, looking for signs, and then I spotted her. I must have become disoriented, for she was certainly in no fit state to move on her own. She was right where I’d left her. I approached and saw her struggling to breathe. As I neared, she stopped moving completely – still enough life left to play possum. I pointed the light away for a few seconds. She moved in the darkness, becoming still as the light crept towards her. I was right. Still alive.
I looked around for something heavy to cave her skull in. The shovel had a long handle but a light blade. The charred remains of some 4×4 fenceposts in the firepit were too short. I scanned the yard for any killing implement but drew a blank. I didn’t have time to investigate in the garage. I had to end it now. She was suffering. I turned the shovel over and felt the weight. Maybe I could use the blade to cut off her head. I reasoned quickly that even in the unlikely event that my decapitation attempts were successful, this wouldn’t necessarily stop the pain. I had to smash the skull, to pulverize the brain.
We had been working with swords the previous evening at Aikido, and I knew the basics of slicing and pushing. I couldn’t translate that into hitting something at ground level in the dark though, and certainly not with something as clumsy as a shovel. I set the maglite down pointing at the leaves around the target. I took aim at her head, and brought the shovel far above my own. My hands were too close together to get any decent control, and I brought the flat of the head down with all my might, looking away at the last moment. The thud I heard didn’t sound like a skull imploding. That thought was ridiculous. I had no idea what it would or should sound like. On closer inspection with the torch, it appeared I had just flattened the soil to the right of her head. I had to do this quickly, she was suffering, and was probably distantly aware that someone was swinging heavily at her head.
I drove the shovel down onto her head again and again. Pounding with all my might to try to extinguish the pain from her suddenly tiny form. I tried turning the shovel sideways and hacking off the head, in an absurd effort to make sure, but the blunt edge just bounced clumsily off the shoulder. I returned to pounding, and finally stopped to inspect the head with the failing cone of yellow light from the torch. As the batteries died, I couldn’t see whether there were brains and blood everywhere, or if the head was just surrounded by wet leaves and dirt. The face seemed intact, but on poking, I was relieved to find her skull hadn’t withstood the onslaught. I was suddenly touched by the cuteness of her ear – tiny and round, perfectly cute. Given that I had smashed the ugly teeth from view, the face in death seemed serene and gentle.
I had never killed anything this big before, but there was no time to reflect on what I’d done. If I didn’t get her underground, the dog would come and drag her around. I’d dug small graves before, but I was not prepared for the resistance of the soil. Dry from lack of rain, dry from the trees pulling out every last drop of moisture before they shed their leaves. I tried one spot to no avail. The soil was criss-crossed with roots, and I couldn’t make any progress beyond a fiew inches. I tried another to the same result. I stopped, and thought that the wettest spot would be furthest from the shelter of trees and their sucking roots, and tried there. I got about a foot down with a lot of effort, and went to retrieve the corpse.
In a final indignity, I could only move the body by putting the shovel under one side and rolling her over. Rolling it over. I wasn’t sure which personal pronoun was more appropriate as I thought about it. She seemed more it than her at that point. I must have broken so many bones in the struggle and coups de grâce. It seemed more like rolling a bag of stones than a thing with a ribcage, shoulders, a spine. It seemed to almost pour into the shallow grave when it got there, as if anxious to return to the earth. For no explicable reason, I made one last check to see that it wasn’t still breathing, though in retrospect, something that had been made invertebrate by a shovel had no business being alive. I scraped soil over it, and put the shovel on top. I found a milk crate with a child’s windmill stuck to it, and placed this over the grave. I had no words to say, but I headed back inside to wash my hands and write this entry.
I was shocked to see Mary on the futon in the lounge when I opened the kitchen door. I suddenly felt self-conscious, thinking that she could have seen everything through the French windows. It was dark, so she probably hadn’t, but I didn’t figure that out at the time. I had never killed like this before, and had certainly never entertained the idea of murdering in front of my partner.
Otis had claimed eighty per cent of another possum. I had had to deal with the remaining twenty.