To My Shallow Grave We Go

• Brooke Coleman, Grade 12, Emmanuel Anglican College
• Short Story
• 2015

Excellence Award in the 'The Write Track 2015' competition

They hadn’t bothered to bind him up. There had been no need. The thick dried blood and fatigue was more than enough to restrain him, not to mention there was no way to open a car boot from inside.
“Don’t get caught up with these guys,” he’d been warned, he’d been begged. “They’re creeps. They’ll screw you over. There’s no way these things turn out okay.”
The spare tyre angrily cradled his bruised and bloodied left side. Whenever the in-use tyres climbed over even the smallest of bumps, the spare tyre took out its frustration on him.
If he had any strength left to, he could have lifted his head only so far before the roof of the boot lend down to kiss it. Sometimes when the spare tyre tossed him high, because the in-use tyres were having all the fun going over a particularly tall bump, the roof kissed his temple to make him feel better. It didn’t help.
The car drove on for miles, and in his dark, hot little world, he was calm. Not because he had come to terms with his fate, nor because he enjoyed the company of the spare tyre or the roof. He was calm because his broken, exhausted body was being rocked into a blood-crusted daze, and he didn’t have nearly enough remaining functioning brain cells to think about how hysterical he should be.
“Don’t get caught up with these guys”.
The tyres bounced, the roof kissed, he lulled in the dark.
“They’re creeps. They’ll screw you over.”
The car stopped.
“There’s no way these things turn out okay.”
The roof above him flew up and the blinding sunshine tore at his eyes. Hands jolted and dragged him out into the blinding world from the dark womb of the trunk.
One to his guts.
Another across his jaw.
The fists retreated and were succeeded by a shovel. It flattened his body to the ground then was discarded in the dirt besides him. Dig.
He scraped at the roasted ground, while the desert sun gave no quarter, and the shotgun watched on.
“All right, Sunshine,” a mouth smirked, the words curled out and swirled into his face. The shotgun’s unblinking eye stared into his own eyes with curiously. “End of the line.”
And so it was.