The Bog

Ron Koppelberger

The Bog

Fast answers to the brave resolution of Wallis K. Nassau sloshed and rolled with the thick morass of quicksand he was neck deep in. Was it preordained he wondered, was he destined for some fateful absolution, a medium of reconciliation with god?
Wallis had intended to throw the garbage bag covered corpse of his wife into the morass. A perfect conclusion to years of miserable garrulous arguing and infidelity upon infidelity. She had turned her back to him as she grabbed for the phone, her accomplice; she was finally asking for a divorce. She had chosen a new lover, a boy in the dawn of maturity, a child barely twenty-one. Looking over her shoulder she had given him a smug sneer of unbridled hate. In that moment the decision was made for Wallis; he grabbed a silver burnished vase embossed with archaic Egyptian legends, it felt good in his hand, heavy and dangerous. As she replaced the receiver he slammed the vase into her head, crushing her skull with a scrunchy crack.
There had been a spellbound moment of fear as he watched the blood pour from her head but it had passed and he had calmly sopped up the blood with a roll of paper towels, then he snuggled her into several garbage bags tying them off with a roll of twine.
Her body had thumped into the trunk of the car with a satisfying thump. He drove the Mercedes near the speed limit as he followed the curvy road to the swamp. Finally he pulled off the concrete two-lane highway onto a dirt two-track. The Mercedes bumped along nearly getting stuck in the muddy ruts. He had stopped the car at a thick knot of tangled vines and briar scrub. Opening the trunk he removed her body spending the next hour dragging her through the Palmetto scrub and pine tree saplings.
He had intended to leave her in the midst of the dense thicket when he saw the reflective surface of the morass.
Dragging her to the edge of the muddy quicksand he hefted her in. Unfortunately the twine around one of the garbage bags had coiled like a snake around his ankle and he stumbled in.
As the swampy grit flowed into his mouth and eyes he realized that the scream of a wild goose was echoing in the forest. It sounded a little bit like laughter, his wife’s laughter.