The Marrow and the Mire

“Rupert, have you seen Dusty?!” The boy’s mother called out to him, not knowing he’d bolted out after the curious bulldog. “Rupert, honey!” She let out another shriek, a high-pitched signal that bounced off the house's wood panels, ringing out across the neighborhood and the Florida Panhandle. It hung in the summer sky before dissipating in echoes above the sodden landscape. As she opened the torn screen door to the backyard, it creaked against a light gust of wind, and she stared off into the moss-laden forest that shadowed the waterlogged town. 

“Have you seen Rudy?” She asked her husband whom she’d regretted marrying about the boy she often resented. She wasn’t a cruel mother but an absent one. 

“Kid went out after the dog,” he said after a few moments of silence and was too busy rifling through an empty fridge for food that wasn’t there. The stale smell of standing water lingered over the week's dirty dishes.

“And you didn’t help him look?” She asked him, surprised by the common occurrence of his obliviousness, disregarding how she too was devoid of motherly attention. She had been hanging up her secondhand sundresses on the clothesline in the backyard and hadn’t even heard them slip away. 

“That’s what you’re for, remember that,” he said with a smug expression, and she wished she’d killed them ten years ago. She would’ve slapped him had she not feared retaliation; daily squabbles were common in the squalor, fueled by a dual temper. He fixed up his sad excuse for a sandwich, pissed off into the living room, and gave his signature look of disdain. The mother’s emotions were fickle, and she’d gone into a panic when she thought about the looks people would give her, what they would say had she lost her son. A worthless mother, they may say. She assumed the worst of atrocities may have befallen him, so she grabbed her keys and went looking.

She drove by Rupert’s uncle's house, but he wasn’t there and his rusty pickup was gone. He would’ve had little to offer anyway and had hardly regarded himself the boy’s family, absent and distant he would remain. The garage door of his place hung dented and the tractors that littered the property wore their patina green. Bought and subsequently forgotten. She asked the neighbors if they’d seen the boy passing through, his red and white basketball shorts swaying past his knees. They heard nothing and they hadn’t seen him, they were either willfully blind, or he was unwittingly illusive. “Have you checked the bog?” One of them said before she took off, continuing her eerie drive. 

Stopping the station wagon, she caught her breath and tried to fight back the tears. Shed for him or her, she hadn’t yet decided. She told herself not to worry and thought about all the ways her late mother would reprimand her for reasons she didn’t understand. Basking in the heat of the vehicle, she peered through the windshield that magnified the sun’s rays onto her weathered skin. 

*****

“Dusty, Dusty!” Rudy shouted, stumbling through the forest he now found himself lost in. The bulldog left its prints in the mud but they were minutes old, and water poured back into the impressions. He had entered the woods with his head secure on his shoulders, but the further he went on his way, his sense of direction vanished, and the sun laid itself to rest as he watched through breaks in the cypress trees. The world that the family inhabited was small, and the wetlands that bordered Georgia were all they’d ever known. But they didn’t wander too far, as there was nothing for them out there, and even the fishermen scarcely cast their lines over the languid waters. Only the kids of the town explored the swamp; their parents forbade it, but Rupert’s had no qualms with either choice, and his mother worried little until the moment called for it. 

The boy had lost the trail that was left for him by his dog, and his stomach rumbled and quaked at its need for food. Dusty wore a bell around his furry white neck, but the jingling sound had faded hours ago, lost within the whirring of insects. The more he trodded aimlessly through the woods, the more the expanse of nature wore on his stunted soul. A quagmire gave way underfoot and he shouted at the world ankle-deep in the clouded water when—he heard a faint bark and then a clear yelp. The cries for help were burgeoning, and whatever had gotten to Dusty, Rupert figured to let it have the flat-faced bulldog he sometimes called friend. Still, he pressed onward, stepping on the rare patch of dirt stable enough to hold his weight. 

A fibrous curtain of typha plants swayed slenderly in front of him, their cattails were cylindrical—an intrusive examination. He gave it no more thought, and his mind shot back to the dog as he stepped through the bed of reeds. A large pond that curved around the marsh revealed itself and the flora that formed a wreath around it; jade foliage encircling the water, a deep green colored with oleanders, pink as the skin when light scatters through the capillaries. His heart thumped a drum in his chest, and he seldom ventured this far into the forest. The disturbed noises had faded, or so he thought when another yelp stabbed his ears from across the pond. His heart sank into his ribs, and he questioned for a second why he bothered with the dog. 

It was hard to discern what exactly he was looking at, between the thickets and the trees, but he swore he saw the spotted fur, bloody and its body limp, nestled atop the flattened reeds. A wave of worry washed over him and his shirt was a wet rag sticking to his skin, his ribs showed through the white cloth, and he looked just as animal as the Bobcats that stalk the shadows come nightfall. 

Taking a step back, a hard object sank below his feet, and in the muck, he saw the jagged and mangled remains of a human skull. Before he could shout for help that wasn’t near, he heard the bellowing of a beast and the rustling of bulrushes around him. 

“Show yourself!” Rupert yelled helplessly, and he hadn’t felt so afraid in his measly life—standing such an easy prey. 

“Over here, Rudy,” a voice said to him, the voice of a man—so he shot his gaze in every direction, shouting and scanning for the source that spoke his name. As he listened over the chirping of crickets, and insects more ambiguous in their calls: the night began its creep.

“Hey, over here,” it spoke again, gently as if trying not to scare its prey into a premature heart attack. It took Rudy a minute to spot the man, but when he did, he quickly realized it was not he but it—and resting near the pond, an alligator studied him with black eyes. Its scleras were turbid and murkier than the waters it swam. Motionless, with a thousand-mile stare and an unchanging grin: it watched Rudy from its post. He could hardly think it possible, were his eyes playing tricks? He had no time to ponder the fantastical implications, and when the gator’s flickered—Rudy didn't blink, but his nostrils curled at the smell—a fetid stench that seemed to trail from the archaic predator. 

“You—you talk?” Rupert asked the obvious, a question belonging to dreams. He gathered his wits as fast as he could and sprinted in the opposite direction, his flight response had been activated with the push of a subconscious button, and he never thought it would cross his mind, but at that moment—he wanted his father, the man he loathed to call a parent. Amid a proliferating nightmare, even that man seemed preferable to the aberrated creature—and at the very least, he was a nightmare Rudy had trained to awake from.

“Stop, or I’ll devour you. You don’t want that, do you?” It spoke rhetorically, and before the boy could respond in terror, the alligator slid its way to him. Rupert tumbled backward, splashing against the ground with a pathetic motion. He could feel the cold breath against his neck, and its teeth: a line of razors stained yellow—aching for warm blood to soothe them. Its breath was that of a dog’s, and as it pulled its teeth away, he could smell the rank of its innards exuding a palpable aroma. 

“Mom, momma!” Rupert cried out and the tears of self-preservation began to pour, followed by the flooding of his ducts. 

“Convince me not to eat you!” It screamed, and the ridges above its eyes furrowed before it began to thrash about the muck. It defied Rudy’s basic knowledge of existing, and its words were concise and conveyed its hatred well: a man’s hatred. But the boy had no response to appease him, and his nerves felt the funniest of feelings while he lay there shaking.  

“Something got your tongue, Rudy?” It rushed through a batch of bushes and back to him; excited by the possibilities. A decade dormant and a year to break in the new flesh, however unlucky a soul must be—to get swallowed by an alligator. 

“Speak, before I eat,” it slithered.

“Nobody calls me Rudy, only momma!” His tears ceased, but replenish they would. 

“I used to, for a time,” it drew back, retreating into the dark as the boy leaned up and dragged his nails through the mire. “There’s nowhere you can go, you know that I’ll catch you before you take two steps,” it proclaimed, or he did, the boy didn’t know what to believe, so he picked up the nearest rock he could find and threw it. Bouncing off its scales, the rock plopped lazily into the mud, and it might as well have been a pebble tossed.

It only gave him raucous laughs, he was the performer and Rudy the lone audience. Every time it cackled, its tail trashed in response, and the world spun circles around them; the talking gator seemed to be enjoying it all too much, the plan he was successfully enacting. With the evening settling down, he lay there helpless, stalked by the phenomenon. Unwanted by everyone but his to-be killer who salivated for him. His death would be ruled a statistic, and no soul would know the otherworldly details of such brutality. 

“Rudy, Rudy, Rudy,” it spoke thrice, taking its time when the boy launched to his feet with a second wind upon him. 

“Run if you want, but we need each other, you’ll be back, you came to me today,” the words cut deep as he pushed through the woods and into a clearing. A nest of bones sat sundried and the hollowed skulls caught his eye among the skeletal heap. Over the darkening swamp, millions of miles away, the sun made space for the moon that awoke above the drowning trees.

“Don’t mind those, I didn’t want you to see that,” the alligator softly admitted, and shortly after, a choir of mosquitoes began humming their swan songs. 

“I’ve been watching for a while now, and that man who beds your mother is not who he says he is.” It said to him, and for the first time, Rudy heard a man in that voice, rising from the guts of a cold creature. 

“You can have him, I’ll take him to you, I can do it, I know I can!” The boy quickly thought about the plan he would hatch and the things he would have to do. 

“He doesn’t deserve his place, they took that from me when they left me in the swamp to die.” With every slithering word, tactically, the man inside revealed more of himself.

“Are you my dad, are you in there?” Rudy quivered at his own question, and even though imagination knew few bounds, he understood that he had wandered too far into a realm beyond his understanding. 

“It’s our secret,” the gator whispered to him, its jaw a bridge lowering slowly.

“Does that mean you’re not going to kill me?” Rupert gave in to his suspicions and dropped the stone he’d picked up; a futile defense it would have been. So, the boy knelt in the mud and the animal beside him; he felt he’d long passed the cusp of insanity—a point of no return, and unwittingly—dived headfirst into an unlikely fate.

“How do you speak?” He had countless questions, and the existence of the preternatural rendered him in a state of attentiveness. Far had he gotten from the fear of the prior hours and settle did his stomach.

“Even I don’t know, and there’s no way to tell without slicing me open,” its pained voice had long passed and the presence of the boy calmed its blackened soul. 

“My memory fades, and I remember the name Rudy, Rupert,” it whispered, but it was a whisper that could be heard over the forest and the sounds of any who tried to muffle it. Their eventful conversation strayed Rudy’s thoughts down the darkest of paths, and soon, it would be pitch black.

“That man doesn’t even look like you, boy. Think about it, your hair is brighter than the sun, and that man you call a father is a dog. No more than the mutt I lured you out here with,” he severed the silence, and the man within the creature was impatient; a four-legged silhouette that blended with the woods the more the moon cast its thoughtless glow. It skittered circles around him, and it was hard to spot amid the ensuing darkness, but he caught sight of it once more when the light reflected off its rubbery surface. 

“I want to believe you, I hate him… what do we do now?” The night was filled with many riddles, and it was a two-part investigation near the base of a willow. Rudy sensed an inkling of himself in the cryptic beast, and in those primal moments, he felt he understood it. What he had first deemed insanity, waned in the truth he now accepted; this would be no nightmare you awake from, but rather trauma in tangible form, and further, a way to reconcile it all: blood for blood. 

“Just like that, you believe me? You’re quick to trust,” the gator said. Rupert thought about his options but there were few; was he prey regardless? He’d convinced himself otherwise in their moments engaged in mutual scrutiny. 

“I’m trusting you because I don’t got a choice,” the boy concluded, looking down at the creature beside him. It paid him no sight while it skittered a few paces ahead. 

“There are choices, but you may not like them, though they could benefit us both,” it stopped in its tracks, and its tail whipped as it turned to meet him; a low moving blot in the night. “How do I know you’re telling the truth?” Rudy inquired again, between the wavering of his mental fortitude. 

“I’m afraid you don’t,” it whispered before rushing behind a tree and into the thickets. Not a few moments later, it peaked its snout through the glistening curtains of reeds, revealing its teeth far from uniform. With a simple whiff, It sensed the bitterness that reeked from the boy, the resentment and disdain akin to his, a soul bound by chance. 

“What do I call you?” Rudy’s voice quivered, and he eagerly awaited the answer from the long-snouted swindler partitioning the plants. 

“My name is Bruce, call me Bruce, son,” the alligator said with no hint of deception and only sincerity. The two of them found mutual ground, one lower than the other; despite the horrific death of the puppy, Rudy forgave him—and the night was full of ideas. 

Accepting the deal and the admission of worlds beyond his fathoming, his father who crept on all fours led him out of the swamp while they caught up on moments they had never shared. The lack of which harbored resentment in Rudy—it was only a matter of time until he acted out—all it took was a bump and a nudge. Over sparse patches of land, they waltzed, crossing the narrow causeways back the way they came. A path that was set for him by his newfound companion who knew all manners of the mire.

“Your mother must go too,” it whispered once more as they neared the edge of the great swamp that bordered the neighborhood, threatening to swallow it in future times. They were close to town now, and the outside world called to Rudy with the beast in tow. Through the breaks in trees and the overgrowth of summer: porchlights cut the shadows, and from the saturated porches, lanterns burned shimmering orbs. When he stepped out into the amber light—the darkness came with him, whether within—or arm and arm. 

“Rudy—Rudy!” His mother called out to him.