The Bog People

            Mallory paced back and forth across the bare concrete. She did not notice that her bare feet were turning a bluish color as she softly smacked them over the cold slab. Her teeth chattered.  The unfinished, half-basement glowered. Dim, flickering, fluorescent lights dangled from the remaining tiles of the hung ceiling. Cigarette smoke filled the musky air. Mallory’s hands were trembling as she absent mindedly moved her Camel menthol lights back and forth from her hips to her mouth. Sometimes, she just put the lit cigarette to her lips without inhaling. She stared at me crumpled disgracefully against the back wall of the house. I lied in the shadows, unmoving next to the decades old, broken washing machine. Mallory talked to me.

            She kept stammering, “Is everything O.K.? Am I O.K. Lucas?” But, I couldn’t speak, I couldn’t breathe. She had some idea about the bogs in Iowa. She kept rambling on about the bogs.

            “I remember when I was a kid, Lucas, the farmers had to be careful about the bogs. A tractor could fall into one of those bogs and never be seen again. People have been known to fall into the bogs. Sometimes, I wonder if they’re still there, like the bog people of Northern Europe.”

            Drifting through the crumbling, half-finished house was the sound of George Romero’s original, black and white, Night of the Living Dead. Mallory played that film every Halloween. She walked to the back door and slowly cracked it all the way open. Rain poured down into the mud underneath the rotten beams of the back deck. The scraggly dogs whined, scrambled, sniffed, and fretted around her feet. Normally, they would have gone outside, but the rain deterred them. Mallory stared out into the marshy creek outside, into the wet dusk. She mumbled as much to me as to herself, “I can hear them Lucas, they’re circling around me, laughing and jeering. Am I O.K.?” She stared out of the back door for a long while as dusk fell like a smattering of dead, wet leaves onto bare, cold skin.

            I stared at the room in which I was grimly disposed. A huge, dingy, beige colored couch reeking of pet urine and covered in dog and cat hair loomed in one half of the basement like a tombstone. A coffee table sat next to it covered in empty beer cans, liquor bottles, ash trays, and pot stems and seeds. Nearer to me was a tabletop made from a heavy door which my father, Logan had confiscated from work. The door was nailed to a sort of wooden frame. Beakers and glass tubing lay scattered across the table. Beakers and glass tubing lay piled in milk crates next to the table top.

            One of the dogs began to sniff at me and whine. Mallory snapped out of her daze and lurched towards the dog. She grabbed the dog by the scruff of the neck and tried to pull the dog away. She tripped as she tried to pull the whining dog away from me. She stumbled onto the dogs paw and leg, and then she cracked her head against the concrete. The dog yelped and then scrambled out from under her. Her eyes watered. She dragged herself away from me, moaning as she did so.

            She teetered onto her feet when she heard the front door open.

            “Logan? Logan? Is that you? Am I OK, Logan,” she whined.

            “Mallory! Mallory, it’s me babe,” Logan said in his deep, slow, monotone voice.

            “Hey, Mallory, I’m here too,” Jack piped in.

            Jack was the connection, sort of. Jack had jet black, curly hair erupting from his scalp. The hair created a garish frame for his gaunt, lean face.

            Logan and Jack descended the stairs, into the basement. Jack ambled towards the beige couch and fell into it, letting out a sigh as he did so.

            Jack remained standing, sort of rocking from one foot to the next. He banged a black gym bag against his leg. He talked into the room, to no one particular, “Yeah, this is the fuckin’ set up. Fuckin’ Logan and his pharmaceutical gig, man. Logan and his fuckin’ hook-ups man. Rock and fuckin’ roll man.”

            Mallory stared out the back door. Logan opened a storage door inlayed into one of the arms of the massive couch. He pulled out a small glass piece and two different bags of dope. Jack was transfixed on the bags. He sprang over to Logan and knelt down. He took his keys out of his pocket and dipped the end of one key into the bag filled with whitish powder. He snorted in the powder. He coughed, then let out a sort of disjointed whooping, “Whoo-eeehh! Yeah! Whooo! Fuck man!”

            Logan lit his multi-colored glass piece. He coughed when he finally saw me in the corner. He dropped his piece onto the bare concrete, where it shattered.

            “Oh, God, Mallory, what the fuck,” Logan groaned. His voice began to slowly rise in pitch as his sense of panic rose. “Mallory?”

            Jack turned around and faced me, “What the fuck,” he whispered to himself in amazement.

            Mallory sensed the change in mood, and then asked again, “Logan, am I OK? Lucas is being mean to me. I know he’s talking to your about me. What is he saying? The Burkhart bastard, that’s what they would have called him. They wanted me to have an abortion, but you were lucky Lucas, I decided to have you. I got you out of Iowa. Now you’re being ungrateful.” Her voice rose to a yell, “I’m your mother! Don’t laugh at me!”

            Logan stumbled over to my body. He knelt, and put his hand on my forehead. He felt how cold I was. He turned his head away from me and then vomited.

            “Oh, Jesus, Mallory, Lucas is dead,” Logan sputtered.

            Jack removed his 9mil from the black gym bag.

            “Did your crystal do that shit Logan? You told me you had good shit, man. Are you trying to fuck me over? What the fuck am I going to do with a load of bad crystal man?” Jack was getting frantic.

            Mallory seemed to be oblivious to Jack’s weapon. She continued, “Do you remember the bog people I learned about in my class? We can put Lucas in the bogs, like in Iowa and he’ll be OK. I’ll be OK. Am I OK Logan? What if the cops come Logan? Oh my God, Logan. The cops could be listening right now.”

            Jack’s face contorted. He was angry, and terrified. “The fucking cops man? What the fuck Logan?” He clicked off the safety on his weapon.

            Romero’s Night of the Living Dead seemed to resound shrilly across the murky air. The knocking of Romero’s zombies resounded. Trick-or-Treaters knocked at the front door. Gunshots from the movie blasted out of the television set.

            Jack was too tense. He pulled the trigger on his weapon, and the bullets ignited the contents of the basement. An explosion and a fire-ball rocked the house.

            When the flames were finally extinguished and the smoke cleared, I thought the bodies looked a lot like the bog people; the lonesome, accidental mummies buried beneath the ages of damp death, which rot endlessly onto the grim rituals of primitive man.