Soil
By Mary Margaret Rinebold
Wallace hated mud, but mud couldn’t keep its hands off him. It was everywhere, following him like mosquitoes on a humid night. Mud sat outside his doorstep, mud seeped into his brown and green mud boots, mud caked and cracked in the creases of his hands, mud held his hair together like black styling gel and seeped into his brain. There was definitely mud in his coffee maker. In fact the mud in his coffee maker was so thick, when he drank his morning coffee he could detect granules of mud between his tongue and his teeth, sliding down his throat and circulating through his digestive system until it found its way to his brain, where it would surely join the mud that had dripped in through his matted hair.
Despite this obstacle, Wallace managed to maintain a respectable, even elegant appearance. In fact it was often said that Wallace dressed and carried himself like a man from another, more formal time, a time when men were men and mud avoided human contact. During that former era, before the sheets of rain came, mud knew its proper place. It was dirt. Wallace really missed those days, for it was then that he knew how to handle himself, how to defend himself against the dirt. This descent into mud, the transfiguration on the part of the dirt, it really confused and offended Wallace. Or maybe that was all the wet dirt in his brain talking?
Outside of Wallace’s two-story brick house was a line of tall Cyprus trees which had, over time, grown into each other to form an inter-woven tangle of branches. From a distance the trees looked like an unfurling roll of lace, a thin veil concealing the façade of Wallace’s modest brick home. However, as attractive as these lace trees were, Wallace had a hard time walking near them, for there were thick mounds of mud around their roots. Often Wallace found himself sinking into the earth beneath the beautiful trees.
One day, the lace trees and the mud conspired for tragedy. It all began when the strong March breeze blew Wallace’s beloved origami crane off his windowsill and into the lace trees, forcing Wallace to search for it in the grove. As he reached for the branch where the vulnerable red and cream paisley crane perched, he felt his legs sink beneath him. Next he noticed that there was mud swallowing his hips, and soon enough, it was strangling his neck. He noticed that above any other fears, his principle emotion was irritation at the mud in his ears. It would certainly be hard to scrub all that new mud out. The next sensation was something Wallace had never experienced before: The End.
