Thirst

Tuesday.

The harsh Australian summer is unrelenting and unforgiving. There are cracks along the ground like veins as far as the eye can see; red raw dirt that stretches on and on, like split skin on hard knuckles. There’s no reprieve.

The earth is thirsty for some drink. He scuffles his boot into the dirt, watches it lift up and swirl and dissipate. The ghost of Mother Nature.

He pops open his canteen and dribbles a bit of water on to its surface. The liquid splatters a dark pattern onto the earth and he watches as the murky amber get swallowed up in an instant, suddenly gone, like it was never there in the first place. He licks his lips, swallows, and takes some water for himself.

It’s been months since its rained. The dam is starting to dry up completely. There’s nothing left but a pathetic foggy puddle that has settled at the deepest point of the trench. Everything around him is completely bone dry, looking like bone itself, the earth picked clean of all water and skin.

We exist, somehow, in this unlivable terrain, he thinks.

The nearby town is just as dry, the concrete mimics the dirt. Everything is hard, unbreakable, strong, undependable. Ghostly. Empty. Thirsty.

The sheep hide in the skeleton shadow of the nearby tree. But the shadow is stumpy and small as the blazing sun sits right above; any fleeting darkness hiding from it. There’s not a leak of inky black anywhere; nothing to spill a shadow. There are no flowers, no trees, no nothing to see. The earth has continued to take from them without mercy, yet he has only himself to blame. A TV in the lounge and the kitchen and in the bedroom. His truck that spews black smoke like hatred. The plastic water bottles he has to keep buying just to keep himself alive. He takes and takes as his land literally cracks and screams beneath him.

He tips his head back and empties his canteen, spilling excess water down his neck to dampen his shirt.

It’s hot as hell and it’s barely midday.

The unquenchable thirst.

Wednesday.

It’s early morning is when he sees it. The sun is still settled in Her slumber yet the air is dry and hot like itchy sheets. Everything is coloured a midnight blue, with the faintest hints of grey streaking across the sky, touching lightly onto the wisp of clouds that hang above him. They will soon retreat when She rises completely; another day of endless scorch.

He crunches out onto the desert ground and trudges over to the edge of the fence. He props a foot up on the lowest rung and crosses his arms over the top, leaning heavily into it, letting it take his weight. He can see the sheep grouping at the far side of the paddock and it takes him a second to register that the deep blue he sees is not the shadow of the dam but the height of the water inside it.

He's stunned, but the oppressive heat has taken any sort of exclamation from him. His boots kick up the ghosts of the earth as he stumbles into the pen and down to the dam. But his eyes aren’t deceiving him, the dam is full of water.

The sun rises quickly, pressing down hard on him, leaving him no room to breathe. The earth around him is still endless and dusty; the ground still looks thirsty, his truck still dirty. He shields his eyes from the glare of the sky, now completely cloudless, to look up and up and up into absolute nothingness.

He licks his lips, chasing away the cracked feeling of skin but the feeling is never satisfied.

Thursday.

He’s struck with the idea like a punch to the chest. He quickly makes his way outside and around the side of the house, the screen door banging in his wake.

There lies the useless fucking rain water tank, sitting there, mocking him.

He climbs the small ladder and lifts the hatch to the tank and peers down into the darkness. It’s completely full.

He dunks his hand into the water, cups a mouthful and swallows, sighing with relief.

Friday.

It’s mid-morning when he’s counting his dead flock. Well, he starts to count but after reaching a dozen or so, he puffs out a breath that’s full of disturbance mixed with compliant acceptance. All the sheep are dead. They’ve all drowned in the water. They float like little chunks of vegetables in broth, his pen one big stew.

‘I don’t understand how this could have happened,’ he says to himself, to the stinging sun. She’s just poked her head out to slap against his skin, ridding him of invisible bugs.

He cracks open a beer and calls Jim.

‘I don’t understand how this could have happened,’ he says but still doesn’t yield a response. Instead, Jim hums thoughtfully on the other end of the phone. An empty silence falls over them.

‘I don’t know,’ he says, finally, ‘maybe they got a bit too excited.’ It’s lifeless, his brother’s tone. He wants to say something but the heavy heat has taken all the fight from him, taken too much from him. ‘You know - they flock to the only water source, they get overwhelmed, they panic and they drown. It happens in Africa and shit.’

‘All my money has died,’ he says flatly.

‘Yeah,’ Jim says, his tone unchanging, ‘I don’t know what else to tell you.’

Saturday.

His body jolts him awake like an alarm has gone off but his room is completely silent. His mouth is dry like he’s had all the saliva sucked from him.

He dreamed that his house was underwater.

He gets up, makes a coffee and a bacon sandwich and turns on the TV. The news is playing. A group of school children have drowned at the local pool. They’re sending the pool water off to check for any chemicals that may have caused this freak tragedy.

The reporter looks like she’s going to cry, ‘no one is sure how something like this could have happened.’

He turns the TV off.

Sunday.

He stares out at the floating, rotting carcasses of his herd, still buoyant, somehow, in the dam. A few lie at the shallow end of the water, one rests like a grotesque heap in the middle of the pen. He tried to move them but he didn’t have the strength to lift their sodden, heavy bodies onto the back of the truck.

He wasn’t, isn’t sure what he’s going to do with three dozen or so bodies. He was going to drive them out to the middle of nowhere to dump them, let them rot and fall away, go back to the earth. Instead, he’ll just have to let them get eaten down to bare bones before he can even begin to figure it out.

The slightest breeze kicks up the dirt and the putrid smell, wafts it over to the house. He keeps all the windows open, like a punishment.

Monday.

He dreams of tsunamis and drowning. He’s a sheep in a pen, a man on the beach, a diver in the middle of the ocean. All he remembers is cool water and a terrible, choking feeling.

He wakes up spluttering, gasping for breath.

Tuesday.

It’s the middle of the night and he’s climbing the small ladder up to the water tank. He pulls open the hatch and gazes down into it. The coolness of the water’s surface flutters up at him, grazes its knuckles over his face. It's comforting.

He swings his leg up and over with a grunt, straining to dip his toes into the water. It’s not as cool as he’d hoped but it’s good enough.

He struggles to get himself down into the tank, completely vibrating to feel the cool liquid all over his skin.

He falls gracelessly into the water, pulling the hatch shut as he does, the still silence of the night shatters for just a moment.

He closes his eyes against the intruding darkness, finding his space in its vastness. He submerges under the water, feeling it fill into his nose and ears.

As the water washes over him, he feels completely at peace. He is suspended in time and space.

He waits until his heart beat slows. Then it quickens, his chest tightens, his body suddenly shaking. He kicks violently to the surface, spluttering, choking, thrashing, screaming.

He frantically looks up into the darkness, blinking the water from his eyes, searching for a sign of the hatch that he just fell through. But the darkness has completely swallowed him and he is drowning.

He is literally drowning.

He’s thrashing like a spider in a jar. He screams into the darkness but his voice just bounces and echoes right back to him. A symphony of terror. His whole body feels like it’s going to split open and burst.

He’s panicking. Kicking his legs furiously, screaming between mouthfuls of water. He reaches up into the nothingness, searching for help, but the walls of the tank are smooth and wet; no purchase, no cracks to grab on to.

He’s completely alone. So utterly alone. His herd lay dead not 20 feet away; a sopping pile of nothingness.

He screams and thrashes until he can’t anymore, and all he can do is cycle his legs pathetically to keep himself afloat. His eyes stay closed, or maybe they’re open - it’s too dark to tell.

The water is cool against his skin. Cool in his mouth.