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Dreams of Ice

Jesse Martin

    A burp escaped Lance’s throat, and with it his tongue lolled out—a swollen, pink sponge.
    “Pick him up,” Mona ordered Tim. “No, under his arms...yes, like that.”
    Tim grunted and shoved the man into the back of the pickup, wiping his hands on his pants and wondering how he made it here, with this woman, doing this thing. Disposal. The two of them set to grabbing clumps of soggy hay and tossing them on Lance, dressing him with the earth and disguising him. Still, his milky, fogged eyes showed. And that tongue.
    A single, dark hole pierced Lance’s chest. His heart had died before he could bleed out. A clean end.
    Tim got in the passenger seat and waited, breathing and feeling his body shrink and expand as if he were one great, big lung, exhaling and inhaling life. He took the pistol off the driver’s seat and put it in the glove box.
    The truck stuttered to life and sped off. Tim looked over to the driver’s seat. Mona had entered the truck and started it. Now she looked concentrated, her hands, white-knuckled, commanding the steering wheel.
    “Shit.” Mona pulled her lips back from her teeth. “Shit, shit, shit.”
    “What?” Tim asked.
    Mona shot a glance at him. “Did you not see? His kid came outside. Goddamn, they probably have the cops on us right now.”
    “I didn’t even see a kid,” Tim offered. “I’m sure we’re fine.”
    “No, I don’t think so.” She shook her head. “...” She closed her mouth. “You never see anything, Tim.”

    Five minutes later, the three of them waited at the edge of a muddy embankment, watching the brown river overflowing and gurgling with rain and snowmelt from the mountains.
    Mona thought visibly.
    Tim waited.
    Lance lay with his face pressed into the soft earth.
    “The water’s moving fast,” Mona said. “It should carry him far.”
    Tim agreed with a grunt.
    Mona looked at him. “You’ll have to take him out there. I’m not strong enough.”
    “We should just push him off the side,” Tim offered.
    “He’ll get caught on a tree branch. Someone will find him too close to here.”
    Tim looked at the man, Lance. Lance who? he thought. He had never learned the man’s last name.
    Mona pulled out the gun and held it at her side. When had she taken it from the glove box? Tim had missed that. Maybe he didn’t see things.
    Tim and Lance went into the water. It was liquid ice, thrusting at the two of them, tossing Tim off his feet for a minute before he regained balance. He pulled Lance tighter to his body. “Come on,” he begged Lance. “I’m sorry.” Mona stood, watching them.
    The roar of the river was mountainous, a cacophony of nonsense. He would lay for a long time in bed after this, Tim thought, in silence and warmth.
    A cold wave surged up and pounded a fist into his back. He went sprawling and lost Lance, who floated off, off, off. Lance grew smaller and smaller, face down.

    The truck was running. Tim ran, jumped in. Mona was silent and drove off, tires tossing up a rain of soggy earth.

    And Tim was lying in bed, feeling the warmth. But when he dreamed, it was of ice: fields and prairies of it, castles of it, waterfalls of liquid ice.
    Tim woke up feeling cold.

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