Teaser Tuesday

In my ongoing quest to blog more often, here’s a snippet of what I’m working on right now. (Evil laugh)

I thrust my fingers into the dirt and pulled out two handfuls, dropping them to the side of the hole Lila had made. Quickly I widened it, uncovering a curve of bone, that became a dome, that became something unmistakable.

“Here.” Mark handed me a stiff-bristled brush, like I’d seen Caitlin using on the bones in the excavation by the bulldozer. “Use this.”

“Thanks.” I shifted to lie on my stomach. Mark took a mirror position, pulling the dirt away when it kept falling back in the hole, as if the earth didn’t want to give up what we’d found.

A sweep of the brush revealed the forehead–the frontal bone, I corrected, AP Biology coming in handy sooner than I’d thought. Then the nasal bone, the brow ridges, the cheekbones and maxilla. Even if I hadn’t remember the names, their shapes were iconic, the stuff of nightmare and mortality.

I gently smoothed the dirt from the eye sockets with my thumbs and wondered what was the last thing this man had seen. The relentless wave of a flood? The snake that had bit him? Did he stare his own death in the face before the end?

Or was that the end of him at all?