Original Short Story for Haunted Passages: “Everything Got Worse” by Kelli Dianne Rule

November 1, 1991. Myakka City, Florida.

The earth-moving machines had long sputtered out and all the workers were eating or sleeping so I got bored and decided to run off to explore the woods behind our construction site. Tall pines and old oak trees covered the floor in dry needles and acorns and when the crunching stopped underneath my shoeless feet, replacing itself with sticky sucking muck, I looked up and saw I’d come upon a section of really tall grass that went back farther than I could see. I noticed the cattails a little too late and that’s when the alligator darted out of the pond and ate me.

The snatch was the quickest part about it. My leg bone snapped in the hot jaws of its fat armored head and I went down. I saw sky/grass/sky/grass as he rolled me down to the water and just before we hit it he chomped further up my leg to get a better grip and that’s when the rolling really started. My brain must not have had time to tell my nerves how much that all should have hurt but upon reflection I’d have accepted the pain if it meant I’d be spared what seemed to be a neverending feeling of pure terror. Under the water, battered and bleeding from all the chomping and rolling, I quickly drowned. The gator stuffed my ragdoll carcass under a partially submerged pine log. Once my body softened up he came back to lunch on pieces of me until, bit by bit, everything that had once made up the physical form of nine-year-old John Jacob Binder vanished from this world. The gator ate my shirt and shorts, too. Nothing of me, in fact, would ever be found.

Alligators don’t usually go for humans but I was a small fry. I also think that his normal food, all your typical Florida wildlife, must have been stressed out from the construction of this new subdivision and as such moved on away and deeper into the woods. So he must have been hard up. He saw an opportunity and he took it, I guess. I wasn’t happy about it but I couldn’t blame him. In fact, I didn’t think much about the rightness or wrongness or fairness or unfairness of my situation at all, except to think that some folks would probably consider it strange to not think about.

The fact was, my existence, whatever that is or was, was now and forever residing here in and around this pond. Ten feet or so out from the water’s poorly-defined edge and double that distance up in the air everything sort of hazed out. When I tried to walk beyond the hazy dome I couldn’t. I felt like a little figurine trapped in a snow globe.

I imagined my mom would blame the workers but the way I saw it, she was the one who had left me there to be babysat by men on bulldozers, and I didn’t hear her give them any instructions or even ask if that was okay with them. She told me to sit back under the trees and not to get in their way, gave me a few books and my drawing pad, and that she’d be back in a few hours. The fourth hour was when I got bored and slipped off. No one must have seen me otherwise I’m sure they’d have found the pond with the alligator and put two and two together.

I didn’t like the idea of my mom blaming the workers. I could imagine the kind of scene she’d cause because she caused one when she lost me one time in the mall. She’d have them all running around the place looking for me. She’d say one of them probably took me. She’d call them all pedophiles and she’d throw her big purse at them. I didn’t like the idea of her thinking I was with a pedophile. I think death by alligator would be a much easier thing to come to terms with.

She’d start up again with her lists. She said making lists helped her anxiety. It could be a list of anything. Around the time my dad left us I peeked in her notebook and saw a ten-page-long list titled “Things That Are the Color Green.”

In cartoons alligators are green but the one that ate me was black. The only green on it was from mold that had settled on and in the cracks of its hide. The alligator that ate me had balloon-like jowls on either side of his awful mouth that actually made him look a little ridiculous. I watched him closely and often. I didn’t have much else to do and he didn’t regard me at all. I sat on the bank sometimes right up next to him. I grazed a hand along one of his balloon jowls and even rubbed a tooth once. I studied him intensely. It was easy because he liked to sit in the same place without moving for hours.

Like I said, he was black and moldy. His eyes were close together and that made him look a little stupid. Sometimes I thought his face looked so stupid that it made me laugh. On the really hot parts of the day he would open his mouth wide and just sit like that. Sprawled on the bank, sunning his leather, with his mouth wide open. When he closed his mouth he kind of looked like he was smiling. I wondered how old he was. I think gators can live a hundred years.

I liked touching his skin. The top was rough and bumpy like you’d expect a dinosaur’s skin to be. I also touched low on his side where his belly started and I found it to be really soft and fatty. Fatty with me.

November 1, 1992

Things John has missed in the last 12 months (bad to miss):

His tenth birthday
Our dog had puppies (4)
Christmas (all the holidays I guess)
A skatepark opened in town
Went to see Disney’s Aladdin with Aunt Risa’s family
Space Shuttle launched and came back

Things John has missed in the last 12 months (good to miss):

Grandpa died (stroke)
Hurricane Andrew, missed us but the whole state is suffering with supply shortages and such, caused our building project to slow down
Cousin Kyle broke your Nintendo (well we gave it to him, so technically it was his but I still know you wouldn’t like to hear that)

I started keeping track of all the different bugs and watching what they did. Mosquitoes, for example. I could study them close now that they could no longer bite me. I wish I hadn’t left my drawing pad behind because I’d love to have been able to sketch them. Because from far away and when you’re trying to swat them they don’t look like much, but up close they’re striped like zebras and delicate like they’re made of glass. They lay tons of eggs both nearby and on top of the pond. When the eggs open up the babies are see-through and so very small, but I’m nearsighted bad so my up-close vision is really good.

When there’s a ripple in the water they all do a wiggly dance. When they’re ready to leave the water they literally break out of their old body and use it as a raft and that’s how they dry their wings off so they can fly. I imagined if humans did that. Just one day when you turn eighteen your eighteen-year old self breaks out of its seventeen year old body and rides it like a magic carpet until the wind takes away all the goo.

I saw mosquitoes feeding on plants and flowers. I didn’t know they did that, I just thought they sucked blood. They did that, too, of course. They ganged up on frogs and birds and sometimes even themselves. When there got to be too much of them the dragonflies came to balance them out. I saw so many different colored dragonflies, including a bright red one that I never even knew existed. I thought the dragonflies looked like fairies and that’s when I started to feel like maybe I was in a magical place and I really started to grow to like it.

Meanwhile the alligator kept lurking around. I forgot to tell you, he had a few friends. Smaller ones that seemed to always hang further back. Of all the animals out here, believe it or not, the gators were the least exciting. They didn’t even hunt much and they didn’t hardly move. From what I could gather their life was ninety-nine percent waiting and one percent eating and that was it.

It made me sad one day when I saw the gator that ate me go and eat a little deer that had come by for a drink. The attack was horrible but thankfully quick and I thought that’s what it would have looked like to someone if they had been unfortunate enough to have seen the gator snatch me.

November 1, 1993

Things John has missed in the last 12 months (bad to miss):

We all saw Jurassic Park, oh my goodness you would have loved it
The house is finally finished! The bank let us get a small reverse mortgage right away so I could buy nice quality appliances like I’d always wanted and even some furniture

Things John has missed in the last 12 months (good to miss):

Bill Clinton new president, it’s going to be a liberal free-for-all. I swear the country is going to Hell in a handbasket
Bruce Lee’s son died while he was making a movie, I’m sorry I know you love Bruce Lee’s Kung Fu movies and I was so proud when you got your green belt
Your uncle Shaw Pete in Alabama got killed in a big Amtrak crash. I think, at least, his family will get some money from it

Today I heard some really loud sounds. Rumblings like thunder and cracks and crashes. I didn’t feel the wind but I can tell it’s windy because all the reeds are bent and the water is blowing all around and all the animals except for the alligators have left. I imagine there must be a really bad storm going on and I’m glad I’m safe in my snow globe even if it’s only because I’m dead.

November 1, 1994

Things John has missed in the last 12 months (bad to miss):

You’re going to have a new baby sister real soon. I decided to name her Jonnie Jacklin after you
Maybe I should put this in the good to miss section for you because you never like the guys I take up with but I’m getting married with Jonnie Jacklin’s daddy after she’s born
The neighborhood is growing and they say that’s good for the value of our house

Things John has missed in the last 12 months (good to miss):

Our house got some damage from that big storm Alberto. But the folks in the panhandle and up in Georgia got it much worse
Bill Clinton starting to come for our guns, I told everybody that would happen if they let the Dumb-o-Rats get into power!
A scientist on the news said they proved there’s no such thing as the Loch Ness Monster

A few days later a new kind of rumbling started up. I recognized the sound from when they were building our house—the diesel chug chug chugging of heavy equipment. I couldn’t see the machine beyond the haze of my snow globe but I could tell it was close and getting closer. Just like during the storm, I heard branches snap, but I also heard big trees fall and I knew men were doing it because I heard them yelling right before each big helpless crack. Sometimes after the tree thudded down I’d hear the men cheer.

I noticed there weren’t as many birds spending time at the pond like there used to be. The ibises used to like to build their nests here because the alligators kept critters away from their eggs. Once I saw a possum try to get to a nest and one of the smaller alligators ate him right up. I thought that was a pretty good deal that the birds and alligators had made. Before, I always wondered why wading birds didn’t seem to be scared of getting close to alligators. Now I understood why they weren’t. Their eggs were a lure for gator food and so it only made sense for the gators to let the birds be. But like I said, there didn’t seem to be as many birds now and that meant there weren’t as many critters and one day I did see one of the smaller gators grab a heron. That just quickened the exodus. That little alligator broke their deal.

Critters still came by because of the water, but mostly just little ones like mice and snakes. I remember when my mom was scouting the land, the guy selling it was telling her all about the wildlife we’d get to see. Wild turkeys and hogs, deer, rabbits and things like that. Granted I can’t see that far beyond the pond but I hadn’t seen one turkey or hog yet. I had seen a few rabbits, and that poor deer.

Even with all those animals moving on deeper into the woods, the alligators never showed any interest in following. They appeared content to float in the water or bake in the sun and fill their bellies whenever even the smallest of opportunities struck. It did seem to me that they weren’t as fat as they had been when I first became acquainted with them. I didn’t want them to go but it probably would do them good to find another place to be. I always try to put myself in another person’s shoes when I don’t quite understand their behavior but I couldn’t get my head around why they’d want to stay in a place where it was so hard to get food to eat.

November 1, 1995

Things John has missed in the last 12 months (bad to miss):

Jonnie Jacklin was born healthy and she looks just like you did. A full head of brown hair and skin that looks tan even though she hasn’t been in the sun. She doesn’t fuss much at all. We are so happy she is here
Your grandmom is moving in to help out because Jonnie Jacklin’s daddy decided against marrying me and in fact just up and split town, probably back to Georgia. Grandmom is going to live in what was going to be your room, the one with the big windows that face out toward the woods. She misses you something awful, we all do of course

Things John has missed in the last 12 months (good to miss):

Deadbeat skipping town on his daughter! I guess good riddance. But still I’m glad you didn’t have to be here for that drama and seeing me so upset
Some crazy guy blew up a building in Oklahoma City and lots of people died and a bunch more were hurt bad. It was all that was on the news for a long time. I think people in this country are getting crazier and crazier. Bush wasn’t perfect but I miss how the country was and how people acted toward one another
The Superman actor fell off a horse and now he’s paralyzed! They say it’s permanent, he hurt his spine. Remember when we watched those movies? I don’t think they can ever make another one now. They do keep making the Batman ones though

One day I looked up from watching bugs and saw the orange-yellow maw of the CAT bulldozer break into my snow globe. It was coming straight toward me. Then it suddenly stopped, shook itself like a wet dog, and shut down. The driver yelled something in Spanish over his shoulder to someone behind him, then he chugged up the machine again and it beeped real high and loud as it backed up and disappeared into the gray haze.

Later some guys who were dressed like sheriffs carrying big nets and long hooked metal sticks stepped into my snow globe and set about trying to trap the alligators. They put a big piece of raw meat on the hooks and the starving alligators snatched onto them immediately. Then while they were hooked some other guys stuck them with what I guess were tranquilizers and when the gators went woozy they put a hood over their heads and taped their jaws shut over the hood. It was all done surprisingly quickly and after that I felt the loneliest I had ever remembered feeling in my whole life.

A little while after that some people came in with a pump and a big hose and set about draining the pond until it was just a big black hole of muck. Guppies flopped and suffocated and the sun shriveled up the frog eggs. After that the machines came back in and started dumping dirt into the hole. The bulldozer driver couldn’t see me but he kept me on my toes dodging his big dumps of dirt. They came back later to pack down the dirt with a big stamping machine and then added more dirt on top of that. When they were done there was nothing left but a big brown circle of earth. I started to panic a little, thinking about how I’d be sitting here for the rest of eternity with not even mosquitoes to keep me company.

November 1, 1996

Things John has missed in the last 12 months (bad to miss):

Jonnie Jacklin can pull herself up on furniture and called me momma for the first time
The people building the house behind ours seem like a good family. They’ve had a heck of a time clearing out the land, some government environmentalists were giving them a hard time about some stuff but they finally got allowed to start building. They got twin girls who are the same age as you would be now. Everly and Sunshine, cute as can be. I bet you all would have been real good friends
Your grandmom had a health scare but she came out okay so don’t worry
I started to go to church again and it’s been really good for me. I was mad at the world after you went missing and I guess I blamed God and Jesus too. But by his blood I am saved. I got baptized again down in the Peace River. That was a little scary because I know alligators like to hang out down there but I believed Jesus would protect me so he did. I stopped asking him why you went away and he told me it was just your time to be called home, that’s all, and after all it happens to everyone, and I shouldn’t be sad because you were happy in Heaven and we’d all be seeing you again someday real soon

Things John has missed in the last 12 months (good to miss):

Grandmom’s health scare cost us a lot of money and we don’t really know what we’re going to do about it. The pastor’s son works in business and he thinks we can make a payment plan with the hospital, indeed I do hope so because we can’t borrow against the house any more
Clinton is a nightmare! Gas prices haven’t been this high in a million years and we’re barely scraping by as it is and he’s probably going to be re-elected. I’m wondering if it even matters anymore who they got as president. Bob Dole isn’t anything special. I’m still going to vote though
Jonnie Jacklin’s daddy came back to town and broke into the house when it was just her and grandmom. He said he was going to take the baby but grandmom had her gun ready and ran him off. We called the cops but they didn’t do anything except tell grandmom that she wasn’t allowed to just keep her gun out like that with a baby in the house. Said it had to be locked up and unloaded. I reckon Jonnie Jacklin would’ve been halfway to Georgia by the time the cops got here if it was. There’s just no common sense anymore in the world

I passed what felt like eons of time in the dirt circle just laid out like a gingerbread man. Why is it that the bad things always seem to last longer than good things?

Every now and then I’d get up and play with some grass that had managed to peep out or some leaves or Spanish moss that tumbleweeded in from beyond the haze. I’d draw pictures in the dirt with my fingers. Usually I drew the gators. Sometimes the cranes.

One day though something happened. I was studying some tiny mites living in a ball of moss and I heard some voices nearby and when I looked up I saw two teenage girls walk in from the haze. They alarmed me because they looked exactly the same and I’d never seen twins in real life before. They were looking down at my drawings and looking around like they were trying to find out who did them. I hadn’t ever thought that anyone would have been able to see what I was drawing.

I decided to draw something else. Right in front of their feet I took my finger and drew the word HELLO. They screamed, awfully, and ran away. I never saw them again.

After not too long the crabgrass started creeping in and before too long it covered up all of the dirt. That meant I didn’t have dirt to draw in anymore but at least I had a soft place to sit. With the grass came more bugs. Ants mostly but also roly-polys, ladybugs, big ugly orange grasshoppers, and pretty shiny beetles. With the bugs came lizards and birds, and snakes that liked to eat lizards and mammals that liked to eat bugs like skunks and armadillos and moles. It was nothing like the magical world of the pond but it was better than sitting on dirt for all of time. I thought about what if they had found me and put me underneath some dirt in a graveyard with strangers and worms and that scared me. I thought I’d rather spend an eternity on top of dirt than in it. But I wouldn’t have to do either. The green came back and I got to see it.

I decided then to be grateful. Maybe in a hundred years some real-life Ghostbusters would come and trap me like the animal control people did with those alligators but for now, at least, I was free.

November 1, 1997

Things John has missed in the last 12 months (bad to miss):

I’m sorry, I’ve been trying to think of something to put here but I just can’t think of anything good right now because since you left everything got worse

Things John has missed in the last 12 months (good to miss):

We weren’t able to reason with the hospital so we’re going to have to sell the house at a loss and move. I don’t know where yet. I’m awfully depressed about it. The church has been supportive and a few folks said they could take us in until we figured out what to do. I’m just leaning on Jesus
I had a breakdown earlier this morning, I think because Jonnie Jacklin is in the “terrible twos” and I haven’t been able to get a moment’s rest in ages. It all just hit me though. It’s been six years since the last time I saw you. That one guy Ramos Amos or whoever, Raymond Amos I think, the papers just called him Crazy Ray and since day one I found I couldn’t even bring myself to think about him much less remember his real name, well, he confessed of course, for taking you and the three other little boys whose bodies they found buried on his land out east of Arcadia, but it always troubled me that they never did find you buried there, or anywhere else. I always thought since they said he was crazy maybe he was lying about taking you but the pastor told me I probably thought that because what happened was too awful for a mother to believe. But with God all things can be faced and overcome, he said. So I started believing it but it still bothers me. We had a funeral of course but you weren’t there. I just wish I knew where you were. I hope he left you somewhere in nature

Kelli Dianne Rule (she/her) is a writer and art historian with roots in rural Central Florida. Her work is concerned with the history and effects of colonialism (i.e., poverty, racism, and environmental injustice) in her home state, with stories often told from the perspective of imperfect protagonists. Her work is slated to appear in future editions of Green Hills Literary Lantern, Whale Road Review, Moonday Mag, and JMWW, and has been dramatized on the Creepy podcast.

Image: youtube.com

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