Swampland by Olivia Demac

Photo by Karl Callwood on Unsplash

The swamp was the best place to watch wading birds, and wading birds were the only birds I watched. Sully didn’t like the swamp, but he drove us there anyway. He was going to propose. Otherwise, he wouldn’t waste the trip to some place only I liked. Sully was quieter than normal, but I chalked it up to nerves. Proposing was a big deal.  He didn’t have to worry. Even though he hated swamps I’d say yes. Marriage was about compromise. ​

We followed faded signs to a boardwalk connecting two mudflats. I looked for the soft glow of alligator eyes between gaps in the planks. Sully walked with his hands in his pocket, protecting the ring from falling into the water. Cattails and spider lilies crept up and twisted around the splintering wood. Glass glass beer bottles glistened in the shallow water. I wanted to fish them out, but Sully stopped me.

“Marci,” Sully said. “If you fall in the water, you’re on your own.” The water would give me a bacterial infection if it touched my skin, he said.

“If you fall in the water, I’ll jump in after you,” I said. Sully needed me. He didn’t know how to swim.

Sully didn’t say anything because he saw a dead bird. It was a great egret. Its body was washed up on the mudflat but its head floated on the water. Turtles surfaced and the bird’s neck swayed in the ripples. Maggots were feasting on its flesh underneath a thinning layer of feathers. Sunlight caught on the water and the remains of the bird morphed into a passing cloud, and I couldn’t tell them apart.

“Are you okay?” Sully asked. ​

“I’m okay.” The bile in my stomach burned the back of my throat. The air was stale and sweat dripped down my forehead. ​

Sully knelt and untied his shoe. He could have picked a better spot. I didn’t want to think of a rotting carcass every time I held the diamond to the sky, but it was nice of him to try and cheer me up. Sully wouldn’t look me in the eye.

“I met someone else,” he said. There were other great egrets off in the distance, but cicadas drowned out their low crocks.

“I did too,” I said. It was a lie. I only wanted him. The wind blew and the stench from the decomposing carcass drifted up and wrapped itself around Sully. I took small breaths through my mouth, but I tasted the rotten flesh on my tongue. I gagged.

Sully walked to the end of the boardwalk and crushed tall blades of cordgrass underneath his feet. If he stayed in the same place too long, the soles of his shoes would leave an imprint. I stood next to him, and sank into the ground, the algae-laden water pooling around the outsoles of my shoes. I shoved Sully and he broke the surface of the water, distorting the reflections of cypress and tupelo trees. ​

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Olivia Demac was born in Worcester, Massachusetts. She is a graduate student at the University of New Orleans and is currently working towards earning her MFA in creative writing. She received a BA in English from Nicholls State university in 2021.

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