A Bid for Life

By Comfrey Sanders

Alpine Fellowship 2021 – Writing Prize Runner-up

It’s early afternoon the day he comes out of the swamp. The woman who lives on the edge of the vast reedy wasteland has turned away from the window in one moment of distraction and when she turns back, the swamp man is slowly but resolutely dragging his body up over the grass. The river that curls around the swamp rises and falls depending on the rainfall that year and the water moves slowly, pooling finally, at the mouth of the valley almost to the sea.

She lives alone. The house was intended for two but her partner left one day for work and never came back. As though she has not noticed this abrupt absence, the woman continues to live like nothing has changed. In the evening she sits only on her side of the couch, and at night she lies quite still, with his side of the bed still ready-made and empty. In the closet are his shirts and shoes, and on the nightstand, the pills he took for sleep and anxiety. Lying on her back she stares at the ceiling and listens to the night sounds coming in through the mosquito net covering the open window. Sometimes she thinks something is prowling up and down outside, and sometimes it sounds as though the thing has crawled into the roof and is tearing up the timber with its teeth to make a place to sleep.

One night, before he disappeared, she had a nightmare. In her dream she was lying in the bed exactly as the sheets would be, exactly as the shadows would fall and the breath of the man lying beside her would exhale in a soft, sandy way. Just waking in the dark, she turned her head to a sound. A skittering, scuffling sound of another man crawling towards her at great speed across the floor on his hands and knees. Eyes and mouth wide, he rushed at her in the bed and she flailed away from him, letting out a blood-curdling scream. The scream came out of her mouth for real and the man asleep beside her bolted up the wall in panic, his heart thumping out of his chest like a wild thing.

Since that night she hasn’t dreamed at all. Not even on the night she ate dinner for the first time alone.

Now she watches through the window as the swamp man pauses his dragging. He has left a wide, mud-slip behind him, the reeds parted and bent over as he makes his way towards the small, lit house on the shore.

She has her hands in the kitchen sink, the dirty water lapping at her sleeves. In one hand she grips a cup and in the other a cloth, paused in a constant wiping and re-wiping. Bubbles gone, she can’t recall how long she’s been standing there, except for the lonely drip of the sink tap onto her wrist. Before, the leak was something to be looked at. But now, the drip keeps time slipping by.

From her vantage point at the window she can see that he has stopped moving, lying on his front with the side of his face pressed into the short, thick grass. From this distance she can’t tell if he’s breathing or has quietly died.

A magpie who’s been hanging around since the leaves started falling hops from foot to foot on the branch sticking out above the man’s head. As the days got colder, the bird started coming around more and more, diving from tree to tree, ground to roof. Now she sails down to land on his back, sticking her beak into the folds of his neck and pulling on his rotting clothes. The woman reaches for the plug and lets the water run out; it swirls in a tight circle and then disappears with a ripping sound. The magpie takes flight. The man doesn’t move.

Hours pass. Long, sliding hours where the light slips in its ephemeral dance across the walls and over the table. The woman watches the clock on the wall folding time onto itself, and when she looks out the window again a mist has collected, hovering above the water, clinging to the drunken, low-hanging trees. The light is turning as it comes down, cold pink and blue. The geese that nest downriver fly over in a perfect V, letting out alarm calls as they come.

The woman goes to the bedroom and, turning on the bedside lamp, places it in the window. The light is one of those cold bulbs, flattening everything around it. That night a white moon sits just above the hills. The woman lies perfectly still, and in the window the bulb throws a shard of light out onto the lawn and over the body of the swamp man.

It’s early the next morning when the woman is woken by a fearful sound. She lies for a minute, unsure if the sound came from her sleep. There is silence and grey new light, and then again the sound. An urgent, painful sound. Slowly, she pulls back the blanket, and in her thin slip she pads outside.

The front door leads out onto a driveway and away through the dense bush, eventually meeting the main road that goes down to the beach. Now, the trees still deep night-green, bowing in over the house and whispering, the woman steps down from the porch. Lying on its back on the gravel is a bird; hard to tell what kind due to its chest having been busted open. Its head is cocked dangerously to one side and its beak is wide open, panting in and out. The woman stands motionless over it as it lets out its vulnerable cry.

Then, coming out of a reverie, she pulls off her slip and, using it to cover her hands, scoops up the bird. Somehow it is still alive, with its organs exposed to the air like ripping open a pomegranate—slick, dark.

When she comes back into the house, the swamp man is standing in the kitchen. Earthworms and beetles flounder in the carpet. In his wake he’s left a thick swamp trail which has crept up to the foundations of the house, eating the lawn as it comes. The sound of the bird is suddenly deafening in this small, flimsy room. The smell of the swamp has crept inside with the man.

His face has a funny shape to it.

A maybe-she-recognises-him-but-then-again-maybe-not shape.

A have-we-met-before…? blankness.

A just-a-friend-of-a-friend vagueness.

He holds out a watery hand for the bird.

At first she doesn’t give it to him. In fact, she tightens her grip on the thing, clutching it close to her bare chest. Unnoticed, the bird starts to seep through her slip and onto her hands, one of its splayed feet opening and closing ever so slightly.

The swamp man takes a step towards her with his palm outstretched.

“Why this one?” Her voice sounds strained to her own ears. It’s been so long since she’s heard it.

Again he gestures. “It’s not got long.”

Suddenly the bird convulses in her hands, beating its wings in a final bid for life, singing its dawn song at an alarming pitch. Frightened, the woman thrusts it away from her. And as it seems almost about to take flight, the swamp man snatches it out of the air, opens his mouth wider than he should—and the bird is gone as if he’s magicked it away.

In the silence that follows, the woman is left holding nothing but the bloody slip. Slowly the man crouches down on the rug and, curling his body around himself, falls into a fitful slumber. The woman dresses in the slip, watching as the swamp leaks out of him, slowly covering the floor and rising like the tide, filling the house from the inside. To look at her you might think that she was the one wounded, her slip clotted on her belly and the stain reaching up her chest and down between her legs, as though she has been sliced through.

Now, with the man almost fully submerged, she gets down on her hands and knees in the mud, prizes open his jaws with both hands and climbs inside, one limb at a time. The darkness closes over her head and the swamp man shifts like a baby in his sleep.

About the author:

Comfrey Sanders

Comfrey Sanders is a 28-year-old writer and actor based in Auckland, New Zealand. While training as an actor at Toi Whakaari: New Zealand Drama School, Comfrey wrote and directed a trilogy of short films: Here’s What I Remember (2013), Part 2 (2014), and By the Roots of My Hair Some God Got Hold of Me (2014).

Since graduating with a Bachelor of Performing Arts, Comfrey has performed in theatres across New Zealand and abroad. She has co-written and performed works with A Slightly Isolated Dog Theatre Company, and Red Leap Theatre Company, and these productions have gone on to have several years of development followed by multiple seasons across New Zealand, Australia, and Europe.

In 2017, she co-wrote and co-directed an adaptation of Sophocles’ Antigone for Toi Whakaari: New Zealand Drama School, and in 2018, her epic poem SEVEN GATES was published in Atlas - the literary medical journal. Comfrey has a passion for art house and independent cinema. She’s currently working on a feature-length screenplay, and a collection of short stories.