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Horror
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Their mouths are wide in a silent protestation, orbits turned to a sky they haven't been able to see for over a decade. Some of the skulls lie far from any remnants of a body, a few still containing an old ax, a machete, a bullet. His fingers slowly brush away the damp soil, revealing a small skeleton with a radial fracture on the sternum. Gingerly, he presses down on the empty sockets of a dull-brown mandible, staring at the slots where teeth had once been and, in some cases, still remain. He rocks back on the balls of his feet, his fingers sliding from the jaw in a slow, uncontrolled action.
Ten years-old.
Jesus.
Rising, he looks around. A few other anthropologists are above, one eating a sandwich, his eyes focused on nothing. Behind him is a crowd of silent spectators, all waiting to know if a relative is one of the Disappeared in the pit. There are two scientists talking to six people, their clothes spotted and dirty, their hair ragged and dusted brown. In their hands are clipboards, and they occasionally write something down.
His eyes lower, and he sits back on his haunches again, focusing on the skeleton sticking half out of the muddy earth.
Ten years-old.
His eyes close.
The only sounds around him are the slow scrapes of trowels, and the brushing of hands against dirt. There is no talking, the only communication slight hand gestures in this mournful place.
The air smells of death, but it is more mellow than the kind found with bodies seething with maggots. It's sour, old and bitter. It sticks to the roof of his mouth and the inside of his nostrils. But after one has worked in it for long hours, the smell itself is no longer recognizable from the surrounding air. It simply becomes a reality.
He inhales.
He's a victim of his own rationality, he knows. He's always been the freak, the cold-hearted judge. He has rarely missed a question, has been hated for his young age and intelligence. Always the odd-one out. He has found his haven and skill in anthropology and has found a place where he's accepted for both who he is and the work he does.
But despite what the common opinion of him is, he feels things. Like his mentor, he sees faces with skulls, injuries with cracked bones, pain with twisted ligaments. He sees fractures in a small skeleton's sternum and knows what it means. But unlike her, he has not adapted to the horrors of his work, and he is unable to confide in anyone but himself.
He exhales, and rises once more.
Ten years-old with a bullet through the heart and he can do nothing but tell what happened.
Sighing, Zack Addy walks away to grab an evidence bag and continue his work.
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