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“hey,” em says, speeding down the beltway on the way back from bwi, “what’s the trench like?”
edric nearly chokes on his coffee in the passenger seat. em watches it happen out of the corner of her eye, and doesn’t comment. in the backseat, shaq snorts.
“you’re a real morbid kid, you know that?” he asks.
“i’ve been told,” em says. “by you. several times.”
“just checking.”
“you could ask your parents,” edric points out, shifting his coffee to the cup holder and propping his feet up on the dashboard.
“oh, i did,” em says. she’s quiet for a moment, merging into another lane so she can whip around to get in front of the truck she’s been stuck behind for several miles, then picks up the thread of conversation again. “mom doesn’t really like talking about it, which is fair, and mame gave me a big stack of his old notebooks and a whole thing about doing my own research.”
“passing the buck, brisk,” edric mutters.
“you don’t have to talk about it if you don’t want to,” em says. “i’ve got a pretty big sample size to pull from. i think like half the family has been there at one point or another.”
“some of us were only there for a couple hours, tops,” edric says. he twists in place to look back at shaq, who em can see in the rearview is sprawled across the seats. “babe?”
it’s a hesitant question, inviting him to share only as much as he feels like. em’s not sure the subject is as sensitive as they’re treating it. she’s heard them both joke about the trench before - maybe shaq more so than edric, but still.
“the trench was fine,” shaq says, with a shrug. “i mean - okay, it was more than fine, it was basically home for however many years i was there. like, i met pretty much all my best friends there. and we kinda made our own fun. and people found out over the siesta that they could send us shit by burning it -”
“i found out,” edric cuts in. “i’m people.”
“eds found out that they could send us shit by burning it,” shaq corrects. “so that was cool. we could get groceries and letters and shit. and then briskie came and set up the phone.”
“i know about the phones,” em says. she knows enough about them, anyway, mostly from stories and the notebooks she was given. brisket friendo - her mame - rigged a way for phones in the immaterial plane to dial into a switchboard in the trench, so people could talk to dead blaseball players. it was the sort of thing other players only passed on by word of mouth, as not to clog the lines, but also the sort of thing that made life a lot easier for a lot of people.
“so, yeah, the trench wasn’t so bad,” shaq says. “i liked it.”
“it was kind of creepy.” edric reaches for his coffee again, but wraps his hands around the cup instead of drinking from it. “when i was there, i mean. it’s all underwater, and it’s like this big - i dunno, labyrinth? with these black stone walls, all lit by torches and shit.”
“it was definitely more wet than creepy, babe, we were in the fuckin’ ocean.”
edric inhales through his nose in a way that makes em sense that he and shaq have had this exact argument several times before. “babe -”
“you got desensitized to the creepiness because you were there so long,” em says, aiming to nip the rest of that disagreement in the bud. she doesn’t feel like driving the rest of the way back from the airport with her uncles bickering in the car - because she loves them, but god can they bicker. “right?”
“sure, i guess.” shaq shrugs again. “like i said, it just wasn’t so bad. i mean, it was home.”
***
the next time em asks the question is at an ice cream parlor in ohio.
“hm,” tot says, in response.
“hm yourself,” em says, licking her cone as it threatens to drip onto her fingers. “don’t tell me to ask my parents, i already did. i’m doing a study.”
“for school?”
“for me,” em says. “i’m curious. half of you have been to the trench but nobody really talks about what it was like.”
“the trench was boring,” luis says, between bites of some electric blue flavor that em suspects is cotton candy. she’s learned after twenty years that quite a few of her extended family members don’t need to eat, but some of them prefer it for the simple joy of experiencing flavors. she can understand that.
“the trench was fine,” tot says, and doesn’t elaborate.
luis turns to hir, eyes wide. “only because you didn’t have to wait around to see me! i had to wait for you for years, which was so rude, and there was hardly anything to do down there except knit and talk to people. and you do run out of interesting people eventually!”
“you could have walked out,” tot says, with the very slight lilt to hir voice that emily’s come to recognize as hir joking.
“into the ocean?”
“you were already dead,” tot points out. “you would have survived. probably.”
“what was being incinerated like?” em asks, trying to prod them back on topic. it’s a question she wouldn’t dare ask anyone else, but luis and tot are so cavalier about death that she figures they won’t mind. or they can laugh it off, at least, if they do mind.
the two exchange an inscrutable look.
“i wouldn’t recommend it,” luis says, with a wry little chuckle.
“it hurts,” tot says bluntly.
“only for a second!” luis adds. “unless you’re unstable, of course. but really, it hurts everyone around you more, i think. in the moment it’s - well, it’s the worst pain most people have ever felt, probably, but then -” they snap the fingers of their free hand. “poof. all done. in the trench. have fun wandering around for years and years.”
em grimaces. she gets the feeling she shouldn’t have asked, even if luis and tot seem happy enough to provide an answer. some things might be a bridge too far.
“sorry,” she says.
“oh, don’t be,” luis says. “we’re here now, aren’t we? alive and buying you ice cream. nobody’s got to go back to the trench, apparently, so it doesn’t matter anymore.”
“all’s well that ends with ice cream,” tot agrees, though ze hasn’t even touched the steadily melting scoop in front of hir.
“right,” em says. “sure.”
***
“ask your parents,” whit says, tightening her scarf around her neck and taking a long drag of her cigarette.
“i did.”
“then ask someone else. i don’t want to talk about it.” she glances sidelong at em. “you seeing anybody lately? tell me about that.”
em rolls her eyes. “you told the last guy i dated you were gonna bust his kneecaps if he didn’t get me home by eleven thirty.”
“and i meant it. you were too good for him, anyway.”
***
“grunkle sebastian, what’s the trench like?”
sebastian gives her a wide-eyed look, then looks over her shoulder, like he’s searching for escape routes. em’s managed to corner him at family hanukkah - which she feels bad about, but not that bad.
“uh,” he says. “i don’t - why do you want to know, em?”
“i’m doing a survey,” she says, deadpan in the way that everyone tells her is very much like her mame.
“oh.” sebastian relaxes a little, visibly, though he’s still clinging to the paper plate of latkes in his hand so desperately that it’s bending the edges. “it was - i mean - it wasn’t so bad?”
“people keep saying that.”
“really?” sebastian asks.
“yeah.” em takes a bite of her own latke, speaks through it. “i guess i get that? i mean, it can’t be that scary of an afterlife when you’ve got a bunch of other people there to do stuff with, right? especially once people knew they could send stuff down.”
“right,” sebastian agrees somewhat distantly, eyebrows knitting together.
“but you got sent there three times.”
“right,” sebastian says again. his eyes flick past her a second time, too, probably looking for rescue in the shape of his husband or his sister.
“so i figured - i dunno, maybe you’d have a different take on it?” em asks, hesitant. she hadn’t expected sebastian to be so skittish about this, but it makes a certain kind of sense. it’s likely not something he’s had to think about since the hall opened and the dead poured out of it, back into the immaterial plane.
“it really wasn’t so bad,” sebastian says, with a little sigh. “there was the voice thing - you know about the voice thing -”
“i know you could only speak in morse, and uncle shaq couldn’t swear, and -”
“so there was that. and - things would happen to the living people that we wouldn’t find out about until someone got the word to us, or someone died and told us. it was hard to get news on stuff you cared about unless you had, like, a source. i guess.” sebastian shifts his weight in place. “that’s pretty much it.”
em finishes her latke, and considers.
“do you wish you’d gotten released instead?” she asks.
“i don’t know how to answer that,” sebastian says, which is enough of an answer in and of itself.
***
“you really want to know?” nora asks. she’s the first person to sound absolutely over the moon about this - somehow, em’s not surprised.
em leans up against one of the crowded bookstore’s shelves, hands tucked in her pockets. “i wouldn’t have asked if i didn’t want to know.”
“oh, good,” nora says, clapping her hands together. “i have so many notes!”
“great,” em says. “more notes.”
***
“yo, mini-friendo!”
“hey, uncle logan.”
“heard you were asking people about death and shit.”
“it sounds bad when you say it like that.”
“i calls it like i sees it, little b. you wanna know about the trench?”
“i do, yeah.”
“well, it wasn’t exactly 24-7 party central down there. lotta people caught up about their own deaths, not really living in the moment. i mean, not really living at all, but -”
“i got it.”
“you got it. it’s like, you get real caught up in your own head when you first end up there, and some people don’t ever get outta that. but you gotta mourn and move on, you know?”
“i think so?”
“like, it’s rough, don’t get me wrong. knowing you’re dead and all. but there’s still new people to meet, and you can still make memories. just because you’re dead doesn’t mean you have to be all sad all the time.”
“okay. yeah, that makes sense.”
“life goes on, right? life finds a way. you feel me, little b?”
“yeah. i feel you, uncle logan.”
***
luis turns out to be right, in the end.
it’s the worst pain she’s ever felt, but it only lasts for a few lingering seconds. she’s on the mound, and then she’s not. she’s burning, every inch of her is burning, and then she’s somewhere else. somewhere dark. somewhere musty and damp, a black stone hall lit only by a few flickering torches.
em gets up and dusts herself off. the other figures milling around the hall turn to look at her as she fixes her ponytail, and she looks back at them, setting her mouth in a determined line.
“hi,” she says. “i’m em.”
“do you know where we are?” the player closest to her asks. they’re in a mints uniform. robbie, em thinks - she’s been trying to take note of all the incinerations so far, but the crabs’ schedule has been running her ragged in a way she didn’t expect.
“sure. we’re in the trench.” em glances down the hall, unsurprised to find four statues flanking the far entrance. she’ll have to take a better look at hers later.
“the what?” robbie asks.
“the trench,” em says. “come on. i’ll show you around.”
it might as well be her, she thinks, to help make this place a home again. someone has to.