Graveyard Shift

by M.L. Rio

He jiggled his leg, but it only climbed faster. He snapped and grabbed the rat to fling it off, but it squealed like a piglet and bit at his fingers, and the crunch of the shovel suddenly stopped. The gravedigger straightened up. Tuck sat still as a stone, hands closed fast around the struggling rat, squeezing its tiny head in his fist to stifle the squealing. It gnawed and scratched against his grip, and he would have screamed if not for Edie, who’d stuffed her loose glove in his mouth. He ground his teeth into the leather. The gravedigger’s head turned again—this way and that. Listening. Hearing nothing but the nocturnal rustlings of the Anchorite’s backyard. The breeze through the dead oak leaves, the occasional uncanny titter of the screech owls that lived in the tree trunk. The distant guttural noise of car engines on Azalea Street. He lowered

Great tension