Lakebottom Secrets

October 9th, 1923. A rerun of the last-

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October 10th, 1923. She had told herself they would lie buried under the water forever. She had told herself the lake would be her confidant and savior from shame and misery by swallowing her secrets. She had told herself she would be fine.

She was wrong.

Later, as she walked around town, at a radio store. “We interrupt your broadcast of the 1923 World Series in Baseball for the weather.” A brief moment of static fuzz. “We’re predicting clear skies and pleasant warmth for the foreseeable future! If you’ve a mind to enjoy your beautiful state, now’s the time to do it!” For the first time in years, she built herself a picnic and went. She enjoyed the sun and the sounds of the very same lake. She couldn’t swim, so she didn’t try. She just enjoyed the warm weather and the breeze’s caress.

By the next month, she hadn’t said anything more than small talk. Long ago, her big secret had forced her to move to this small California town where she knew no one and could know no one. She knew only her secrets–now at the bottom of the lake. She visited the lake often to let her heart remember what she had cast into the lake. The big secret could stay there. The little secrets would cling to her heart for a while longer. The first gasps of winter rubbed her skin like little desiccating fingers.

By the fifth month, an arid, chilly gust ruffled her shin-length black skirt. She pulled her dun woolen coat tighter around herself. This coat was big and long, and loose. Perfect for hiding a little secret. She refused to hide any such thing anymore. She was an honest woman now. She did as she pleased and apologized to no one. She walked to the bar quickly and took a seat. She ordered an old fashioned. A charming-looking man a few stools down took notice of her. She ignored him and kept drinking. He sat next to her and tried to flirt. She noticed him and flirted back. Later, in a dark room he’d paid for to have this affair, she could not be aroused. She simply couldn’t. He did nothing for her. She was dry.

By the ninth month, the height of summer reigned. She visited the lake for the first time in months. A creeping dread cracked open in her soul. The water was lower. Much lower. She couldn’t remember the last time it had rained. She couldn’t remember any snow over the warm winter. Her secretless suburban dream was evaporating around her.

She panicked. She ran to her car and drove home as fast as she could. She was pulled over. She’d met this policeman before. He was dirty. He was a bad cop in the traditional way. Corrupt and corruptible. “Officer! So nice to see you again!” She beamed. She batted her eyes even as her heart threatened to crumble into dust. “I’m so very sorry for speeding. Are you sure there’s no way I could avoid any trouble with the big… strong… law? I know! My house is just around the corner, and you must get so hot on patrol. Why don’t you… come in for a drink?” She enticed him with a lascivious smile that succubae could hope to match. Her soul wavered like a mirage. She traded her body for immunity. She flowed like a river. She hated herself every moment for it. She despised every drop and ounce of her lust.

By the eleventh month, she broke. No clouds had darkened the sky, and no absolution was coming. It was only a slow and agonizing wait until her secrets were bare for all to see. There was nothing she could do. She couldn’t swim. She couldn’t move her secrets. Buried there in the banks of the lake as they were. The big one and the three little ones. The secrets wouldn’t be easily recognized, but she’d left something damning with them. She’d left something that would lead them right to her. These secrets were born from her own naïveté. A romantic girlhood wish she’d thought granted.

She was wrong.

Abuse and cruelty followed the wedding. Screaming and shouting and crying. Broken bottles and bruised skin. He moved them to California to hide her from her mortician father. He would sweet-talk her, he would dust saccharine sugar onto her heart, and she would crave every last bit. She would lie to herself and tell herself that that was the real him. That it was the illegal drink that made him violent.  Then he would leave and come back, and he would be aflame with rage. She would hide, but he would find her. She encased her soul in ice, numbing herself to the world.

Then came the little secrets. She hadn’t wanted them, but he forbid contraception. “Against the will of God.” He’d said. She tried to deny her body to him, but every time he would overpower her. As time went on, his vile seed took hold, and she bore three children. She lied to herself and said that his offspring would be a wake-up call. He would stop drinking for their sake since he hadn’t for hers.

Yet again, she was wrong.

He kept drinking, and he kept being violent. It wasn’t long before his violence turned toward the children. They had spent their whole lives being afraid of their father. She threw herself between the monster and their children every time, and every time he beat her. From within the frozen cage around her heart, she despised this monster. She despised everything about him. She despised everything he had done to ruin her life. She despised everything that reminded her of him. She despised her own children but defended them nonetheless. Animal instinct forced her battered body to block his blows.

October 9th, 1923. A rerun of the last ten years. He went to hit the child who was wailing from hunger and sadness. She stood in the way. He hit her in the head and floored her. The ice around her soul began to melt. Her psychotic fury was white hot, and the ice melted. Her rage vaporized the ice as quickly as it melted. The sudden rush was too much for her, and she blacked out. When she came to her senses, she was covered in the blood of her secrets. All four were secrets now. Even to herself.

She drew the curtains and began preparations. She threw the bodies into bags and punctured the stomachs so they wouldn’t bloat and float. She stripped and threw her bloodied clothes and wedding ring in too. The stench of death filled her home. She opened a window a sliver. The smell heated as soon as it left the house and rose above the prying noses of her neighbors. That night she loaded her secrets into the car and buried them in the thicket-ridden shore of the lake. Later she returned and scrubbed and scrubbed and scrubbed. She scrubbed just shy of making her own hands bleed. She bleached and scrubbed until no sign remained of her secrets.

The big secret had been a laborer, per diem. He was one of many faces that turned up, did the work, and left. No one would miss him. The little secrets were truants, and their school had given up on them. No one would come looking for her secrets. She had told herself they would lie buried under the water forever.

She was wrong, and now, after a year of drought, she knew it.

She knew then that the time for secrecy was over. Those secrets would haunt her until she died. She isolated herself from the world, hoping the insanity would pass. It only worsened, and she could not bear the impending truth. The last vestiges of her humanity were drawn out of her by the cloying heat in her closed-up home. Curtains were drawn, and doors were locked. The house was a hot box, a sauna with no reprieve. She sweated, and she rocked herself between waking and unconsciousness. She left only for food. Her money was running out anyway. She hadn’t thought to work.

By the fourteenth month, she lost even her instinct for survival and drove to the lake. She stripped bare under the torrid sun. The thirsty stares of men drank in her quiet beauty. The harder eyes of married women loathed her and scolded their husbands. All was a desert but the cool and quenching waters of the lake. She walked into the water to where she had buried her secrets. As the last parched gasp of air left her lungs, she took the bags holding her secrets and placed them on top of herself, keeping her body wrapped in the lake bed’s soothing embrace.  The watchers on the shore thought her bold—or mad—for publicly going for a swim in the nude. They knew her to be mad when she refused to surface.

Investigators would later recover the bodies. The detectives deduced what happened. The newspapers abounded with facts and speculation. Then, soon after, she and her secrets were forgotten.

Content Advisory: This story deals with psychologically heavy subject matter, including domestic violence, sexual violence, mental illness, and harm to innocents.

If you, or someone you know, is experiencing domestic violence, call your nation’s Domestic Violence Hotline.
The link above brings you to a Wikipedia article listing domestic violence hotlines by country.

Only use this if you are using a computer the abuser cannot access.

Internet usage cannot be entirely hidden, but deleting your search history can buy time.

You are not alone. There is help out there. Anyone can be a victim of domestic violence, but nobody should be.