Open Quicksand

[SmileyMcDeath]

Susan tugged on first one foot, and then the other, but it felt as if her hiking boots were rooted in concrete. Each of her calves was surrounded by circles of goopy grey ooze which pulled up with the resistance of rubber or tar with each tug.
The apparently-solid dry, sandy ground was cracked and buckled for several yards around her, and more goo glittered in the cracks. She realized that what she had taken as dry, stable ground was actually a thin dry crust over the bog beneath.
But just the action of pulling on her feet, as she'd done fruitlessly for the past several minutes, had caused her to sink.

She remembered what she had read about quicksand (was this quicksand though? It didn't seem very...sandy) while taking geology classes in college--she remembered that it was supposed to be impossible for a human to sink all the way under. Beyond that, she remembered that one wasn't supposed to move around, or one would pull oneself too deep to escape. She wasn't sure exactly how that squared with it being impossible for a human to sink. Nor could she remember exactly what you actually *DID* to escape from a pool of quicksand, but it should definitely be possible one way or another provided you had
a rope and a friend handy, or a branch and a friend.

At the moment, however, neither was handy, as she couldn't reach the branches of even the closest tree, and her husband was gone to town to pick up supplies and breakfast for them both (it had been her idea, and right now, she was ready to kick herself for it). And so, Sue had gotten an early start on setting up the trail cameras, and promptly found out that the dry slough near the campsite that they'd selected for the first batch of cameras wasn't so dry after all. At the moment, she was fairly concerned but not TOO worried, as Danny should be back in fairly short order, and he knew more or less where she would be working, and so in the meantime, she would simply remain still and wait. What she did remember about quicksand safety was very clear on that point, after all.

Her pack lay nearby--when she'd first realized she was stuck and sinking, she'd carefully pulled it off and tossed it to what she'd THOUGHT was the shore of the bog. It was now sinking in a little muddy circle of its own (Just HOW fucking big WAS this bog, anyway?)

As long as she remained stationary, the gray muck didn't seem to be rising up her legs very fast. She reached up to swipe the sweat away from her face--it was already hot and the rest of the day promised to be a humid, sweltering mess. She thought of the bottle of Gatorade in her slowly-subsiding pack, and wished longingly that she'd thought to get it out and take a swig before she'd tossed it away. Or even that she'd bothered to take her phone.

****

The quicksand had risen to roughly knee-depth, and now, she couldn't move her feet at all. She couldn't seem to feel a bottom yet, either. She checked her watch impatiently--she'd been here for a couple of hours already.

And she nearly went weak with relief as she heard Danny's shout. "SUE? SUUUUUEE! WHERE ARE YOU?"

"DANNY! DAAAAAAAAANNNNNYYYYYYY!" she yelled back. 'I'M OVER HERE NEAR THE MARSH!" She hated the way her voice sounded to her own ears--she wasn't THAT afraid, was she? "HURRY! I'M STUCK!"

After seemingly forever, Danny came trotting out of the trees, and stopped about twenty yard away, on the hill at the edge of the slough. "How did you--oh shit."

"Don't come any closer--I'm not sure exactly where the edge of this starts," she said, holding out her hands in a "warding off" motion.

He tested the ground cautiously near the base of the hill. "The topo map said there were soapholes around here," he said thoughtfully. "They move around. I guess we found the quicksand." He looked up at her, and asked, "Why the hell didn't you call me? Where's your cell?"

"I left the phone back at camp. I didn't think I was going to need it," she said ruefully. "I thought I'd get an early start and set up the nearest batch of cameras, and then be back at camp before you got back with the food." She gestured at the mudhole imprisoning her legs. "I didn't think this was going to happen. I mean, we're in the middle of a drought."

"Soapholes are most dangerous in a drought. That's when they form a solid crust. And If you had known you would have needed it, you wouldn't have needed to carry the phone in the first place," he said archly, and then sighed. "Well, I guess that's water under the bridge. We need to see about getting you out of there. I don't suppose you have a rope in your pack, do you?"

"Yeah, I do." she pointed off to the left, and he followed her finger. Her pack was almost completely gone, swallowed up by the sticky mud. "Getting to it is going to be a little difficult. It looked solid before I threw the pack over there."

"Uhh...yeah," he said slowly. "Okay, then...plan B. I'll go back to the truck and get another rope, then come back and we'll see about pulling you out. Try not to move around, okay?" he turned around and jogged back up the trail

"Yeah, I'll stick around here, I guess," she sighed. "Not like I can do much else."

****

His first attempt to pull her out was unsuccessful--it had taken Danny forever to find ground solid enough to get relatively close to her, close enough to throw her one end of the rope, which she'd looped around her waist. Apparently, when she had broken through the solid crust on the bog, the entire thing had begun to crack and destabilize. An hour spent cursing, tugging, pulling at her trapped legs, and trying to break the vaccuum seal around her limbs with a stick had moved her a couple of feet closer to the solid patch, but had also caused her to sink in to her hips. The quicksand was holding onto her with a force that was positively uncanny, and showed no signs of ever wanting to let go. He'd tried to call out for help on his own cell phone, but, unfortunately, there didn't seem to be any reception in this area, rendering his point about her cell phone moot.

"I think we're making progress," he said, sitting cross-legged during one of their breaks. He'd brought back Gatorade and had tossed a quart bottle out to her, and in the blazing midday heat it had tasted like ambrosia. Both of them were wringing wet with sweat and filthy. "At least you're closer to solid ground."

"Look, we're getting nowhere fast. Maybe you should go back into town and fetch some help," said Sue.

"That means leaving you here, alone," he said.

"I was fine this morning for a couple of hours. I'm not sinking fast at all if I don't move," she replied, feigning a confidence that she really didn't feel. "Anyway, the fire department gets calls like this all the time, right? They've got specialized equipment to get people out of situations like this. Like longer ropes. Something, I don't know."

He stood up and tossed his empty Gatorade bottle aside. "Fine. Let me try one more time to get you out. And, if I don't get you out before I wear out again, I'll give you a board or a swim-floatie or something to hold onto, then I'll go back up to the camp and drive back into town and bring back some help. Or at least somewhere where I can get a signal, and I can call 911. Deal?"

She reluctantly agreed, and he grabbed his end of the rope and looped it several times around his arm until the slack was gone. He dug his feet into the ground, and pulled as hard as he could, grunting with the strain. She learned forward into the rope, letting him pull her forward while trying to free her trapped legs. He'd pull a bit of slack free and wrap the loop around his hands, again and again. She felt herself moving forward incrementally.

Was it just her,or was the mud around her feet actually finally loosening a bit? She felt it becoming more liquid and squishy, instead of rubbery and stiff, but it still felt as if she were about to be ripped in two--

--and then the nylon rope snapped.

Danny fell backwards and hit the ground, not with a thud, but with a wet "BLUP," and Sue saw that what they had both assumed was solid ground had now begun to crack and buckle--it had been nothing more than an unusually sturdy part of the same crust which had given way under her own weight. Daniel had broken through it by trying to pull her out...and now, he was also sitting mired in the bog. He tried to crawl back to the solid part of the crust, but the movements only sank him deeper.

"Danny? DANNY! STOP MOVING!"

He froze as they shared a look of horror.

****


He had been talking nonstop to keep from panicking, but he had finally fallen silent, and that had begun to worry her. Perhaps the mud was thinner or more yielding where Danny had fallen in--he seemed to be sinking much faster than she was, even though both of them were making a studied effort to keep still. While Sue was only about waist deep, Danny had settled into the quicksand to his chest. And there was no true solid ground for yards around them--over the last hour, the crust had continued to crack and melt into the gray ooze beneath it. They'd periodically screamed for help, but there was obviously no one around to hear.

"Try your cell phone again?" she said. He carefully pulled it out of his shirt pocket and opened it, and swore. Even that small movement caused the bog around him to shift a bit, and he sank in a little more.

"It's like an artesian well," Danny said, trying to keep his mind off of their dire predicament by talking through and analyzing their situation. "There's water coming up under pressure beneath a deposit of clay, sand and salt. And it moves around. It's here one year, somewhere else the next..."

The mud bubbled. He looked startled...and then frightened, as the mud continued to bubble around him.

"Danny? What's wrong"

"I-I think I'm starting to sink faster. M-maybe I hit a gas deposit or something.." The quicksand was already up to his shoulders and rising higher. "I guess maybe I should have gone for help when you said, huh?" He laughed hysterically. "I guess maybe no one ever told this bog you're not supposed to be able to sink all the way under in quicksand-"

"Just stay calm--don't move--" Sue looked around wildly, trying to think of some way to help, anything, but there was nothing.

"I d-don't think it's going to make any d-difference...if I move or not" he gasped out, his eyes frantic. He tilted his head back--the mud was already touching his jawline. "Oh God help me--"

"SOMEONE HELP! PLEASE! SOMEONE, ANYONE! HEEEEEEELP! HEEEEEEEEEEEEELP!" Sue screamed at the top of her lungs, hoping against hope that someone would finally hear.

"Please...oh my god Sue...he--...."

The sticky mud bubbled and rolled for nearly a minute as Danny struggled beneath, before slowly falling still.

After half a minute or so, a single bubble slowly rose to the surface and burst with a flatulent, sludgy *blup.".

She looked away from the spot where Daniel had disappeared and squeezed her eyes shut, her tears leaving glistening trails through the spatters of mud. She fought to keep her tears from becoming wracking sobs.

In spite of herself, her chest hitched. In spite of the baking heat, the mud was like ice; she thought she could feel the chill of the mud creeping up her body infinitesimally higher and faster with the movement.

She couldn't move. She had to remain completely still. If she moved, she'd sink faster. Danny wouldn't have wanted her to move. Danny would have wanted her to remain still, to keep from moving so someone would have time to find her...

...Danny was somewhere under the bog only a few feet away, his body beginning to cool as it slowly settled towards the bottom, with his lungs packing with quicksand until they finally burst...

She looked up at the uncaring sky and shrieked and shrieked as if she would never stop.


****

When the sun had risen and burned off the morning mists, the quicksand had been just beneath her armpits.

Sue had remained motionless all through the night, and on into the day, with even the warmth of the sun's rays unable to drive away the bone-deep chill which had soaked into her body from the bog. Her body had forced her to doze; each time, she had jerked back to consciousness from dreams of Daniel screaming her name, or choking as his face disappeared beneath the mud.

By the middle of the afternoon on her second day in the bog, the quicksand had slowly risen in spite of her immobility, finally engulfing her breasts in a gluey grip and swallowing up her outstretched arms. The mire ringed her shoulders now like a set of obscenely glistening sucking grey lips, and squeezed her chest with every labored breath; Sue had spent the first half of the day screaming for help until her throat was raw, and now each time she took a breath, she could feel the burning pain as her exhausted diaphragm fought the vicelike pressure of the shifting, glutinous mud around her. What of her skin which was exposed had burned red in the sun.

Maybe she deserved this, whispered a tiny voice in the back of her mind. She tried to beat it back.

Maybe she deserved it because Danny had died, trying to save her. Because if she had been more careful, they could have been back at camp. Or at home and safe now.

It didn't seem to matter whether she consciously moved or not--even the motion of her slow, shallow breathing was eventually going to suck her under.

She licked her dry, cracked lips and tried to work some moisture into her parched mouth. For a brief interval, hunger had warred with thirst for supremacy, but in the end, thirst had won out. A brief shower had passed earlier that morning; she'd tilted her head back with her mouth open in hopes of catching rainwater, but the few drops she had been able to intercept had done nothing to soothe her raging thirst. The surface of the quicksand bog was wet and glistening where it had been churned up, but there was no water. She wondered when she would eventually become thirsty enough for her body to force her to swallow a mouthful of gritty sludge.

She choked back the urge to weep again.

Dammit, she wasn't going to cry. She whispered it to herself like a mantra. Daniel wouldn't have wanted her to cry. He would have wanted her to hold together until help got here...

...if help got here.

If it ever got here.

She looked at the mire around her and fought a shudder.

****

The sun was setting amidst cloud, and the trees cast long shadows across the quicksand now pooling an inch or so below her chin.

In the distance, she could hear the buzz of cicadas, and the call of a whippoorwill. A distant roll of thunder came to her, along with a breeze that smelled faintly of ozone and rain. An evening thunderstorm was brewing.

She took shallow breaths, tiny sips of air to minimize her movement. In spite of the pain in her chest from the pressure, and the cramps in her cold, numb limbs from prolonged immobility, her senses were honed to a razor's edge; she drank in every sound, every scent, everything around her. She licked her sunburned lips and coughed wretchedly; her lips and tongue were swelling, the inside of her mouth as dry as sandpaper. Her eyes burned from a combination of fatigue and grief, but no tears could come. She prayed nonstop now, silently, her voice long since gone. She prayed for someone to find her, prayed for God to send a miracle, prayed just to wake up from this nightmare, at home in bed, with Danny beside her. She'd talk about her nightmare, and they'd laugh about it together. They'd laugh...

*This isn't a dream,* said the part of her mind that was still relentlessly, mercilessly sane. *Just you. You and the quicksand and Danny down below. No one else around for miles.*

"Shut up," she whispered brokenly.

*Let's see, rough back of the envelope calculation here...you've lost, oh, a bit more than six inches of height in the last six hours, and it seems to be pretty constant, whether you move or not...*

"Shut up, shut up, shut up," she mumbled aloud--or at least as much as her parched throat and mouth would allow.

*Sunset at this time of year is around 7:30, give or a take a minute, so...probably somewhere between 2 and 3 in the AM you're going to slide under.*

"SHUT--*" her whisper, dry and coarse as dead leaves, broke up into coughs. Her throat burned like fire--the cool of the mud around it felt almost welcome, and with dull hysteria, Sue realized her coughing fit had cost her a little more ground. Her traitorous mind continued, relentlessly.

*It's time to face facts. You've been here for two days, and you won't see a third. No one is coming. No one knows you're missing yet, or where to find you even if they did. This place is remote, miles from anywhere. Even if someone was looking for you right now, they'd never find you in the dark before you go under.*

She opened her mouth to scream at the voice to stop, but found she couldn't make a sound. And this time, the tears DID come, cutting through the grime on her cheeks, as it finally sank in that the voice was right.

Help wasn't coming. No one was coming. No one was going to find her before she drowned in the bog, smothering in this slop just like Danny had, trying to save her.

Silently, hopelessly, she wept.

****

The last of the daylight was gone now, and she had turned her face up to keep it above the surface of the bog. She could see stars above her...but one by one, they were going out as the clouds moved in.

They were beautiful, and she drank them in like sweet wine. They were the most beautiful things she had ever seen. They were the last things she would ever see.

*Not your fault, you know.*

She could hear the thunder, a little closer now. The clouds were going to come and cover the stars, and then even those lights would be denied her, forever.

"I'm so sorry." It wasn't even a whisper.

*None of this is your fault,* said the voice in her mind, louder now, and this new one sounded like Danny. She wondered again if she was insane, and decided she just didn't really care anymore.

Her lips moved slightly, though no sound came forth. "Forgive me...please."

*There's nothing to forgive.*

She didn't have the strength or the breath left to argue. It continued.

*Some people are just unlucky. It just happens. It doesn't mean anything other than that we live in a world where bad things happen to good people.*

*It makes a lot more sense to me now. It will to you, too. I love you kiddo. I still do.*

And it fell silent finally, and she was alone.

Sue stared upwards helplessly into the hungry darkness above her for who knew how long, licking at her parched lips and taking small sips of air, waiting for the end to come, before it finally came to her that she still had control over one last thing.

Her arms were cold and painfully numb from prolonged immobility, sunk a foot under the surface of the doughy mud, but she concentrated, and felt them respond sluggishly. She focused all of her strength and tugged rythmically at her limbs, and, the quicksand resisting with a grip like steel, they began slowly move. The mire began to loosen slightly around them as they did.

She pushed down on her cramping, burning arms, as if trying to push down against the force of the bog. She actually felt herself rising up slightly against the heavy, gluey suction, but at the same time, the quicksand around her was becoming more liquid. Flatulent bubbles of gas rose to the surface and popped around her face, and she coughed at the rank smell.

A soft cool wind was blowing, carrying the scent of rain with it, rustling the grass on top of the bog.

"God forgive me," she whispered into the darkness. The smooth, thick mud moved around her body, its touch now strangely sensual. If she closed her eyes, she could almost imagine that it was Danny's hands moving across her body, that the soft wind was his voice whispering into her ear. As best as she could, she pointed her toes downward, towards the bottom of the bog somewhere far below.

And then she pulled her arms up, as if swimming in reverse, pulling herself downward. The thinning mud slopped over her face, metallic and foul. She closed her eyes. She pulled down again, and the quicksand finally stopped resisting as she willing gave herself to it. She gulped down one last breath as the engulfing mud slowly rolled over her face in a cool doughy sheet, sealing out air and sound, all except the rush of the bubbly mud in her ears and the sound of her racing heart. She felt it around her, slightly gritty against her skin as she very slowly moved downwards through it.
It would be over soon.

She framed Danny's face in her mind and focused all of her attention down on it. Instead of the dark, she saw the field of flowers beside her family's house, with Danny in the middle of it, and she walked towards him, smiling...

*I love you.*

Presently her breath exploded out of her, bubbling up. Her body thrashed, trying frantically to claw its way back to the surface, but she was only dimly aware of it.

And finally, after her body couldn't resist the urge to breathe anymore, it forced her to inhale, and only cold gritty mud sluiced in.

Unseen by anyone, the quicksand roiled violently and bubbled for several moments before finally falling flat and still again.

[sinkwithme]

Wow! Thanks for sharing this. Great descriptions and imagery. Very arousing.

[quagmire_uk]

Dark and imaginative!

I usually prefer a happy ending... but I probably wouldn't find quicksand so interesting if it always had a happy ending. What was especially exciting was how it seemed like it'll have a happy ending until half way through and things suddenly went downhill. Did a great job of defying the usual expectations.

[PM2K]

Beyond awesome! Thanks for posting this!

[snake]

I actually requested a story like this a while back. Thanks for writing it! Though it would have been better for Danny to sink a bit slower and have more banter with Sue before he goes under.

[water_bug_62208]

Wonderful story! I enjoyed the hopelessness of Sue's sticky situation. I enjoyed the fact she was so solidly stuck that only a Triple A tow truck could've saved her. I also liked the extremely long sink process before she finally went under.

The impossibility of escape of a gal from thick quicksand or mud inspite of help, and, a long, drawn-out sink to submergence, are key, at least to me, for an outstanding Quicksand Story or Video. Your descriptions of "stuck" for Sue as she slowly sank to her doom added so much to your story.

Thanks for sharing!

[SmileyMcDeath]

Thanks you all for your kind comments. I'm glad you liked it!

[Viridian]

I remember the "Open Water" challenge idea. This is a very well written story that captures the spirit and mood very well. Thank you for sharing!

[AK47]

Wow. This is probably my favorite story, since I keep coming back to it.