Sun Hunger

by Matt Rigg

Before her final breath, Amia prays for light. For cold sand on the lakeshore bordering her family’s estate squishing between her toes. For wind whipping along the river, transforming her loose hair into wildfire. For mist clinging to lapping waves after morning dew. For Iris, the pale, straw-maned girl who’d stayed at their guest house over the summer. For her amaranth lips and piercing, wild eyes. For her father’s reassuring arms, her mother’s warm smile.

She yearns for what is lost to her, fights against encroaching darkness, claws at her cheeks to stop the ravens thrumming in her skull; bites her lip, sputters blood as she begs for one last glimpse of the sun’s shimmering dance on the lake…

Until Amia drowns in the blackness.

It starts with a gasp, then a whimper. Wet sighs become ragged whispers. Squeaking inhalations turn to wheezing until finally Amia takes full, unobstructed breaths. Had the consumption left her?

The weight of darkness pins her down like chains, so she thrashes at the pine lid inches from her face, cracking her forehead and fists against it in frenzied panic. Dirt trickles in from the splintered surface.

Amia halts, clenching her fists until her palms turn wet. In silence, the faint trickle of running water is clangorous. The family cemetery overlooks the river’s mouth that feeds her beloved lake.

With lucid precision, she strikes the cover once, twice, thrice. It’s thin, cheap, and the soil above is pliable. Her head and fists work in unison to smash an opening to crawl into, but she hasn’t prepared for the rush of sodden earth.

As the taste of autumnal rot fills her mouth, Amia swims up through the dirt, imagining she’s holding her breath underwater until a shadowy vignette threatens to consume her; but she breaks through the surface, with the promise of sun on her face, and summer air on her shoulders.

Clawing herself out of a grave, Amia feels only frigid moonlight.

The babbling flow guides her to the riverbank. She spits soil, cups river water to flush her nose and eyes. When she finally opens them, the moonlight sears her reflection into focus.

Buried in a dressing gown. Blood paints the front like a scarlet kaleidoscope. Amia’s face vibrates as if the water disturbed only that part of her reflection.

The girl’s tormented keening slashes the midnight silence.

Candlelight flickers in front of her family home at the crest of the hill. “Fathe—” Amia croaks, her voice as broken as the rest of her. “Father, the consumption has spared me!” she calls, snuffing out tears. The glowing wisp freezes, then darts toward her.

His whiskered face blooms into view, limned in gold; the mere sight of him fills her heart with peace. A loud thunder crash follows an explosion of light. She’s hit, thrown tumbling backwards into the river.

The icy waters envelop her to the dirge of her father sobbing. A crimson stream trails from her chest as she sinks deeper.

Amia awakens to the sound of the river. Blades of dusty moonlight trickle in through the patched coffin lid, only this time she is bound by chains with a solid iron lock strapped to her chest. She twists and flails and shrieks in a rage of betrayal.

The voices of men silence her. They are muffled through the pine.

Amia pulls her hands between the chains and tugs at the lock. It doesn’t budge. “Help me, please,” she says, her voice hoarse. “There’s been a mistake…”

They throw the lid open. They set the coffin upon the riverbed, tilted such that she spies the surface where the river feeds the lake glowing in the approaching dawn.

Her father and uncle block her view and converse with a third man as though she’s not present. Amia yanks at the chains, bending a link. Her strength surprises the men; they backpedal, crossing their chests.

“Why have you done this?” Amia tears another link from the chain, her voice booming in distorted anguish. “What have I done to deserve such torment?” Crack. Another chainlink set free.

Amia begins to rise, but her father stomps her chest with a riding boot.

“With haste,” her father says, trembling.

A priest with round glasses and a wiry stubble—the man who’d baptized her—steps into view. He recites verses from the holy book and ignores her pleas. The sky behind him burns yellow.

She’d hoped to see the sun rise over the lake once more. The desire was all-consuming, liberating; it thrust her wandering mind back to childhood when she would splash with her cousins on muggy summer days, then dry out on the shore by the willow trees. How they would try to swim upriver against the current, only to be dragged back into the lake, dying of laughter. How she spent summer nights embracing Iris, who was always deathly cold, on the shore, where they’d watch clouds pass over the moon between stolen glances at her perfect, porcelain features or whispered secrets with her fingers entangled in Iris’s golden hair.

Amia explodes, pushing the men aside, then rolls over the coffin wall onto the riverbed where she scrabbles towards the mouth as if clawing the last few inches to the gates of Heaven. She stands and lurches, one strained stride after the next, until she’s restrained and kicked down to her knees.

The sun peeks above the trees, dappling the lake with dancing flames, when something sharp pierces between her ribs.

Amia glances down. A wooden spike protrudes from her chest.

In the light of the sun, she cannot move, cannot feel more than its warmth as she’s dragged up the riverbank back into her coffin, praying for the nightmare to end as men she’s known all her life entomb her in pounds of iron chain until her skin bulges and the prison of emptiness returns.

Matt Rigg is a writer of strange and intimate fantasy fiction. He is the lead narrative and level designer at Siege Camp Games in Toronto, Ontario. When not gushing about professional wrestling on Twitter, Matt hides away in his cave, getting lost in vibrant worlds or writing his webcomic, “Sonder”.