The worst kind of time capsule

Thunk. The shovel’s progress through the dirt ceases. It’s replaced by two soft hands scrabbling at the dirt. A finger nail bends, breaks, leaving a trail of blood. Undaunted by this, dirt is flung away to reveal a braided tan handle. The body belonging to the hands heaves itself out of the hole and then yanks and wiggles the handle. Years of decomposing unsurprisingly has affected it. One end breaks, leaving only one end of the rope barely hanging on to the metal surface it is attached to. The hands swipe sweaty hair falling out its ponytail backwards in a frustrated motion and the figure sits up.

“Crap.” Amanda politely curses at the box. Keeping her image squeaky clean even in private. Old Amanda would have leveled a few F-bombs at her nail breaking and at the audacity of this box to not be in the first place she dug, but this is new Amanda. New Amanda gets her hair and nails done every Wednesday. New Amanda has matching pantsuits and color coded lacy underwear and a subscription to every newspaper article and social media influencer culturally relevant. She yanks her pink scrunchie out of her hair, letting her once perfect curls frizz against her shoulders. Her box flashlight splutters at her side. She idly smacks it, reilluminating the holes that surround her.

A least a dozen holes speckled amongst the graveyard. A forest hides most of it from the town’s view. No modern road big enough for cars to zoom down. You have to fight your way through a path behind the town’s abandoned chapel. The new church was rebuilt across the street with a nicer mausoleum for the trend of cremation. If you can make it past there and if the bridge across the river wasn’t washed away in spring floods, it’s a five minute walk. A walk that Amanda made a few hundred times in her youth. It’s her first time in years coming back here since she moved away and graduated with her bachelors degree, since she worked her way up through tedious fetch-the-coffee and answer-the-phone jobs, to jobs that led her working with brands that matter, with people who mattered and people who wanted her to lead them, to lead the city. It’s a walk she thought she’d never have to make again, a walk that she thought she buried from history, a history she paid fifty thousand g’s to bury four years ago when her campaign manager tactfully murmured over espresso martinis, “Of course you don’t have anything to hide Mandy dear, but really, everyone has something they rather never get mentioned, and they are really quite discreet, you don’t even have to tell me what it is or even if you call him, but I’ll leave their card in your purse….” , a walk whose path she could never forget even though years of EMDR buzzing in therapy had eased some of the aching parts of memory away.

A walk Amanda never made alone before.

She’s been at this for about three hours. Quite stupid, she was in her youth. Trusting that it would be buried, that she didn’t need to be present, that she could escape her past and move on. For not the first time she shoves aside the panicked inner voice, ‘what if it's not here, what if they lied, what if it’s buried somewhere else, what if they have already dug it up, what if they already have it.’ She’s encountered a few casket tops in her digging tonight. Only one bone piece and that one she quickly reburied. She isn’t a grave robber. Amanda quite approves of cremation. She wants her body to be made into diamonds, to be worn by someone cute and newly famous to award shows around their neck. So her body can live forever as a statement piece. She doesn’t have any family to visit her body anyways. She’s surrounded by headstones commemorating loved ones. James Smith, 1897-1926, beloved husband and father. Thompsons, husband and wife, buried together. Willow Smuck, her cookie recipe finally revealed underneath. Did she roll in her grave when she realised that her rivals knew her secret? Did they bring the cookies to her grave to eat when they came to mind her grave? Amanda obverts her eyes from the younger markings. The tombstones with angels for the babies and children, tragically their lives cut short. It makes her uncomfortable to look at them, therapy never changed that. Of course, she never did anything wrong. Three different therapists all came to the same conclusion with her. Someone as sensitive and empathetic as herself was vulnerable to being taken advantage of by bad people.

Amanda balls her hair up into a bun on top of her head. Never mind the dirt that’s worked its way into the bun, at least her hair is finally off her neck and out of her eyes. Her arms ache but new energy seeps back into them as she takes in that tan rope. She may not have buried this box, but Amanda wove that rope herself. She knows she’s found what she’s looking for. Now how to get it out without breaking it or her back is the next course of action. With this box’

She picks up the shovel and wedges it around the edge of the box. Excitement aids her aching muscles as Amanda shoves the earth away around each four sides, revealing more of the dull metal surface. A few more shovels fulls and she’s able to scrape and pull with her hands, ignoring the stains on her tan pantsuit. Amanda yanks with all her might and back on her heels with it she goes. The box she only saw in her nightmares now lay in her hands. Amanda felt a chill run up her spine as she took in the ornate spirals across the grey chest lid, the tiny keyhole. With this in her possession, those people won’t be able to hurt her again.

Amanda pulls a key out of where rests on her neckline, the chain scraping against her collar’s buttons. Up down it works the keyhole. Perfect fit, but years of disuse makes her have to lean her body weight onto it to click. The lid raises. The box falls from her hands as Amanda seizes its contents.

A notebook the size of a baby’s palm. A polaroid picture with a red thumbprint on its corner. A long dead disconnected flip phone. Relief surges through her body as she opens and counts. It’s all here.

It’ll take at least 2 hours to put her hair back to right. Another hour before that to trek back to the place she parked her car, drive thirty minutes to where the helicopter company that donated to her campaign will fly her back to the city. Amanda finally allows herself to smile. She’s still ahead of schedule. She doesn’t need to be at her campaign party until six pm where the final tally of votes will cement her election as the first female mayor. She’ll have her signature lipstick back in place with a flute of champagne in hand. It’s what she deserves. What she’s earned. Finally, her secret is secure.

“Now what would my favorite mayoral candidate be doing in a graveyard at two o’clock in the morning?”

Amanda barely manages not to jump, biting her cheek to hold back a scream. She knows better than to turn around. Not when she’s clutching the very thing she knows the voice wants.

“Oh.” Amanda says to the voice, as she stuffs the contents of what she is holding into her bra. “Just looking for a time capsule my friends and I buried.”

“Nostalgic at this hour?”

“I didn’t know anyone else knew about this place.”

“You don’t recognize me?”

With a smoothing of her blouse to make sure her hiding place isn’t unnaturally bulging, Amanda turned around. A man stood about five feet away from her, hands at his sides. Preppy cardigan sweater with khakis. Hiking Boots. His eyes gleamed in the moonlight. Amanda recognized him from the town's biggest news station. The sun’s 6 o'clock anchor. A popular figure in town, she didn’t pay attention to him until he started reporting on her campaign on his personal blog. The one that was most vehemently against her candidacy despite his bosses reassurances that they’d deal with him in regards to neutrality and defamation of character, the one whom she’d sent a cease and desist to, the one who oddly reminded her of someone whose appearance was lost to her memory, who looked familiar to the person in the polaroid.

“Are you happy to see me or is that a gun I see?” Amanda chirped at him. She brushed dirt off her pants.

He steps towards her. Jerkily, mouth moving slowly. “You really don’t remember who I am?”

“You’re that reporter who Jett Hu reassured me that he is reprimanding severely for behavior.” Amanda resists the urge to cross her arms over her chest, that is a defensive posture that implies she has something to hide. A self soothing gesture. She settles with a hand on her hip. Smooths the corner of her hair as she adds. “This will just be another addition to my case. I’ll be surprised if you still have a job by the time I am elected.”

“Behavior? You mean doing my job of informing the public of the truth.”

“Without proof. Words without proof are not truth, just assumptions. Now if you stop walking towards me in that threatening way, I will be on my way home.” Confidence is what will get her out this one. Amanda stepped nimbly out of the hole she dug. The gun followed her movement.

“Going home without filling these holes, it’s very on brand for you Tish.”

Amanda swallowed. How could he… no one knew that name. Only one person knows that name. But that person looks nothing like this man. Could they have aged this way? “My name is Amanda Horne. Is that your big reveal story you had planned to release tomorrow?”

“Your entire life everyone cleaned up your messes for you. Always poor Tish. Sweet innocent Tish. I bought into that for years. Following you around like your personal lackey, I would have done anything for you. I did anything for you.”

He’s within grabbing distance from her now. Amanda could see his eyes clearly. Wide eyed and red rimmed. The gloves on his hands shaking with the gun. The desperately mussed trying to follow the trend style of hair he’s fighting the urge not to touch, his free hand keeps coming up and stopping short of touching it. Higher register for a male voice. He’d had to have gone through training to get that low clipped professional news anchor tones. It’s then that Amanda recognized him. Kicked herself for not recognizing him sooner. She should have.

“Brutus.”

A tight smile rewarded her memory. “That’s right. I guess I was right. My former self was wrong in believing that we were best friends.”

“We were best friends, Brutus. You go by Brandon now on the news, I am Amanda. We both are different people now.”

“Did you find the capsule?”

“You betrayed me, Brutus. I’ve spent the whole night digging with no box uncovered.”

“You lie. I did exactly what you told me to do. You are the one who betrayed me. We were supposed to run away together. We were supposed to get in your blue bug and make a life overseas. Instead I bury that cursed box and I get arrested on suspicion and placed on trial."

“You never actually served. They never could prove anything. You got acquitted and moved on with life. You’re overreacting.”

“Did you ever look up what happened to the family? Did you ever look me up? Did you ever feel any remorse for what we did?”

“We did nothing. You did something, Brutus. It was your fingerprints everywhere. You took the money out. You made the calls.”

“Everything I did was at your bidding! That was your money, that was your camera, that was your handwriting in the book. Amanda, a person died!”

“None of that was my fault. They wanted it. You know they wanted it, Brutus. You wanted it.”

“We weren’t the ones who should have decided their fate!”

“They paid for it. The Spanish government just decided that they could assist a person's death, Sweden has been doing it for years. There was nothing wrong with what we allegedly did. Just because things went wrong doesn’t mean what we did was wrong.”

“You are acting so high and mighty because you didn’t actually pull the trigger. You didn’t see the look in their eyes right beforehand. They said wait, Amanda. They changed their minds at the very last second. And you didn’t let me stop!”

“You keep acting like they didn’t choose this. They paid for the service, they signed the contract. You took payment for it. We all knew they had no future. It was a mercy. We were ahead of our time. I’m sure that we would be applauded now.”

“If you really think what we did was right, why did you skip town? Why are you back all these years later, searching for the evidence?”

“I am simply protecting myself from people who would twist the truth.”

“What people Amanda. People like me?”

“It doesn’t matter. The evidence is gone, Brutus. We are both free.”

“We are never going to be free Amanda. If there is no evidence to prosecute you legally, I will bring justice myself.” The gun was directly in front of Amanda's eyes now, she was staring down the black abyss.

“Okay Brutus.” Amanda said. “If killing me helps you sleep at night.”

“Why.” Brutus said. “Why are you not afraid!” The gun shook.

Amanda shrugged. “Too much botox to show fear anymore I’m afraid.”

Then Brutus points the gun at his own head.

“I can’t live with this anymore.” He cried out. “What we did is killing me! How can you be okay with this!”

Amanada jumped at his sudden motion. Now she watched him, surprise turning into an emotion she doesn’t know the name for, an emotion she thought she’d never ever feel again.

“Brutus,” She soothes. Amanda placed a hand on his cheek. She felt a wet droplet hit it. “I feel the same way.”

More tears fall from his eyes. “You do?”

“Yes.”

“When I buried the capsule Amanda, did you know how many missed calls there were? How many text messages?” His voice shook.

She swallowed.

“I opened the thread with her password. She had texted her best friend right before. Saying goodbye. Her friend kept asking where she was, that she mattered. Did you know that the friend killed herself a few months later?”

She shook her head softly. “You’re right Brutus.”

His eyes flickered. “I am?”

“In fact, I’ll die too. We both can take ourselves out.” She pulled the small glock out of her pocket, the one she’d been waiting with bated breath to use on him. His eyes widened when he saw it, breath coming out in longer pants. She placed it against her own temple, locking eyes with his. “The world will be better without us with it.”

He nods shakily. Amanda smiled. “Let’s count together. On three. You go first.”

“One.” He whispered.

Amanda clicked the safety off. “Two.”

“Three.” His finger squeezed the trigger.

BANG!

Brutus falls instantly. It’s not like the movies. No long drawn out scene of stumbling or monologues. He tumbles head first into the hole Amanda dug, his head thunking on the chest inside. His knees sprawl askew on the ground beside it. Amanda lowers her gun from her temple, looking down at him quietly.

The fear and relief have finally broken out of her. Amanda giggles, holding her sides, her body shaking with relief. “Thank God!” Amanda said out loud. She never really believed in one before, but it was clear who he favored in life. Stupid stupid Brutus was always so emotional. She holds the only proof of what she’s done. Half the work of burying him is already done for her. He’s always been braver than her. Brutus’s career would have been destroyed with the revelation. Really she was protecting him too. Did his poverty make him feel that way? Amanda made a mental note to unpack the effects of her class on her mental health in the next therapy session.

With shaking hands, she takes a lighter and the papers out of her bra. It takes a few clicks for a fire to appear. She tosses them all down into the hole and watches with satisfaction as the fire laps at his clothes, as the paper turns to dark ash. Smashes the flip phone in the hole. Wipes her hands and makes the long trek back to her car.

Poor Amanda. She doesn’t see the trail camera perched at the edge of the forest. Four years of politics and all the newspaper subscriptions did not prepare her for the world of blackmail. Her adrenaline didn’t alert her to how robotic Brutus’s movements were. If she stuck around long enough, she would have seen the plastic melt from under the clothes and the wires sparking. Maybe she would have seen the real Brutus step out from behind the trees. Real Brutus, who thanks God for his own reasons. Real Brutus reburied the capsule after uploading the contents to the cloud. His expose piece would release in a few hours. Real Brutus spent his life savings putting this plan into action. He would have left it alone if he knew she felt any remorse for what they’d done. If she didn’t keep climbing, reaching for more power. But in the end, they both got what they came for.