Recessing

The problem required a professional’s verification. The sheriff was insistent. Several safety-yellow, hydraulic brutes rolled over their garden. The cesspool cover was removed, ripe sewage tainting the air. A crew of five men took turns precariously balancing on the edge of the hole, shining lights and poking downward with poles. Last week’s moaning continued; sad, whalish, inhuman grousing. She presented now only as a plump, half-submerged, dark brown mass, strung between walls the way cheese pulls from hot pizza. But Gladys was a ward of the state and her sentence had not included the neighbors she’d wronged switching to vegan.