Page 21 of Fatally Yours
“You don’t have a cock, so you’ll be fine and dandy fantasizing about fucking psychos while we’re rotting away behind bars, taking it up the ass!” he roared. I thought she flinched for a moment, but she was fearless and lunged towards him, looking like he would rip out his eyes with her black-painted nails. Wes shot out and grabbed her again, and pressed her head to his chest while she sobbed. Her cries echoed against him, and her fingers were gripping his shirt.
“Stop, Mandy, baby, please,” he said in a hushed tone.
“She doesn’t deserve this!” she screamed, throwing herself at Devin again. Her teeth were bared like a rabid animal. “You never deserved her!” Before she could attack him again, Scott let the shovel clatter to the ground and smacked her across the cheek. Once more, she retreated to Wes, blubbering.
“Not a fucking word about this, okay?” Devin grabbed her by the collar,and I heard the fabric rip ever so slightly. “Or you’ll end up like her.” The implications of that statement were vast and horrifying, and I wondered if August wasn’t the only one with homicide on his mind.
That was far, even for Devin, but the stress of the situation was getting to all of them. Even though my throat couldn’t tighten, I swore I felt like it was. It was like I was witnessing my life crumble before my clouded, dead eyes. I couldn’t cry, I couldn’t scream. There was nothing I could do but helplessly watch in horror.
Scott returned to digging the grave, and after wiping sweat from his brow, he finished up the place that would be my home for eternity. If only they knew I could see and hear everything. They all stared down at the hole in the dirt. Mandy’s eyes were glazed over as she wiped away another tear.
“What the fuck happened to us?” she muttered under her breath. “I wish August never died.”
I couldn’t agree more.
After they accepted what they would do, Devin turned to me with a shiver as he realized my eyes had been uncovered. I could only imagine the glare of death shading my face. It was a familiar look—something I saw as August took his last breath, and when he came back to me once again on that stormy night. You never forget the glassy stare of a corpse, even reanimated ones.
He pulled the sheet over my eyes again with his lip curled and hoisted me up. Once again, I could still feel his warmth, and it was then that I realized precisely how cold death was. And it would only get worse from there when I was in the ground. Not in a cemetery, without a gravestone, left to rot and be forgotten. A missing person forever.
My mind began to race as I was dropped into the hole they had dug. A scream wanted to rip from my throat, but nothing came out, just like before. It wasn’t fair that I was still conscious. August put me here, and I wasn’t sure I could forgive him.
It was only when they began to pile soil atop my limp body that the terror really set in. The sheet was pressed against my face, and I feared suffocation beneath it or being smothered by the dirt, but there was no breath in my lungs. And what did you do with those who no longer breathed? You buriedthem, just as my friends were doing to me. My friends were fuckingburying me.
The moonlight slipping through the thin fabric slowly faded as more soil piled atop me. Soon, there was nothing but darkness. And moments after that, I felt a strange weight on top of me. Dirt. Worms. Insects. My body would feed the plants, the trees, and the creatures above because the hole wasn’t that deep, and I could still hear the remnants of their voices through the pressure of the earth.
“Can we at least give her a grave marker or something?” Mandy said.
“No, you dumb bitch. Someone will find her if we put a fucking cross or some shit here,” Devin said. I pictured her slumping into Wes again while her tears and snot dampened his shirt for the millionth time this evening.
“Dude, stop being so mean to her. We’re all fucking stressed out,” Wes said. His hand would be in her hair, patting her head in a poor attempt to comfort her. But on the inside, he was breaking. “But he’s right, Mandy. We can’t.”
“What about that boulder?” she pressed. After a moment of silence and the scuffing of footsteps, something scraped along the dirt, confirming they rolled whatever they found over me. It was right over my head as the pressure slightly increased on my skull from the weight.
“Are you happy now?” Devin huffed. At that moment, I swore to myself that I would kick his ass once I was done with August.
“No,” Mandy said. “My two closest friends are dead. I don’t think I’ll ever be happy again.”
X
There was little noise except the subtle hum that came with the stillness of the night. I imagined the moon bathing me in its glorious embrace, but no light came through the cover of dirt. There was no doubt in my mind about what was happening now—this was hell.
Not in the traditional sense with fire and brimstone, but hell, where it’s cold and lonely, and you’re left alone to ponder everything you never did in life. Hell, where the love of your life came back from the dead only to murder you. Hell, where your friends were falling apart and decided to bury your somehow still-conscious remains out of sheer desperation.
Unfeeling,relentless hell.
Some time passed, but I wasn’t sure exactly how long. It couldn’t have been more than a handful of hours, but it felt like an eternity when my mouth was smothered by blood-stained linen, and soil was piled atop me. Agony was too kind of a description.
There were sloppy, heavy footsteps above me, making me want to cry out for them to help. Once again, my voice betrayed me. Whoever it was, their shoes were scraping along the dirt right above my head. Just another confirmation of where I was. Help was just a breath away, and I could do nothing but lie here incapacitated and listen. I could almost reach out and touch it had I not been fucking dead.
The feet were over the end of my grave now, and the dirt pressed into my body, confirming that there was indeed someone lurking about. They weren’t silent like an animal. No, their uneven steps were much too haphazard to be natural.
I wondered if it was one of my friends coming to dig me up and confess to their crime of concealing my corpse. I didn’t want them to go to prison, but this punishment was much too cruel for the benign life I lived. All would be forgiven if they just returned and pulled me out now.
There was a muttering voice above me. I couldn’t make out words, but I knew that tone. It had an intimate familiarity to it, and if I had veins that were working, rage would be coursing through them, and my chest would be pounding with anger.
It was August. There was no doubt in my mind that he returned for me. But why? Was this another way to cause me anguish because of the mediocre life I lived? Another way to smite me and strike me down for my sins? To laugh at my demise after I betrayed him?
This is hell.
