Natural Causes
Orgininally Written for musemuggers 09/04/2004
Prompt #32 - A picture of a church
597 words
Natural Causes
Lisa woke with a low moan and a turbulent feeling in the pit of her stomach. She licked her lips and felt peeling skin and the stretched dryness of underlying new growth. She rolled her thick slug like tongue over her teeth trying to lick away the slime. It didn't work.
She took a deep experimental breath and shuddered as sharp shooting pains ran through her lungs and down the sides of her body. That wasn't right. With great effort she pulled her arms from their crossed position over her chest and felt her sides for outward signs of the pain; but she found none.
She opened her eyes and a sharp fleck of sleep crust worked its way under her eyelid. It scraped across the membrane of her eyeball, causing her eyes to water in an effort to wash out the offending speck, and giving her the desperate urge to rub her eyes. She lifted her arm slowly, trying to raise it to her face, but it caught on something smooth and silky backed by a hard surface.
She blinked in the pitch dark, ignoring the sharp pain in her eyeball, and felt the obstructing surface with her scrabbling fingertips. Some kind of sheer fabric. Probably satin or, more likely, polyester. She rapped her knuckles on the hard surface and was rewarded with the knowledge the she was trapped by wood. Satin covered wood? A coffin.
Panic rose up in her throat; disguised as acid bile. She swallowed hard and began to thump on the wooden lid--she assumed it was a lid--of the coffin. They could not have buried her yet. She was alive after all. She didn't remember dying. Someone would hear her banging and let her out. They must.
She thumped and scraped and yelled and screamed until the air in the coffin became thick and close and she could scream no more. She fought to breathe, taking in huge gulps of air; eyes wide but seeing nothing in the engulfing darkness. Her body could not be sated.
She took one last deep breath and choked with a shiver. The last sound she heard was a reedy rattle from her own lips and she lay still, eyes wide and still unseeing. The speck of sleep in her eyes floating out on a single tear, which washed down her face until it came to rest in the strands of her elaborately dressed hair.
Her hands, unable to fall to her sides, stayed pressed against the coffin lid. A droplet of blood fell from her fingers and landed without sound on the silk wrappings of her body.
Six feet away an old unhappy man patted his shovel on the dirt as he levelled the surface of the grave. He wiped his brow and sighed; this rain had made this job more of an effort than usual. Wet clumps of dirt were such a pain. He dropped the shovel into the barrow at his side and walked away; enjoying the stretching ache in his back as he stood straight and tall.
Watching him as he passed by a tall handsome man smiled. His golden hair tied back from his face in a loose ponytail; he plunged his hands deep into the pockets of his charcoal grey overcoat and approached the grave. Rain ran over his cheeks masking his lack of tears. He thought of Lisa LeVesconte and her deep desire to be buried unmarred by embalming fluid and death paint. Natural in death as she had always been in life.
Or so he'd told them.
Prompt #32 - A picture of a church
597 words
Natural Causes
Lisa woke with a low moan and a turbulent feeling in the pit of her stomach. She licked her lips and felt peeling skin and the stretched dryness of underlying new growth. She rolled her thick slug like tongue over her teeth trying to lick away the slime. It didn't work.
She took a deep experimental breath and shuddered as sharp shooting pains ran through her lungs and down the sides of her body. That wasn't right. With great effort she pulled her arms from their crossed position over her chest and felt her sides for outward signs of the pain; but she found none.
She opened her eyes and a sharp fleck of sleep crust worked its way under her eyelid. It scraped across the membrane of her eyeball, causing her eyes to water in an effort to wash out the offending speck, and giving her the desperate urge to rub her eyes. She lifted her arm slowly, trying to raise it to her face, but it caught on something smooth and silky backed by a hard surface.
She blinked in the pitch dark, ignoring the sharp pain in her eyeball, and felt the obstructing surface with her scrabbling fingertips. Some kind of sheer fabric. Probably satin or, more likely, polyester. She rapped her knuckles on the hard surface and was rewarded with the knowledge the she was trapped by wood. Satin covered wood? A coffin.
Panic rose up in her throat; disguised as acid bile. She swallowed hard and began to thump on the wooden lid--she assumed it was a lid--of the coffin. They could not have buried her yet. She was alive after all. She didn't remember dying. Someone would hear her banging and let her out. They must.
She thumped and scraped and yelled and screamed until the air in the coffin became thick and close and she could scream no more. She fought to breathe, taking in huge gulps of air; eyes wide but seeing nothing in the engulfing darkness. Her body could not be sated.
She took one last deep breath and choked with a shiver. The last sound she heard was a reedy rattle from her own lips and she lay still, eyes wide and still unseeing. The speck of sleep in her eyes floating out on a single tear, which washed down her face until it came to rest in the strands of her elaborately dressed hair.
Her hands, unable to fall to her sides, stayed pressed against the coffin lid. A droplet of blood fell from her fingers and landed without sound on the silk wrappings of her body.
Six feet away an old unhappy man patted his shovel on the dirt as he levelled the surface of the grave. He wiped his brow and sighed; this rain had made this job more of an effort than usual. Wet clumps of dirt were such a pain. He dropped the shovel into the barrow at his side and walked away; enjoying the stretching ache in his back as he stood straight and tall.
Watching him as he passed by a tall handsome man smiled. His golden hair tied back from his face in a loose ponytail; he plunged his hands deep into the pockets of his charcoal grey overcoat and approached the grave. Rain ran over his cheeks masking his lack of tears. He thought of Lisa LeVesconte and her deep desire to be buried unmarred by embalming fluid and death paint. Natural in death as she had always been in life.
Or so he'd told them.