Good Girls Don’t Die – Part One
Good Girls Don’t Die – Part One
By: Jessie Turk
My name is Jenna, and this is the story of how I woke up dead.
I know what you’re thinking, and no, it is not a figure of speech. I literally woke up, buried in a shallow grave, sans a pulse.
Let me explain.
I did not realize I was dead, at least not at first. I was a bit preoccupied by the fact that I woke up, and I was unable to move, or even open my eyes. The cold and dark pressed in on me from all sides, rendering me completely helpless. I’d never considered myself to be claustrophobic before that day, but then again, I had never experienced sensory deprivation to such an extreme. That level of helplessness brought out a type of fear I did not even know existed. I suddenly understood what people meant when they talked about a fight or flight response. In that moment, I was willing to fight the grave itself for my freedom.
Even in my afterlife, some primal part of my brain railed against the walls of my prison screaming, “I don’t want to die!”
Loamy grave dirt flooded into my nose and mouth as I tried to scream for help. That was about when I really started to panic. Gagging, I began to struggle for any tiny bit of movement I could muster, but I barely manage to wiggle a toe. I couldn’t get the leverage I needed to free myself, and in my panic, I couldn’t tell which way was up and which way was down.
Being buried, I had no concept of time. I don’t know how long panic held me in its grip before I finally calmed down enough to think straight. I hadn’t suffocated yet, which was odd. Heck, my chest wasn’t even burning with the need for air.
How bizarre is that?
Regardless of whether I needed air or not, I knew I still had to think of an escape plan. I would go insane if I had to spend even one more minute trapped in that pit with nothing to keep me company but my own thoughts.
I began experimenting by applying pressure at various points in my surroundings. I needed to see if any spots around me had even the slightest bit of give. I needed to find a thin spot where I would have the best chance at breaking through. It was hard to tell, but I was fairly curtain that I was laying on my back. I tested this theory by pressing my limbs forward as hard as I could. Alternating sides, I pressed my arms and legs forward, hoping to loosen the dirt pressing down on me from above. The damp earth above me began to shift ever so slightly. Bit by bit, inch by agonizing inch, I managed to lift my heavy limbs toward the heavens.
My heart soared when I felt my fingertips break the surface. Who would have known that the feeling of cool night air on my bare skin would feel so damn good?
The sight of the finish line gave me renewed energy. I struggled, kicked, and clawed my way through clumps of dirt and damp leaves until my face finally broke the surface. Freedom at last!
I tried to take a deep breath of that sweet, sweet air, but my nose and throat were clogged. I choked and gagged, trying to spit out as much as I could, but that was easier said than done. The dirt in my mouth had leached out all the moisture it could find, turning into a gluey and gritty mess. What I managed to scoop out of my mouth with my fingers looked like black sludge. I think I even saw a worm wiggling in one of the masses. Had there been anything in my stomach, I would have vomited.
As I struggled to pull the rest of my body from the shallow grave, I managed to get a good look at my surroundings. There were trees as far as the eye could see, which – coincidentally – was not all that far. It was the dead of night, and the only source of light was the full harvest moon hanging like a beacon in the inky black sky. There was not a single landmark in sight, and no memory of which direction was home.
I would soon discover that getting home was the least of my concerns. For starters, I was naked, and it took me longer than I care to admit to notice that my clothes were gone. It probably had something to do with the fact that I didn’t feel cold, but I didn’t feel warm either. It dawned on me that I didn’t feel anything.
I placed a hand on my bare, unmoving, chest. I felt no intake of breath, and no heartbeat. I knew then, I should have passed out from asphyxiation long before I pulled myself out of that hole. In fact, I never should have woken up in the first place.
That was the moment I realized that I was dead, and all I could manage to say was, “Well, shit.”
I sat on the forest floor cross legged and buried my face in my hands. I needed to gather my thoughts. I needed to try and think of the last thing I remembered before waking up in my grave. Judging by the method of burial, I got the distinct impression that I did not die a natural death.
Then my ponderings were interrupted by yet another realization. As I massaged my temples with my fingers – trying to will my memories back into existence – I felt an abrupt ridge line where my hair should have been. I gingerly explored the area and, instead of hair, all I could feel was patches of congealed blood over bare bone. I began groping at my head, desperately searching for even a few strands of hair, but it was all gone; skin and all.
“Son of a-!” I shrieked into the still night air. Somewhere in the distance, an animal scurried away, startled by my sudden cry.
Funny, you’d think I would have been angrier about being dead than being scalped, but I had been growing my hair out for years. Once upon a time, my long dark hair hung almost down to my waist. I started growing it out in high school. Painstakingly moisturizing it, combing out the tangles, and trimming the split ends until it had grown long and lustrous. Now, someone had not only cut it, but scalped my corpse, which offended me in a way I can’t even describe. It was the final insult that I simply could not endure.
The floodgates opened, I screamed my indignities into oblivion. I figured there was nobody around to hear me choking and sobbing, but even if there were, I don’t think I would have cared. My voice – hoarse with grave dirt – reverberated off trees, rocks, and the carpet of damp fall leaves. If I was trying to be poetic, I would say that my despair was enough to wake the dead, but once again I am being quite literal. After all, I rose from the grave, and I would soon find out that I was not the only one.
Not more than two feet to my left, a patch of earth began to undulate and shift beneath a pile of dry twigs. The sudden movement startled me out of my grief like a slap to the face. I yelped, scuttling away like a crab across the forest floor. I know I probably should not have been all that surprised. After all, I’d just burst from the ground not a few minutes prior, but cut me some slack. My mind was still coming to terms with my situation, and I was not yet prepared to deal with company.
A foot was the first distinguishable body part which emerged from the second grave, followed by a hand. Fingers tipped with broken acrylic nails clenched and unclenched, grasping desperately at the air.
“Oh shit,” I murmured to myself as I realized what was happening.
I crawled over on all fours, and began to dig. Using my bare hands, I sifted through clumps of soil, trying to free the woman trapped underneath. My own experience rising from the grave was still all too fresh in my mind. The last thing I wanted was to have another person go through the same experience. Thankfully, the second grave seemed to be just as shallow as my own. Only a foot of grave dirt separated this second victim from freedom.
I focused on trying to uncover her head first. She might be dead, but I was sure she would appreciate being able to see. She fell into a fit of coughing, whimpering between each wretch of her stomach, as she tried to dislodge the clods of dirt from her windpipe. I managed to worm my fingers under her neck, so I could help haul her upright into a sitting position. Moist black soil filled with squirming maggots fell out from between her perfectly straight and artificially whitened teeth. She whimpered between wretches as she continued to spit up an ecosystem’s worth of carrion insects.
“That’s it, get it all out,” I said, trying to be reassuring. I gave her a few firm pats on the back, trying to encourage her to spit out as much as she could.
It seems silly, comforting a dead person, as though I could make everything better. How do you treat a traumatized corpse? Still, I know I would have appreciated having someone there for me when I first woke up. Going through that alone had sucked, to say the least.
The other girl was in much the same shape as me. She was completely naked, and the skin of her scalp had been expertly peeled away using a knife. A host of insects crawled across her exposed skull and disappeared into the loose flap of skin behind her ears. It took every ounce of willpower in my body not to gag, and I desperately hoped that the same thing was not happening on the back of my head. I was dreading the thought of ever looking in a mirror again.
“My name is Jenna,” I said as her coughing fits began to slow. “What’s your name?”
Still sitting half in her grave, the girl turned her head and appraised me with a single eye. Her left eye socket was hidden in shadow, but from what I could see it appeared to be swollen shut. Even by the light of the moon, the blotchy black and purple bruises that extended from her forehead to her cheek were painfully apparent. Her one good eye was raccoon-like. Presumably, she’d been wearing some heavy eyeliner before she died. It seems that even high-end waterproof makeup will start to smear after some quality time underground.
She tried to speak, but I suspect that her tongue was likewise covered in grit. What came out was slurred to the point of being unintelligible. She looked stricken when she couldn’t manage to get the words out; almost as if she were about to cry.
“Easy,” I assured her. “Take your time.”
Her jaw worked, and she turned to spit another small mouthful of blackish sludge. Then she took a deep breath, speaking each syllable slowly and with purpose, “Laur-a.”
“Nice to meet you, Laura,” I said with my trademark crooked smile. “Welcome back to the world of the living.”
“What…?” mumbled Laura in bewilderment.
Laura’s eyes gave me a thorough once over. I inwardly winced as I thought about what she would see. A naked twenty-something girl, filthy and naked, with a gruesome bloody gash where her hairline should have been. I saw her eyes linger on the top of my head, going wide with shock.
Slowly, she raised a trembling hand toward the top of her head.
I snatched Laura’s wrist, “I wouldn’t do that if I were you.”
Laura’s lower lip trembled. She didn’t have to see or feel the wound. The look in my eyes told her everything she needed to know.
“Oh God,” she sobbed. “Oh God, why?”
“I’m not sure that God has anything to do with this,” I muttered, half to myself.
I knew from the look on Laura’s face that she was about to have a full-on breakdown. I braced myself for the onslaught of wailing and tears. She needed to vent, and I was not about to stop her.
Just as the first high pitched notes of a scream escaped Laura’s chapped lips, something else caught my eye. A hand burst through the topsoil, sending clumps of hardened dirt flying.
“You’ve got to be kidding me,” I groaned.
Laura paused mid tantrum and stared slack-jawed at the hand waving desperately for help. I could tell what she was thinking. She was thinking that this was a bad dream, and that she would wake up soon. She’d be safe in her bed at home, and not sitting in the middle of the woods next to a dead woman. If only that were true; for all of us.
I crawled over Laura to get to the third grave. The dirt was considerably tougher to dig through using only my fingers. Time and the elements had packed the dirt down until it became a solid barrier. It was a wonder that the woman trapped beneath could move at all. I ended up using a flat rock nearby to help break up the earth into manageable clumps.
Time had taken its toll on the third grave. Even my death dulled senses could not mistake the overwhelming stench of rot which hit me like a wave. I think if I were alive, and my sense of smell were not so degraded, I might have puked. I could practically taste the rancid smell all the way down the length of my throat.
The third girl stirred within the confines of her earthly prison. She tossed and turned as though she were trying to muster up the energy to get out of bed in the morning. She lurched, trying to get her arms under her to sit up, but her elbows wobbled and gave out. She slumped back into the hole, kicking up a tiny cloud of dust.
“Hang on,” I said, trying not to breathe through my nose.
I reached in and gingerly grasped the struggling girl by the shoulders. Her skin was cold and slimy to the touch. The girly part of my brain was screaming for me not to run away screaming, but then I thought… what did I have to be squeamish about at this point? I was dead too, though not quite so far past my expiration date.
“Easy does it,” I said with a grunt as I hooked my hands under her arm pits and heaved.
She was a lot heavier than I anticipated. I hadn’t properly braced myself, so I nearly sent us both tumbling back inside the hole.
I glanced over my shoulder at Laura who was still staring wide-eyed into space, “Hey, give me a hand, will you?”
Laura blinked her one eye at me dumbly, “What?”
“Help. Me.” I repeated slowly. “Come on, I don’t think she can stand on her own.”
At first, she stared at me like I’d grown a second head. Then I witnessed reality sink into her stunned brain. She looked from the form slumped in the third grave, and then back to me with a look of disgust.
“You’re kidding me, right?” was her response.
“Do I look like I am in a kidding mood?” I snapped. “Get up and help me with her, now.”
I used the same tone of voice that I’d employed countless times before on young children. One of the benefits of being a nanny I suppose. I knew how to step in and take control of a situation. Not that I’d ever used the nanny voice on a grown woman before. I didn’t expect it to work the same way that it did on children.
To my surprise, Laura sat up straight at the sound of my voice. She begrudgingly got up out of her own grave, dusted off her legs, and walked over on unsteady legs. She took one arm, I took the other, and together we managed to haul the third girl out into the moonlight.
To say she was in rough shape would be an understatement. I almost feel bad saying that looking at her made me count myself lucky that I was recently deceased. I was no doctor, but if I had to wager a guess, I would say she was at least a few months gone. Her abdomen was bloated and distended, which explained the smell, and patches of her skin was beginning to peel away under our touch. Her face was only barely recognizable as human. Like Laura, she only had one good eye which darted back and forth frantically. Her other eye socket leaked thick yellowish puss down her cheek.
“Nasty,” Laura hissed. I resisted the urge to tell her to look in a mirror.
Our new friend fixed us with a terrified one-eyed stare. I thought she might start screaming, but only a low moan escaped her sagging lips. We would later figure out that she would never be able to speak. Soft tissue, such as the tongue, were among the first to become lunch for grave worms. What was left lolling around inside her mouth was a useless lump of fetid meat; not at all suitable for human speech.
As a result, we never did find out her real name. The tendons in her hand were also so far gone that she didn’t possess the fine motor skills required to write it down for us. We ended up calling her Heather, after the only recognizable plant which had been blooming near our graves. They were about the only living thing around other than trees, and naming her Oak or Maple just didn’t seem poetic. She seemed to like the name well enough. At least, she nodded at me when I asked.
“So, what do we do now?” asked Laura, deferring to my shaky leadership skills.
That was the million-dollar question, wasn’t it?
Now what?
Author’s Story Note
I did not intend for this story to be a two parter, but here we are.
I promised myself that the stories for my blog would not exceed 3000 words. The original intent was to create content which is quick and fun to read. Unfortunately, this one got away from me. Somehow I managed to blow through 3000 words, and I hadn’t even reached the half way point of the plot!
Rather than cut out half my story and sacrifice content, I decided that this would be my two-part Halloween special!
-Jessie T.