The Oneshot Collective
The Grave
This is the story of a little boy. This boy was very ordinary, painfully ordinary in fact. He did what he was told, when he was told. He never complained or talked back. He was such the good boy in his father’s eyes. But mother knew better. She knew of the wrong doings of the fruit of her loins. Things that old fool refused to believe. But mother would fix that. No more would her little boy be such a secretive, sneaky, sly little thing. She would take care of her foolish husband, the mate that was not a mate. She would take care of her little boy. After all, that is what mother’s do. They take care of their families.
Always.
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"Help...help...SOMEBODY HELP!" You scream but its useless. No one will come to save you, you know this but still you run and raise immortal hell. You run and run until something makes contact with your forehead...something solid and cold.
You wake up feeling groggy with a splitting headache. Hand on your head you pull yourself into a sitting position and look around and find all you can see the blackness that is the inside of your eyelids. You try and try to pry open your eyelids but something is holding them shut. Another strange thing, you seem to be crying uncontrollably. Why are you crying? Why won't your eyes open and more importantly: where are you? The tears coming down your face in torrents feel hot and thick. You lift your hand to wipe away your tears and feel something out of place. Tiny little knots of thread are binding your eyelids shut.
You let out a moan, half fear half nauseated, only to find that your lips also feel prey to the needle and thread. Your breathing is coming in short desperate gasps, or would except for the fact that your lips are as immobile as your eyelids. 'God, oh God what the hell is going on?!?' Your pounding heart does nothing to quell your fear, but your mind is doing that for you. Slowing down your thoughts you try to feel out your surroundings, you feel nothing but damp earth beneath and around you. Slowly realization begins to settle in, this is a final resting place. A grave, your grave if you don't find a way out of here.
You try to roll over and are met with a sharp pain in your side, you must have hurt yourself when you blacked out. It's as simple as that, but that does not mean that the pain is anywhere near bearable. You let out another moan, this time in agony but yet again are met with sewn shut lips. You hear a dull thud somewhere near your head. Who knows it could help you in some way. So you feel around hoping to find it and it not be something of your imagination.
Minutes seem to stretch on for hours on end until finally a sharp point makes it presence know to your ever searching palm. You pick it up carefully. Almost seeing with your hands you feel its curved shape the sharp point. It feels like ivory or bone, either way you don't care. Pulling yourself up in a sitting position as carefully as one would handle a newborn babe, as to not cause yourself more pain than necessary, you prepare.
Taking several deep breaths to steady your shaking hand you raise the pointed object to your left eye and ever so carefully you cut each tiny strand. Minutes drag by, how could anyone stitch things this efficiently? Finally after what you guess to be ten minutes maybe more who knows, your left eye is free! You pay no nevermind to your surroundings or to the sounds masked by your beating heart and raise the object to your lips and cut them a bit faster and more violently than you did you eye.
The point makes several new cuts on your parched lips. You breathe deeply for the first time in what seems like hours and lean your head against the grave wall and shut your left eye while the right remains tightly sewn shut and rest for a moment. You raise the object once again but finally see it for what it really is: a human rib.
Your heart begins pounding once more as you look down to the source of pain in your side, finding the gash showing off the broken stump of white that was your rib. Beneath that, things that should always remain in the warm dark of your body are kissed by the night air. You can see your stomach very clearly in all its pink dirt encrusted glory. You mean to cry out but stop when you hear a wet sounding plop and feel something wet land on your forehead. The source of the moisture you pick up, it feels cold and wet as it sounded to your shaking hand. The source of all this is your severed tongue.
After a few seconds of horrified silence you hear slow sluggish footsteps, you would get up and look to see who or what it is but you're too petrified to move. Finally the footsteps stop at the edge of the grave, you open your eyes and see an old hunched, frail looking old woman. Recognition kicks into place but you dare not say a word.
"Did you have a nice rest?" The old woman asks. "Of course you did, until you had to come running into this place. I told you never to come here. But you did and now you must be punished, like your grandparents before you." She finally turns around and you see dried blood caked on her hands and face. You watch as she raises an ancient notched and dull looking axe.
Horror creeps slowly through your veins as you realize what mother is going to do to you for coming into her secret place. Brother and sister, aunt and uncle, grandmother and grandfather, daddy. All of them victims of her delusions of black magick and self adoration.
You can only watch as the ancient axe swings and makes contact with your neck. It only cuts to the bone and you can only lie there and die mother laughing and saying one last thing to you.
"Goodnight sweet child." Then all goes red, then black...
Always.
=========================
"Help...help...SOMEBODY HELP!" You scream but its useless. No one will come to save you, you know this but still you run and raise immortal hell. You run and run until something makes contact with your forehead...something solid and cold.
You wake up feeling groggy with a splitting headache. Hand on your head you pull yourself into a sitting position and look around and find all you can see the blackness that is the inside of your eyelids. You try and try to pry open your eyelids but something is holding them shut. Another strange thing, you seem to be crying uncontrollably. Why are you crying? Why won't your eyes open and more importantly: where are you? The tears coming down your face in torrents feel hot and thick. You lift your hand to wipe away your tears and feel something out of place. Tiny little knots of thread are binding your eyelids shut.
You let out a moan, half fear half nauseated, only to find that your lips also feel prey to the needle and thread. Your breathing is coming in short desperate gasps, or would except for the fact that your lips are as immobile as your eyelids. 'God, oh God what the hell is going on?!?' Your pounding heart does nothing to quell your fear, but your mind is doing that for you. Slowing down your thoughts you try to feel out your surroundings, you feel nothing but damp earth beneath and around you. Slowly realization begins to settle in, this is a final resting place. A grave, your grave if you don't find a way out of here.
You try to roll over and are met with a sharp pain in your side, you must have hurt yourself when you blacked out. It's as simple as that, but that does not mean that the pain is anywhere near bearable. You let out another moan, this time in agony but yet again are met with sewn shut lips. You hear a dull thud somewhere near your head. Who knows it could help you in some way. So you feel around hoping to find it and it not be something of your imagination.
Minutes seem to stretch on for hours on end until finally a sharp point makes it presence know to your ever searching palm. You pick it up carefully. Almost seeing with your hands you feel its curved shape the sharp point. It feels like ivory or bone, either way you don't care. Pulling yourself up in a sitting position as carefully as one would handle a newborn babe, as to not cause yourself more pain than necessary, you prepare.
Taking several deep breaths to steady your shaking hand you raise the pointed object to your left eye and ever so carefully you cut each tiny strand. Minutes drag by, how could anyone stitch things this efficiently? Finally after what you guess to be ten minutes maybe more who knows, your left eye is free! You pay no nevermind to your surroundings or to the sounds masked by your beating heart and raise the object to your lips and cut them a bit faster and more violently than you did you eye.
The point makes several new cuts on your parched lips. You breathe deeply for the first time in what seems like hours and lean your head against the grave wall and shut your left eye while the right remains tightly sewn shut and rest for a moment. You raise the object once again but finally see it for what it really is: a human rib.
Your heart begins pounding once more as you look down to the source of pain in your side, finding the gash showing off the broken stump of white that was your rib. Beneath that, things that should always remain in the warm dark of your body are kissed by the night air. You can see your stomach very clearly in all its pink dirt encrusted glory. You mean to cry out but stop when you hear a wet sounding plop and feel something wet land on your forehead. The source of the moisture you pick up, it feels cold and wet as it sounded to your shaking hand. The source of all this is your severed tongue.
After a few seconds of horrified silence you hear slow sluggish footsteps, you would get up and look to see who or what it is but you're too petrified to move. Finally the footsteps stop at the edge of the grave, you open your eyes and see an old hunched, frail looking old woman. Recognition kicks into place but you dare not say a word.
"Did you have a nice rest?" The old woman asks. "Of course you did, until you had to come running into this place. I told you never to come here. But you did and now you must be punished, like your grandparents before you." She finally turns around and you see dried blood caked on her hands and face. You watch as she raises an ancient notched and dull looking axe.
Horror creeps slowly through your veins as you realize what mother is going to do to you for coming into her secret place. Brother and sister, aunt and uncle, grandmother and grandfather, daddy. All of them victims of her delusions of black magick and self adoration.
You can only watch as the ancient axe swings and makes contact with your neck. It only cuts to the bone and you can only lie there and die mother laughing and saying one last thing to you.
"Goodnight sweet child." Then all goes red, then black...