Digging My Grave Novels & Stories

The diary entry ended right there because the very next day, Vivian threw me into a pit of wet concrete and buried me alive. After I died, she dug my corpse back up and sealed it into the wall of my own villa. I watched Jayden tremble uncontrollably, his tears splashing onto the pages of my diary. I'd never seen him cry before. He sobbed until he was retching as grief had torn through him. I'd choked on my own tears the same way when Mom died. I just never thought Jayden's heart could break like that for me.

The same grave he swore she wasn’t dead in. The diggers work fast, mercenaries I’ve hired under fake names, paid in crypto and silence. The soil gives way easily, too easily for something meant to have rested undisturbed for over a decade. When the spade strikes metal, I feel it in my bones. “Stop,” I say. The men step back. I climb down, mud pulling at my boots. My gloves scrape against the surface of a steel coffin, modern, industrial, nothing like the ornate box in the burial photos. Someone changed it.

He stood there for over ten seconds before pushing the door that had been closed for three years open. With a creak, the humid and stale air rushed out, carrying the smell of mold. The interior was just as it had been when I died—neat and tidy, except for some mess on the tables. That mess was from the days after my death, and they were caused by Toby's mischief. In the living room and near the wall, there were two chalk outlines—one large, one small. The large one was me. The small one was Toby. I had collapsed on my way back to the bedroom from the bathroom. Toby had died quietly in my arms.

The folks watching nearby started whispering and pointing. "She didn't even research properly. She's pretending to be a dead woman whose body's probably dust by now!" "Exactly. Trying to pass herself off as the richest man's wife. She should take a look in the mirror!" I said nothing. I walked toward my parents' urns, the ones being used as flower pot bases, planning to dig them out and rebury them properly. Digby stepped in first and kicked one of the ceramic urns hard. It shattered instantly. My parents' ashes spilled across the ground, mixing with dirt and fertilizer.

He swallowed. “They chose you,” he said quietly. Not bitter. Just tired. So tired. He dug again. Like he had for the middle child. Bare hands tearing into the earth. Dirt under his nails. Blood mixing with soil. Two small graves now. Side by side. Too close together. No parent should ever dig graves this small. He laid the youngest down gently. Covered them slowly. Each handful heavier than the last. When it was done, he stayed there kneeling. Long after.

Not once. When I reached the mountain top, I laid her gently on a flat rock. My hands curled around the shovel left there for burial rites. I dug. The rain made the soil heavy, slippery, but I kept digging—even as my arms shook from exhaustion, even as my heart felt like it was being carved out of my chest. “This isn’t fair,” I whispered, slamming the shovel into the ground. “You deserved peace, mama… not this.” I blinked away tears, mud streaking my cheeks. My breaths were sharp, painful.

Without saying a word, he walks straight to the grave and he starts digging. The realization hits me so hard I nearly start crying all over again. He’s digging up a grave. For me. Not because he believes there’s a body inside or he’s even mildly curious or because he wants answers. No, it’s because he knows I’m afraid. He knows I won’t be able to leave until I know. The rain continues to fall around us as he drives the shovel into the earth again and again. Dirt flies behind him with every movement. His muscles strain beneath tattooed skin. Mud splatters across his trousers. Sweat mixes with rainwater and runs down his body.

ELENA The grinding roar of the excavation machines had already begun; the final, awful soundtrack to the moment I’d been dreading. I stood there, stiff, trembling, watching the workers prepare to dig up my daughter’s grave. My daughter. God, even thinking the word felt like dragging barbed wire through my chest.

I close my eyes, trying to recall the memory of how Morien counted graves, one by one, before finding the hidden weapons. My memory fails me. I have no idea which grave is the right one. So I drop to my knees in front of a random mound and start digging with my bare hands, pushing sand aside in frustration. “Way to go, Maya,” I mutter. “You forgot a shovel.” I groan and smack my forehead lightly, then scramble to my feet, pacing around desperately. I scan the ground for anything sharp enough to dig a branch, a rock, anything. I move toward the trees, bending low, feeling through the dirt and leaves.

The soil was hard, and there were rocks in it as well. It was not long before all ten of her fingers turned bloody from the digging, and her fingernails cracked, perfectly recreating my death in the coffin. However, my mother dug as if she could not feel a thing, digging while crying and mumbling at the same time. "Janine, it's too suffocating in there. I'll dig you out right now… I promise I won't lock you up again…" When my mother finally tired out from all the digging, she leaned against the cold tombstone and started revealing the deepest, darkest part of herself.