Digging My Grave Novels & Stories

looking helpless as he lost the only thing that made him a god: his land. "You look like you're staring at a funeral," Silas rumbled, standing by the window. His silhouette appeared massive against the grey sky. "I am," I whispered. My voice was a dry rasp, like a dead leaf when crushed. "I'm watching the burial of the Crescent Alpha. I just didn't expect the scene to look so... boring, and ordinary…" My cough broke the silence, a deep, racking tremor that made my ribs feel like they were being snapped back one by one. I pressed a tissue to my mouth that quickly soaked in a dark, thick crimson. I didn't panic; that was for people who still had a future.

A boy in my sister Lily Bennett's class slaps her. Dad is furious. He storms straight to the school and demands that the teachers explain how they could have let something like that happen. Mom completely forgets about maintaining appearances. She floods the parent group chat with angry messages, refusing to let the matter go. My brother, Evan Bennett, is even worse. That evening, he shows up outside the school with seven or eight of his friends and corners the boy responsible. By the time Evan comes home, he says the kid has been "taught a lesson". But Lily isn't grateful. Instead, she pouts. "You guys made such a huge deal out of it that everyone at school is making fun of me now. No

No matter how hard she tried to make them clean, her hands stayed dirty. A little way in the distance, some men were digging a pit. They were throwing some of the bodies inside, mostly the ones dressed in blue. They would topple down the slopes, falling on top of each other, like marionettes whose strings had been cut. She tried to yell at the gravediggers not to go so fast. She hadn’t checked those men yet. She didn’t know if they were tossing in a familiar face. But they continued their work as if they could not see or hear her.

It had long been my fear that I would have to do that for Mara one day, she was so close to giving up before this Freeze. Unfortunately gravedigging requires the ground to not be frozen. So one particularly dark, long cave has always been used for this purpose. “Nothing’s changed, not a fucking thing,” Elvie huffed, as the sniffling procession lay willa down on top of a sheet, ready for wrapping. Her blonde curls were still bouncing and light, she could almost be sleeping.. Elvie continued in a low, angry voice. “We’re just as fucked as we were under Valdis.”

Abandoning the signboard, I collapsed onto the scorching desert sand, my sobs mixing with the sand landing in the pit. "Ahhh!!" I screamed at the top of my lungs, my voice carrying my anguish as I attempted to dig with my bare hands. The sand burned my palms, and some grains found their way between my fingers, but I didn’t care. James clicked his tongue behind me. "It's pointless, muffin. He has been buried alive. He will be gone before nightfall," his voice irritated my nerves as I scooped a handful of sand and flung it in his direction, momentarily blinding them. I seized one of the shovels, attempting to dig the pit open, but the pain in my chest hindered me.

He yanks me by one arm, pulling me with such force it actually hurts. "Ow! Stop!" I shout, but he puts his other hand over my mouth, walking me down the hill until I see the cemetery, the same familiar place I know very well. "Do you see that gravestone?" he growls, pointing in the direction of Zack's resting place. "Yeah. Why?" I say in my best bitch voice. He turns me around to face him, his hands tight on my shoulders. "Because you'll be buried next to him if you do not listen to me carefully!" His words feel like they're cutting into my flesh.

He bent down and touched the dirt. “I hope it’s still here. Let’s find a shovel first, I think there’s one inside.” “Alright.” I walked ahead of him, trying to spot a shovel somewhere inside this ominous, ugly cemetery. I found a rusty shovel leaning on a ruined tomb with green moss growing all over it. I called Raverine and showed him the shovel but before I walked away from the tomb, I tried to read the name carved on the concrete tomb. I used the shovel to remove some moss and still couldn’t make up the owner of this tomb.

It’s so grown that when I kneel beside the grave, I am hidden. I get to work, digging my claws into the ground as I begin to dig up the earth. If he’s alive… Fuck it. I work faster, keeping on alert. After this, our time will be even more limited. If he’s alive and anyone discovers that we’re onto something, then we will need to move faster. Thirty minutes later, I have dug up the soil, and I brush away the dirt of the wooden lid and lift it off, staring down into the empty coffin. No clothes, no dust, no bones.

My clothes are uncomfortably stuck to me, my hair matted to my face. After four graves I come across the number 6. Tabitha. The shadowy figure is nowhere to be seen, but then again...she could be right next to me and I just can’t make her out from the rain streaming down my face, running into my eyes. With one deep breath I drop onto my knees and start to claw at the dirt. Several times I pause, grossed out or it’s common sense taking over my limbs, but I push through and dig. Dig. Dig. Dig.

They couldn't, not even Garrick, who sat clutching his ruined knee, his renewed hatred for me burning behind his scowl. “You want a place here?” Tion asked, louder now. “Then take it.” He pointed to the pit. “Bury your weakness.” I didn’t hesitate. I took the shovel offered …heavy, rough, splintering in my palm and filled the grave meant for me. Stone by stone. Soil by soil. Until it vanished, the only telltale sign was a heap of soil at the top while everyone else watched in silence. When I finished, I didn’t ask what came next.