Real-ish

A Grave Encounter

Cora~
I stroll through the rows of stone, the dying grass crunches beneath my roughed-up sneakers as I read every weatherworn inscription. I write some of the more interesting names in my little black book for the next time I visit.

 I can't remember when I first started coming to the Peaks graveyard, but I can remember the first name I wrote down. Her name was Vanessa Heartright and I thought it sounded like a rich English name. It was the first thing I wrote down when I got my 'journal' for my birthday.

The book is plain but I find myself loving the pleather and cardboard cover. The once crisp pages are now smudged with graphite and wrinkled from use. To anyone else, it would probably look just about ready to be thrown out, but to me, it looks like a peaceful escape.

Most people keep away from the graveyard because they either have someone buried here they don't want to remember or they heard the rumors. The rumors state that screams of the dead are heard if you get too close.

Of course, I never believe them. I'm here all the time and all I hear are birds and the crunch of my feet on the dry dirt. The lack of people, and horror movie soundtracks, make this place peaceful. I wonder sometimes if I spend so much time in the perfect setting of a murder mystery, will I eventually become the murdered or the mystery?

I take a break from my wandering and my dark musings in favor of sitting beneath a willow tree that is older than me and my family. I close my eyes for one second.

That's all it took to turn my world upside down.

One second, everything is peaceful, with maybe a slight breeze.

The next second is full of shouting, limbs, and confusion.

My eyes fly open as I try to comprehend what just happened. There's so much weight on me that I feel like my ribs are gonna crack.

When my eyes adjust to being open again, I wouldn't believe them if I didn't feel the weight and warmth of the people on top of me. 

Somewhere in the mass of bodies, I can register 4 individuals. They groan in unison and I sit there in stunned silence. Or maybe it's the wind getting knocked out of me. Maybe I even hit my head and I'm hallucinating.

But the silence, and the weight, are getting uncomfortable, so I clear my throat.

As if a button was pressed, all four boys jump off of me and into fighting stances. My ribs spring up so fast it hurts, but I still breathe in deep, gasping lungfuls of air to fill my previously crushed chest cavity.

The only problem now is I have two katanas, a staff, escrima sticks, and an assault rifle shoved into my face. I slump against the rough bark of the tree in another shocking silence until the smallest of the boys speaks in a supposedly threatening voice. 

"Who are you and where are we?"

I feel a shiver run through my spine. This has to be some sort of hallucination. There's something off about these boys. Aside from, everything. The fact that they simply appeared out of thin air, for one. I swallow thickly and breathe deeply before replying.

"Um, my name is Cora, uh, Sanchez and this is the Peaks graveyard. Can I ask why I had all of you on my lap? Or where you came from, even?" I try to cover the shake of my voice, but that is hard when my entire torso is still resizing. Why am I even talking to the hallucination people?

The smallest looks around my age, 13. There's definitely an age gap between him and the older boys. In my assessment of them, I take notice of the masks covering their eyes and the odd clothes they're wearing. Is that Kevlar?  and who wears metal armor anymore?