Postmortem

Sixteen Days After

   He put the note under my door at 12:36 on the weekend sixteen days after my life ended. However odd it may seem, that was how I'd begun keeping track of the days since I'd been reincarnated. The writing on the note was easily recognizable without the courtesy of a signature to reveal the author to me. In all the years I'd known the unintelligent boy, Bruno had never bothered to develop any kind of skill in penmanship.

    My nose crinkled in distaste even as I read the words; Meet us in the woods tonight, once your parents are asleep. We're ending this. Finally, a modicum of intelligence from the fool. We did need to end this.
    I'd returned to the makings of my death three times since that first time. The sting from inflicted torture, the feeling of when my heart first failed to beat, the chill of being surrounded by fresh earth. It set me on edge at all hours of the day. Although I'm dead, rest has been fleeting since these glimpses into my grave began. If i didn't finish my task soon I wouldn't ever have the chance to again.
    I balled the scrap of paper and threw it away, knowing I would meet him. I noticed my arm beginning to turn red as pain radiated like fire atop my flesh all over again. As I registered that this was yet another reminder of my death, I thought again, yes, this would end. One way or another.

()()()

    The sun had set and my parents had fallen asleep by the time I left the house. As it turned out, leaving your house in the dead of night unnoticed was much easier when you had ghost-like vanishing abilities. As I started what I knew would be a long walk through the woods, my thoughts turned to the last time I had walked through these woods to the cabin.
    If I thought about it I could recall being surrounded by them, my friends, as we walked to some unknown spot. If I felt things like I had that night then the memory would probably bring me a pang of sadness. Instead, I felt nothing but annoyed. They didn't deserve any of my memories.
    It was another twenty minutes before I arrived at the cabin. It was still mostly the same, decrepit and rotten. The only addition was the tangy scent of fresh blood in the air. For a moment I wondered if it wasn't my imagination, before I saw her body.
    Luna's chest was covered in thick bright red liquid, and her open eyes had an unnatural glassy sheen to them. I couldn't hear even the faintest beat of her heart anymore. Anger burned through my veins at the disrespect Bruno showed her. He had left her outside the cabin after brutally stabbing her multiple times.
    With more fury than I had ever experienced in my life, I ripped the door to the cabin open. Bruno sat in the chair with his head in his hands. His clothes and hands were covered in blood, the stench of it permeating every inch of the enclosed space. When he looked up it was with mania etched into every inch of his expression.
    "You." He spat. "You, you, you, always fucking you, Alice." He ran his hands through his ruffled hair roughly. He settled, covering his face again and muttering to himself.
    "What did you do to her, Bruno?" I asked, taking a step closer from the doorway, into the cabin where I had died. He stopped muttering and looked back at me.
    "What did I do, what did I do to her? Nothing I hadn't done to you, nothing she won't come back from, like you did!" He half laughed, half sobbed before glaring at me again.
    "Bruno. What did you do to Luna?" The question washed over him like ice, sending a shiver across his skin. His face turned ashen.
    "I- we walked here together. Me and her. Together. But, then we got here. We got here and she was pacing back and forth and back and forth and back and forth! I couldn't stand it, it was so loud! Loud, loud, loud, loud-"
    "Bruno! What did you do?"
    "She didn't believe me anymore! She thought I made it all up, thought Danni and Nicki just couldn't live with the guilt! She blamed me, said she'd go to the cops! She couldn't, she couldn't, I had to stop her! It wasn't like you, I didn't want to! But I didn't have a choice, she would've gotten me sent to jail!"
    His eyes were wide, searching the small space for no discernible thing. Eventually he settled on one of Luna's paper lanterns lying crushed on the floor. He calmed down. Spoke in the quietest, gentlest voice I'd ever heard him use.
    "But it's okay, because she'll come back. She'll come back just like you did and everything will be okay. We'll be together. Together." His sentence broke away at the end as he covered his face and broke into hysterical sobs. I was powerless to stop the laughter pouring out of my throat, echoing across the room.
    "You are so much more of an idiot then I ever gave you credit for, Bruno." Another little giggle made a smile bloom across my undead expression. "She's not coming back, you fool. You're going to get life for this. Well, this and the other ones." He raised his head slowly. His cheeks were red, eyes puffy and snot trailing under his nose. But the anger simmering in his eyes was unmistakable.
    "What?" He grit out.
    "Yeah, Danni and Nicki. You didn't honestly think you'd get away with killing them after doing this to Luna, did you?" I grimaced at his confusion.
    "But- I didn't kill them. You did. Why would anyone think I did it?"
    "Don't be stupid, Bruno. Your DNA is all over the crime scenes. And after they find me, well... maybe you should get ready to plead insanity." My smile was luminous as his confusion gave way to terrible understanding.
    "You're not serious. You're just trying to scare me, you wouldn't- you couldn't have done that." He shook his head as though he could shake off the condemnation.
    "Nothing's as serious as a corpse, Bru." I tossed his bloody hunting knife onto the floor of the cabin. He stared at it, unmoving. Anger and fear flooded out of his pores, a rotten smell I never noticed when I lived. Was that what Death smelled when she came for me? Was she here even now, lingering in the shadows, basking in what she was most familiar with?
    "Pick it up. You had no issue using it on the corpse outside. Why stop there? You wanted this, you started it. Now fucking finish it." He reached a trembling hand out to pick up the weapon. Then, in a swift motion he came at me with it. I tilted my arm to the side, allowing him to cut me like he had sixteen days ago. He did this a few more times before pausing in fury.
    "What are you doing?" He barked the question in a voice so angry it was almost inhuman. I almost laughed, my head light with relief and humor.
    "What do the dead feel, old friend?" This time I did laugh as his eyes widened and he desperately slashed at me once more. The knife punctured me once again, the sensation calling me home. He stumbled back even as I stepped closer. My body rotted in front of his eyes.
    Finally, the grave is calling me home.
    First my skin grew shiny, then it swelled up like a balloon, until eventually it sank and grew gray and sagging. My eyes became glassy and dark. He fell onto the ground in his scramble to get away from me. I loomed over him with my dead body and decayed mind, a grin peeling my bloodless lips apart.
    "Nothing. We feel nothing." My body turned to rot, molding and morphing its way back to my grave of over two weeks ago. My cadaver remained where my friends had buried it, six feet under in the cold earth behind the cabin in the woods.
   
    Bruno remained lying on the ground holding his murder weapon, until a police sanctioned search party found him. Once they saw Luna's state they arrested him. Later, they would unearth my mutilated body and charge him for that as well. He also got the credit for Danni and Nicki.
    He would claim that I had done it all, but no one could recall having seen me since the day I died. I was a memory as all corpses are with so many little details forgotten. Besides, I had been dead for three weeks by the time they found me. It's not like I could have come back for revenge.

     Sixteen days was all it took to destroy them, to destroy their lives like they did mine.
    And now, finally, I can Rest In Peace.