This is a collection of short stories I wrote during February, almost every day. They were inspired by prompts -- from writing a story with a certain title, to a story with a specific weather event -- all of which tested my limits as a writer <3
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PROMPT: write a story about someone being brought back to life
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When I died, I thought that would be the end of it – finally, the end of it. How blissful does the end sound? A complete and total conclusion to my life, surrounded by the comforting bleakness of death.
Alas, it was not such.
I had scarcely felt Death's numbing embrace for more than a few mere moments before I felt my soul being pulled back into my broken body. I've been lying here in my grave for a couple of weeks, futilely attempting to deny the fact that I'd failed to leave this mortal world of suffering.
Silent sobs wracked my body as every instance of my living melancholy ravaged my mind, making me wish for the end all over again. I've tried holding my breath, but I no longer seemed to need oxygen.
I am somehow alive again, whether I liked it or not.
Realising the darkness and dampness of my supposed final resting place was probably worsening my rapidly deteriorating mental state, I summon my now-returned strength and decide to break out of the coffin. I claw my way through the prescribed six feet of soil and wriggle out of the very top, fingers grasping onto unforgiving blades of grass.
As I gasp for unneeded air in the graveyard, gratitude surfaces in me; it's nighttime. The idea that anyone might have seen me escaping my grave was deeply troubling – it would've looked like something out of some horror movie, right?
I shudder at the very thought. All through my life, I resented such movies; it was somehow fitting that in my afterlife, I have become the victim of such a perverse absurdity as being a reanimated corpse.
But what even am I?
After reading my own headstone, I glance down to see the grass covering my grave lying smooth and unbothered by my escape. I reach out to touch my name on the cold granite but find that my hand passes straight through as if I merely reached through blank air.
The arrival of a couple of men mercifully prevents me from dwelling on my lack of corporeal form too severely. Their voices instil an unbidden anxiety within me, so I pick up the muddy hems of my once-white dress and race across the field of granite headstones and dead bodies to a coppice of woods not too far off.
Now hidden safely amongst some yew trees, I frown and glance down at my attire – a flowing white gown of silk, with detail stitched into the bodice to accentuate my waist. A burial gown – chosen for me by my mother, no doubt.
An intolerable coldness sweeps through my body, almost as if I can feel my physical body turning in my grave. I never wanted to be buried; though I suppose that was just one of the many things I said that my mother never listened to.
"This one's pretty fresh," I hear one of the men tell his partner-in-crime, beckoning him over to my grave.
"Reckon it's got anything valuable?" He saunters over, a shovel resting against his shoulder.
Before I can hear either of them continue to discuss robbing my grave, I rush at them – with an unknown rage and a fatal speed. It seems I am no longer in control of my own actions; something within me has changed – I am not my own person anymore.
I guess most of me is dead, then.
(569 words)
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((p.s. I do actually have a wip that follows a girl who's brought back from death as a spirit... Maybe one day it'll make it to wattpad 🤞🏼))
