Time in Love

Chapter four

Warning!! Sensitive content including death and corpses.

My footsteps were featherlight on the ground as I walked over to my dead body.

When I reached my hands out I realized I couldn't see them. Maybe I was a ghost? No. Ghosts didn't exist. This must be a dream or some kind of premonition.

I peered down at my body. Instead of on the floor in a palace where I had been shot, my body was lying in a casket. The decorations around me were floral and utterly breathtaking. You'd think they'd stuffed me with flowers by the way my corpse smelled.

There wasn't a single drop of blood on my wedding gown. Somehow they'd recreated it to fit on my dead body. My eyes were closed and my lips were parted.

A line of people started to form by me. One by one they all said the words they wanted me to hear.

Some were sweet, some were prayers and some were downright alarming.

The priests daughter actually said "bitch." As she passed by. I'm sure she would've spat on me too but there were to many people watching her.

Then it was my mother's turn. My mother, the emotional wreck she always was patted her fave with a handkerchief but I could see the tears streaming down her face. I wanted to wipe them away and give her a big hug but she wouldn't look at me. She only looked at the husk of the body I used to be and sobbed.

"I'm sorry. I'm sorry I made you marry so early." She admitted, her voice a cracked whisper. "I-if it wasn't for m-my pressuring you'd still be here!" She squeaked

I felt my lungs filled with water in my chest. It was like I was drowning and no matter how hard I kicked or clawed at the surface nobody could hear my screams.

Then, people decided my mother. The mother whose tears I'd only seen fall when something truly horrible happened. Couldn't take it and had to leave.

I was about to step away but my father stepped up next and I decided I owed him the grace of hearing what he had to say to me. I hoped whatever he said I could bear it. But I realized too late that I couldn't.

"I thought you knew better my little Peggy. Premarital sex is punished by God."

My bones went rigid.

Of course my father didn't care about my death. He'd finally got his preaching license from the church the year before I died and suddenly everything was a sin.

But how in the world did he know I'd had sex?

And I realized. I looked at my corpse once again and the stomach looked a little bigger.

That night, I woke up screaming.