100 Morbid Themes

2. Something wicked this way comes

AN: These drabbles will be the death of me. Procrastination is bad, don't do it. Enjoy!

11. Death

"Wait. That was your grandfather?" She looks honestly puzzled. "But he didn't sound that old."

"Well, maybe my little brother finally hit puberty." He still opens the register website and starts typing his family name.

"I thought that was your fa-" He cuts her off immediately, dread growing. "My parents are dead!"

She doesn't say anything. He fumes to himself, unable to spell their names correctly. His hands are shaking. She nudges him out of the way and types another name. "Who's that supposed to be?"

"The guy from yesterday. He was a truck driver, I think? Saw his name on the list." When no results come up, she quickly switches databases. He's mildly surprised. 'Huh...guess not all things change.'

A face appears on the monitor. The guy from yesterday is appropriately labelled "deceased". She opens his life record. "Robberies, hooliganism-hah! Oh, he was a suspect-" She cuts herself off and scans through the whole page quickly. Then wordlessly turns the monitor towards him. Under "Post-mortem Improvements" he sees what he was afraid to see: two painfully familiar names. Names that had been erased from their family register.

'Two lives in exchange for one death.' That was too generous. "That's not the way the system works." He says out loud and regrets it immediately. She doesn't look surprised, this time; and he doesn't know what's worse: her intuitive understanding of the situation or his inability to keep her out of this mess.

12. Horror

It had been such an ordinary day, so far, so Yan wasn't at all surprised when he crashed into someone in the hallway. He immediately apologised and bent down to pick up the scattered objects. Only then did he see her face: the same eyes, which seemed to be always asking a question; same bizarre hair hidden under a hood. She smiled at him. "Oh, it's you. It's been a while." She seemed nervous, for some reason, but he could only vaguely remember the rest of what she had said ("don't....you...name...?").

"Wait. You're alive?"

His usual politeness had vanished, to be replaced by astonishment. And as her face mirrored his own, both bewildered by the other, Yan could feel his ever-present guilt, which had plagued him the past year, taking the backseat, as horror began nagging at his bones.

'Then...who did I kill?!'

13. Buried

For three days and three nights, the church had been closed. The priests had surrounded it and would pray every two hours. The people, who would stop to ask idle questions, would be chased away.

"There is a demon in the church."

The rumour made rounds, even as the clergy tried to reassure the citizens, but they were fretting and whispering. The speculations became more and more outrageous.

"It must be a demon." A stern-looking man nodded to himself. "That's where all the screaming comes from."

"But how can a demon enter a church?" A woman asked, frowning.

The citizens started arguing among themselves. "It could be a ghost."

"Na, I bet it's just the priests making a ruckus." They continued to speculate, their shouts growing louder. "That's blasphemy!"

"Maybe it's the souls of noblemen."

"Could be, there's a bunch of them buried there. Gives me the creeps." "But shouldn't souls be appeased by prayers?"