“Once you found us, we were finally all together. And it was so good to be all together, Ryan! Wasn’t it? We waited here for you for so long.” Ellie looked fondly to Maurice. “But then you left us, and we were so afraid that you were going to find the light—that you might leave us for good.” She frowned with blood-stained lips.
“I didn’t worry, Ryan,” Marvin grinned. “The men in our family, nah—there’s no light for us.”
“We had to keep our doors open while we waited for you to come back,” Ellie continued. “We are a respite for the dead, and we wouldn’t close our doors before you returned to us.” She motioned to the bar around us. “As you can see, it was getting so crowded.” Corpses and bodies riddled the entire tavern in piles—disembodied heads enmeshed with the rotten limbs of man, animal, and insect, alike. “You’re here, and you won’t leave us now, Ryan. You can’t find the light here.”
“I’m not dead!” I called out between gasps for air. “I’m not dead,” I repeated. Water splashed to the ground from my mouth as I turned to crawl towards the door again, but it moved back with every motion I made towards it. “Why are you keeping me here?! I’m not dead!” I choked again.
“You are, Ryan,” Ellie answered.
I looked down at my body drenched with lake water—bloated, soft, and full. “But—” I started.
“We all are,” Ellie said, motioning to the corpses throughout the tavern. Maurice, the skinless woman in the green dress, and Marvin joined Ellie behind the bar where they stood in their states of morbid decay. “And in death,” she said through her bloodied grin, “our family can finally be together—forever.”
Corpse Forest
By Julie Hiner
Afterlife
* * *
Voices whispered through Willy’s ears, the haunting tones crawling their arctic fingers down her spine. Imaginary threads sewed her eyes shut. Her sacral senses pulsed. She didn’t know where she was, but she knew she wasn’t in her sunny apartment. The last thing she remembered was the knife, held by her own trembling hand, slicing into her neck, and the hot gush of blood that followed.
The whispers intensified, kissing her earlobes, whipping into her ears, weaving through her insides. Words escaped from the blended sound of dozens of phantom voices melded into one.
Escape.
Suffer.
Afraid.
Slice.
Maim.
Kill.
Willy gritted her teeth and squeezed her eyes tighter. She inhaled deeply. The Drakkar Noir remnants of her last one-night stand had been replaced by rot and decay. Where was she? Why was she here? If she looked, would it all become real?
A tear tore free from the corner of Willy’s eye, slithering down her chapped cheek. The whisper of a child told her he’d taken his own life. Was this the afterlife of those who stopped their own beating hearts?
A young voice separated from the melting pot of pleas. “I’m here because I took Mommy’s pills. I saw her do it. I wanted to sleep, too. I couldn’t take another belt lash to my back. I just couldn’t.”
Then, she belonged here. But did they know the truth about her?
She swallowed hard against the fear clawing up the inside of her throat. She knew she had to look.
Taking a deep breath, she forced open her eyelids. Locks of chocolate curls obscured her vision. She lifted her pale arm, the skin thin and rotting. She brushed her hair from her eyes. Nothing could have prepared her for this.
Putrefied corpses swung back and forth, each wearing a coat of translucent flesh over skeletal frames of black bones. Charcoal trees loomed, dripping with silver witch hair. A purple-blue hue painted the entire forest, as far as Willy could see. Rotting remains hung from tree after tree with no clearing in sight.
Her eyes darted along the never-ending collage of hollow faces. Empty eye sockets filled with dark space reached for her. In unison, the pairs of black caverns widened, thousands of small, skeletal hands sprouting from deep inside. The sea of bony fingers swam toward her, prying her mouth open until her skin split across her face and pain seared through her skull. Rough nails raked down her throat, scraping her insides in their frantic search. Her screams stifled in the stern of her jaw.
Her mind exploded in a rant, yelling at the hanging carcasses, “What do you want?”
The sighs amplified, echoing around her. In a flash, the hands retracted in a single slice from her gut to her lips. Her insides stretched, then collapsed against her bones. Thousands of murmurs blended into one solitary soft voice like a winter breeze. “Why are you here?”
She looked across the ghost faces, the explanation of each fate clear from the unhealed wounds. A pair of wrists slit deep, an unending red river running from them. A hole blasted through a skull, exposing a mess of pink-red brain-blood mush. A winding rope mark burned into a neck in purple, black and sickly yellow lines.
The kid. The one who had whispered to her, swung from his tree, his insides transparent, a pile of pills stacked in his stomach. His face blue, his eyes black, his skin pallid.
Willy licked her lips and swallowed. Two drops of saliva forced their way down her parched palate.
She spoke, her voice raspy and weak. “I sliced my throat.”
It wasn’t a lie, but it wasn’t the whole truth either. The knife reappeared in her trembling fingers as she relived the horror of her self-inflicted end. Pain shot across her face as she poked the tip of the knife into her skin. Her hand guided the handle across her neck, the blade slicing a thick slit into her flesh. Blood poured over her hand, down her chest, soaking her ivory negligee. Terror pierced every organ. She pulled her hand away and looked at her shaking arm, the bath of blood, and the shiny silver blade. Her scarlet-soaked nightdress stuck to her skin.
“Why?” the kid-corpse inches from her whispered.
She jolted. How did he get there?
How could she answer that question? Did any of them know the truth? Was this a test?
The ghost with the slashed wrists materialized closer to her. A woman with long, dark hair. She whispered, “I cut my wrists and bled to death. I couldn’t take one more day in the depths of loneliness.” An empty hole opened in the woman’s stomach, stretching into a dark and bottomless well.
White light shimmered as the ghost woman vanished. The man with a smoking hole in his skull glared at Willy, inches from her face. Brain matter mixed with blood floated through the air around him. His deep voice echoed off the trees. “I pulled the trigger. One single shot to end the pain. I watched my child die. A sickness took her. I couldn’t take the constant pain any longer.”
A flash of pink light as the ghost man vanished. A third appeared. The young woman with a winding purple-black mark around her neckline. “I hung myself. I couldn’t take one more needle.” She turned her arm, exposing a collage of blood-tipped punctures. Toxic fluid seethed through her veins, bubbling her skin.
A blue haze took the rope-marked woman. The kid ghost full of glowing pills appeared. His cold breath sliced Willy’s cheeks as he blew a whisper, “Why?”
Willy froze. What could she do? These others—these ghosts—their reasons for taking their own lives all seemed… justified.
The icy breath cut her cheeks again. “Why?”
“I couldn’t go on one more day.” The dryness in her throat smothered her words into a croak. It wasn’t a lie. It was a partial truth.
The small face of the kid ghost inched closer to her. “Why?”
She stared into his dark, cavern eyes. Hands of fear wrenched her heart. Her voice barely audible, she said, “I was afraid. Every day. I couldn’t live with the fear.”
The faces stared. The kid vanished, then reappeared, hanging again from his tree. No more whispers. No more stares. All the spirits seemed satisfied with her answer. They hung still, their void eyes staring vacantly into nothing.
The knife sat in Willy’s blood-soaked fingers. Her red-stained negligee clung to her thighs, heavy and wet. Her n
eck throbbed. Fingers of pain wove through her face and down her arms. Sickness swirled in her stomach at the realisation that this was her end. Would she hang here forever, swaying back and forth, soaked in blood and pulsing with pain? No relief had come when she slit her own flesh. At least not for her. Maybe she had spared others. How many would she have hurt?
She hung. She swayed. Her mind numb, her body shivered in cold blood.
Cycle of Whispers
* * *
The corpses swung gently back and forth from the tall, dark trees. The bruised hue of the forest clouded Willy’s vision. The ghost whispers followed a cycle. As if on cue, their mouths moved, their eerie voices echoing off the trees, winding deep into the pit of Willy’s ears. She couldn’t tune it out. Cries of pain seeped through her for what felt like an eternity until they finally wound down and the forest became silent again.
If she mustered up the energy to whisper her own plea, the phantom voices would muffle and the knives of pain slicing through her would ease to a dull rub. As soon as she stopped, the voices swirled through her mind, contorting her brain and seizing her skull. Pain sliced through every part of her body, amplified with each sway.
She forced her cracked, cold lips to move. The desert in her throat filtered her voice to a raspy whistle. The half-truth of the reason for her arrival in the corpse forest dripped from her lips on repeat.
“I am here because I slit my throat. I bled to death. I couldn’t take it one more day. I was afraid.”
As the last word seeped from her lips in a slow crawl, a deep sigh sunk through her. The thought of hanging from the tree, silent and swaying was a welcome image. She longed for a deep sleep—to no longer hear, see, feel. Even the slightest pause between the end and the beginning of her next script claiming her spot in this corpse-laden forest resulted in the first knife slicing her inside. She chose the grueling rewind and repeat of her cry over the overwhelming pain of a thousand blades.
She wanted to tell the whole truth. A desire swelled within her to spill out every detail—not just of why she was here, but of why she had taken her own life. Maybe if they knew, she would be spared the pain. Could she be allowed to rest if she released a full confession? She clung to a tiny granule of hope that this was possible. Yet, something deep in the bowels of her gut told her if she vomited the words of truth, a fate far worse than a whispered plea on repeat would befall her. Unsure of the outcome, she stuck to what she knew, whispering to numb the pain.
A crack in her bottom lip split suddenly. A warm drizzle of fresh blood trickled down her chin. Did it hurt? She wasn’t sure. Her mind was numb, her motions robotic, her ghost body heavy with exhaustion, all her focus on her lips to keep them moving.
After an eternity on the clock of death, the haunting murmurs faded. Silence descended. The blue tinge waned. The forest turned black. The ghosts took their hiding spots behind the cloak of night.
Willy succumbed, entering the sleep of the dead, in which there was nothing but pitch-black and silence.
Mittens
* * *
The ghost boy materialized a mere inch from her face. Willy jerked. She was on edge, unable to get used to the barrage of surprises in the forest of corpses.
The kid’s blue lips moved, his cold breath leaving icicles across her face. “Why are you here?”
Willy swallowed, saliva slipping through the slit in her throat and drizzling down her neck. “I am here because I slit my throat.”
“But, why?” the boy enquired.
“Because I was afraid.”
The empty eye sockets of the dead boy swirled, black, purple, blue. A small hand reached out of one of the cosmic caverns. Long, bony fingers grasped for Willy’s face. She flinched. The skeleton hand missed her face, stretched out over her head, and pierced her skull. The hand plunged straight through her brain, the bony fingers scraping against her gray matter, causing a painful itch. Her body juddered. Her mind froze. The bone fingers scratched and scraped, then stopped. They wrapped around a series of neurons and squeezed. She gasped. The corpse forest vanished.
Soft grass tickled her bare knees. Warm sun baked her face. Soft fur grazed her fingers. She looked down at her hands. Her stomach clenched as the puzzle pieces clicked together. She was back on her childhood street. It had been a long time since she’d been back here. She stared at the small, brown kitten settled into the palms of her hands.
It purred, a vibration buzzing through her arms. A tiny mew escaped from its mouth. Mittens. Missy Wilton’s new pet. Missy had lived three doors down from her. Missy with her perfect blonde hair that always shone and her pretty pink dresses with matching shoes. Willy stared down at Mittens.
Willy tightened her grip, finding the kitten’s neck with her fingers. She wrenched the tiny neck. Bones cracked. Raspy gasps seeped through Mitten’s tiny mouth.
The kitten went limp.
Willy set it on the warm grass. She slipped a pocketknife from her back pocket and clicked it open. The blade slid into the fur and through the warm skin with little resistance. She pulled the knife down the length of the small, limp body. Warm blood spurted over the kitten, matting its fur. Willy wiped the knife on the grass, snapped it shut, and slid it back into her pocket. She stared at the slimy organs, wondering what they would taste like. Her mouth watered.
Snapped from her post-mortem reverie by the voice of her mother, she listened to the dinner call. “Wilhelmina! Wilhelmiiina! Dinner time.”
She looked down at the bloody carnage. A drop of terror trickled through her. What had she done? What was wrong with her? She abandoned her fresh kill and sprinted home.
Mid-run, her childhood street vanished. Pain sliced through her. She swung back and forth, from her tree, in the corpse forest.
The dead boy floated in front of her. The hand retracted from her brain and returned inside the dead boy’s empty eye socket. His dark eyes stared into her. He knew about Mittens. Is that all he knew?
In a flash, the dead boy was back, hanging from his tree. Willy pondered what this all meant. What was he searching for? Did he want to know the truth about her? If he found out, would she be sent somewhere even worse than this morbid forest of swaying skeletons? Could it get worse than this? The ball of fear in the pit of her gut told her it could.
She could still hear the cracking of Mittens’ bones as she wrenched its little neck. Missy was a mess when she found poor Mittens dead and slit open, lying in a pool of blood on the grass in her backyard. Missy cried in horror, putting on quite a show. She wouldn’t calm down until she was bribed with a new pink dress. How many pink dresses could one little girl own?
Despite Willy’s jealous jabs at Missy, something sick swirled in Willy’s stomach when she thought of Missy’s terror-stricken face.
No one had suspected Willy. She’d always been a well-behaved little girl. She’d been discreet with her un-girl-like tendencies. Even more so as they followed her into adulthood. Poor Gerald, living five houses down, was the target of blame for Mittens’ unfortunate end. Gerald had always been weird. He was jittery and stared at the other kids like a creep. Willy knew there wasn’t anything actually wrong with Gerald. He wasn’t… like her.
When Gerald was questioned about Mittens, his anxiety got the better of him and he froze up. His lack of response was interpreted as guilt, and he was sent away to a specialist for assessment.
Something had washed through Willy that day when Gerald was sent away. A dark weight in her stomach. Did she feel bad Gerald was gone? Was she sad Missy was so upset? She didn’t know. But she wanted to tell someone what really happened to Mittens. She had walked down the stairs into the kitchen and found her mom baking chocolate chip cookies. When she opened her mouth to confess to the one who would nurture her no matter what, something clicked in her brain.
She couldn’t remember what happened next. There was a period of nothing. Then, next thing she knew, she was sitting at the kitchen table with a warm chocolate chip cookie in one hand, and a co
ld glass of milk in the other. What had she said to her mother? She’d never know. She’d been too afraid to ask.
Acid-laced bile swam in her stomach. Why did she have to relive all of this? She took that knife to her own flesh so she could end it. No one had told her that, when you died, you didn’t die. You became something else. Swaying back and forth from her tree, she’d morphed into a skeletal ghost coated in her own blood, her self-inflicted wound searing in never-ending pain.
Lindsay
* * *
The dead boy’s twin abysses explored Willy. His cold whispers chilled her cheeks. “Why?”
She racked her brain for the right words. Why did she take a knife to her own flesh? Because she was scared of what would happen if she didn’t. He wanted to know more. The holes of his nothing eyes spun in a swirl of red, orange, yellow, and purple. Before she could say a word, a little hand reached skeletal fingers through the kaleidoscopic grotto.
The bony fingers pierced her skull again. This exploration was rougher than the last one—fingers of hard bone sliced into her brain matter, sending sharp spikes of pain through her.
The corpse forest vanished. A forest of firs engulfed her, tall and green, spattered in fresh pine cones. She trotted along, pine needles crunching under her sneakers. Wafts of citrus swirled around her. The knife in her back pocket pressed against her.
A girl with long, red hair skipped along in front of her. Her heart froze. Lindsay. The only best friend she’d ever had. This wasn’t right. Why did she have to relive this? Why did they want to know?
The Other Side Page 5
