The last thing I remember is her smiling face. It was terrifying. Her light hair hung down around her triangular face, bouncy curls wavering in my fading vision. Whatever was in the syringe had worked quickly. There was excruciating pain. I lost control of my muscles and fell to the floor. She bent over me, her slender, precise hand curling to hold the pulse point in my throat.

I knew I was dead. I had to be dead. There was no breath in my lungs. I watched my body be taken to the morgue, and felt myself dragged along after it, unable to move more than a few feet outside of it. She wouldn’t let them preserve or dissect my body. I was buried the next day. The earth is a comforting dark place. A place where you can rest peacefully. I began to wonder if there was some way to move on. I was trapped, unable to move away from the slowly decaying hulk that was my body. I tried, but it was as though the universe were less than a yard in radius. There was nowhere I could go.

I felt a shock of electricity. A blast of force, and my consciousness, if a dead person possesses consciousness, rippled around me. I blinked. I was in my body. I blinked against the dark, but it was still dark. I began to beat against the lid of my coffin. I screamed. It occurred to me that for whatever reason I was back in my body, I didn’t have much air down here. I stopped moving. A few seconds later I heard a thump, coming down through the ground. Another, and another. The thumps grew louder over the space of a few minutes. Then there was a hard thump against the coffin. I jumped. A few more thumps. The coffin lid opened.

to be continued …

My love,

I write this as I lay beside you in bed. The lights are out and you slumber peacefully. Your breathing is steady and calm. My heart beat is not. It is a war-drum pounding in my chest. I won’t be here with you much longer.

I am not leaving through my own choice, you can say that I’m being taken. You have asked me time and again to tell you about the mysteries you have always known surrounded me. Would that I had time to tell you all of it. I do not. I have but the time for these scant few words. Your love is all that has kept me alive this long. Soon, it will not be enough.

In the park by the beach, there is a tree. It is gnarled and it’s branches spread like fingers reaching out to grasp the sun. Beneath that tree there is a single stone, shaped like heart. If you go to this tree on the night of the full moon, and look beneath this stone, you will find my legacy to you, a gift more precious than anything I could ever give you.

When I’m gone, you must not cry. You must do nothing but hold my final gift to you in secret. You will know what to do with it when the time comes. You have all my love, and I’m afraid there is nothing more I have left to give. Be well, and trust yourself!

your love,

Jessica