The Last Breath

The man’s eyes shot open, lungs on fire as if drowning, gasping for air that refused to come. Darkness pressed against his face, smothering, swallowing every movement, every panicked thought. His hands shot out, clawing against splintered wood, tearing through rotting fibers. The walls were impossibly close, a coffin that seemed to squeeze tighter with every breath. Cold, stale air seeped into his mouth, gritty, like tasting earth itself.

He stretched out desperately, fingers searching for an escape, but they found something worse—a mass beside him, damp, fleshy, and utterly lifeless. His mind reeled, but his body recoiled too late. The corpse was beside him, packed tight against his skin, every horrifying inch of its clammy form pressing against him. He could feel the swollen flesh, the softness where decay had taken hold, still moist as if it had been freshly sealed in with him.

A shuddering gasp escaped him, but the dark absorbed it, greedily swallowing every sound. Panic boiled over, hot and acidic, and he thrashed in the confined space, kicking, pounding at the lid. Splinters bit into his knuckles, but no pain could pull him from the waking nightmare. The coffin walls deadened his screams, and above, the weight of six feet of soil seemed to press harder with each passing second. He tried to push the dead weight away, but it settled closer, clinging like some grotesque companion, its head slumping over his shoulder, chilling lips brushing his ear.

Then, something stirred. A sound that sent a wave of ice down his spine. A low, agonized groan, rising like an echo from the depths of hell itself. His breath halted, his body locking into place, heart hammering in his throat. He tried to move, to press himself against the opposite wall, but there was no escape. Slowly, with a sickening rigidity, the corpse beside him turned.

Its face slid against his, and he could feel the rough, peeling skin dragging along his cheek. The smell was unbearable—a foul stench of rotting earth, sickly sweet and ripe with death, the scent of something that had not only died but had been claimed by the soil itself. He gagged, his stomach convulsing as he tried to turn his head, but the corpse's face followed him, drawn closer as if it could sense his terror.

And then it spoke.

“You... stole my place,” it rasped, each word like the grating of shattered glass, a hollow, twisted echo of a voice once human. The words clawed their way into his skull, ripping through his mind, embedding deep. “Now… we share this grave.”

He choked, tried to scream, but a skeletal hand clamped over his mouth, the icy fingers spreading across his face like death itself seizing its prize. Another hand clutched his jaw, forcing it open, prying him wide until the very joints in his skull strained. The corpse’s fetid breath poured into his mouth, heavy, rancid, filling his lungs as if it intended to root itself within him, as if death itself was forcing its way in.

A mad whisper filled the coffin, slithering through the suffocating darkness, bouncing from every angle, the corpse’s dry voice weaving with something else—a chorus of voices, of tortured, lost souls chanting a rhythm of despair. The sound closed in, the whispers turning to laughter, hoarse and raw, gnawing away at his sanity.

His strength ebbed, his hands falling limp, and he felt himself sinking, the life draining from him with each labored breath. Yet the corpse was relentless, drawing closer, pressing its decayed mouth to his ear, whispering so intimately, like a lover turned to rot, a foul affection that crushed his very will.

“Breathe,” it hissed, the words crawling down his spine like a curse. “Let us become one.”

His vision blurred, the crushing darkness devouring every inch of him, the dead man’s breath infecting him, a sickness spreading through his veins, consuming. His body went numb, his soul slipping, sinking into the depths of that darkness, claimed as part of the grave.

In his final moments, he felt a horrific understanding—the corpse beside him was not just a body. It was waiting. Waiting for him to take its place, for him to wear its rotting shell, for him to become the next in a line of souls that would forever share this coffin.

As his vision faded to black, he heard its laughter, thick with malice, echoing in his mind.

“You are mine,” it whispered, and in his last, shuddering breath, he felt his soul torn from him, sucked down into the endless dark.

Forever.