The Graveyard

I held the gun in my hands, watching two strangers banter, standing over a grave. They were older, probably around their early to late 40s. It was a man and a woman. The woman had long dyed pink hair, and the man wore a light green coat. These features made them stand out.

From the smiles they were giving each other, I could tell they were close. Not romantically, but maybe as friends. They stood apart in a way that did not signify a romantic interest. I could see the man smiling at the woman. The woman placed a hand on the man’s shoulder, offering comfort.

These were the kind of assignments that bothered me the most. These two did not deserve to die, but what choice did I have?

It was me or them. That was the way it worked.

My partner nudged me with his shoulder. “Are they still talking?”

“Yes.”

“Good. I’m almost done here.”

My partner was pouring some kind of green chemical into several nearby graves from a glass bottle. “We need to give it a couple of minutes before they start getting up. Boss wants them to die in the most fucked up way possible. Do you think that they will get eaten alive like the movies?”

The glow in his eyes told me that he was genuinely excited with what was about to concur. We were going to kill two people that didn’t deserve it, and here he was, curious as to what their deaths will look like. I turned away from him, not answering his question.

“This shit better work. It took a damn long time to create this in the lab. You know that blonde bitch scoffed at me when I told her to hurry up? I have no idea what kind of fucking equations are needed to get this shit done right, but she had no right to give me attitude like that. What did I do to her? Our jobs are hard too!”

He kicked at one of the headstones after he was done with the chemical. I flinched when his shoe connected with the gravestone. Ruby Mantle was the name on the headstone, and I made a silent apology to her, hoping that she would know in the afterlife that I didn’t mean for this to happen.

He sat down in front of the grave, his hands underneath his chin. This stance reminded me of a kid bored in a classroom. “What do you think those two did to the boss? He is beyond pissed at them. He wants to get even so bad…oh hey. Do you think they are the ones who killed his uncle and brother? Only those assholes would tip him over the edge like that.”

“I don’t know.”

He threw his hands in the air. “They have to be, man! They have been a pain in our asses for months. We lost so much cause of those assholes.”

Not as much as they have, I thought.

After this single thought crossed my mind, Ruby’s grave started to rise. My partner clapped his hands together.

“Bout fucking time.”

He eagerly watched as a hand creeped out of the dirt, reminding me of the woman on the movie cover of The Evil Dead, reaching out toward the sky as the demon chokes her. I looked up at where our two targets were standing.

Only they weren’t there anymore.

Before I could warn my partner, I felt something sharp stab the back of my neck. It was quick, and the pain was immediate. I dropped the gun, and collapsed next to Ruby’s grave, feeling the dirt beneath the grave I was on top of, begin to move as well.

My partner reacted much too slow to the situation, and Ruby’s arms reached out for him, pulling him toward her grave. She rose out of the grave, her face nothing but a skeleton. Her mouth was open wide as she took a bite of out my partner’s face.

He let out a shriek, as the thing continued to eat at him. I heard the crunch of leaves nearby, and I wasn’t surprised to see the pink haired woman standing there.

She held a bloodied knife, the man in the light green coat standing behind her. His face held no emotion, and the woman had a look of rage that would terrify anyone. I wanted to tell them sorry; it was my fault that they had suffered so much.

What our boss did to the man in the light green coat was unforgivable, and this woman viewed him as her family. We never should have gone after them. Two skeletal arms emerged out of the grave beneath me, wrapping around me, almost like that of a lover.

The pain that followed next was unbearable on another level, and I knew this was what these two strangers were feeling.

I let out a massive scream as the thing’s teeth latched onto one of my eyeballs.

At least I will die with no grace, letting them know that I was suffering.

***

“We need to leave. We have to warn the others.”

The man in the green coat touched the woman on the shoulder. She was shivering, but not out of fear. He was familiar with her rage; he could clearly see it when she plunged the knife into the man’s neck.

“Em…please. We need to leave.”

The woman slowly turned to look at him. Seeing that expression on his face broke his heart. She became like a sister to him as time passed, and he never thought he would ever have someone like her in his life. They had started calling one another brother and sister, out of love, and it felt right.

She bit her lip, trying not to cry. “You’re right. I have no idea what the fuck is going on here, and I don’t want to stick around and find out.” She picked up the gun, quickly wrenching it away from the corpse that was consuming the man she killed.

“Come on, they are probably waiting for us already.”

The man placed a hand on her cheek for a brief moment, before they ran off together out of the graveyard. The duo didn’t realize they were holding hands.

It had become their thing to let the other know how much they love each other.

Thank you for reading!

Emy Quinn