text: [Themes: horror]
  
  Yes. I felt the casket jostle around me. For a moment I didn't understand that's what it was. My body didn't tell me how the silk around me felt. My eyes were closed, and even if they hadn't been this space had no room for light. Nevertheless, in an instant I knew it was a casket in the same way I knew I had a body even if I couldn't feel it.
  
  I laid still as a stone. I had to after all. Even if I could move there was nowhere for my limbs to go, no way to stretch out of the silk-lined interior that kept my hands folded as if in gentle repose.
  
  I wasn't supposed to be awake. That's not how this was supposed to play out. I could feel a scream building up inside me, but it didn't feel like it usually did. There was no flutter of it against my throat, there was no clenching of it within my stomach. It was only the emotion of a scream. Without feeling it like this, I never would have known a scream is more feeling of the spirit than it is of the body.
  
  I had held my lover's hand what had only seemed a few moments earlier. Hers were warm, mine cold. The world had glimmered though I knew it was, in actuality, dim and fading. It was extinguishing before me and I thought it would have been the silent smothering of a flame, but instead it was paper curling brightly, consuming itself in its thirst to blaze.
  
  Here was different. It was not bright. There was no color. I had never been more alone. The feeling of her skin to mine was a dull memory, one I couldn't even trick my flesh into replicating.
  
  Another jostle. I recognized it now as the thud of something falling on the lid above. Dirt. I was being buried.
  
  Perhaps I fell into a dull haze at the horrifying realization, perhaps I fell unconscious. Either way the world blurred like fever and when I came back to myself the march of soil reclaiming its place had long since been dismissed into the snuffling, shifting, soundless sounds of earth making itself comfortable.
  
  I quickly realized what had stirred me from the haze. A voice trembled over me. Loud enough to hear over six feet of packed dirt. It was a mournful cry. It meant something. It stirred my interest.
  
  I knew what I had to do... It was...
  
  It was...
  
  What was it?
  
  What did I do?
  
  > Tried to reach it
  I listened to the singing for a few moments. Something sad and vaguely familiar. Oddly enough I tried to remember who it was singing but no one came to mind.
  
  I strained to listen closer: something so haunting and close bit at the edges of the sound. I tried to push my cheek against the wood to hear better, forgetting my body would not move. It just laid there, stiff and unwieldy.
  
  I, however moved a few inches away.
  
  I froze for a moment. Then tried to move my hand against the wood. I didn't see my fingers in front of me, I didn't feel wood. Even so, I was certain I had moved. I pushed harder against the coffin and felt myself move upright into the cold dirt beyond it.
  
  Easy as breathing had been before all this, I pushed myself upright and burst into a world above.The motion carried me forward and when I stopped to get my bearings, I was startled to find myself a few inches above the fresh-turned dirt beneath me. I was dressed in a familiar way, though I didn't remember dressing. When I looked out sideways, my hair was streaming in a wind I couldn't feel. Beneath me was a grave. My grave. Sunk beside the dirt was a woman all dressed in black. She sat weeping beside, singing a tremulous, mournful song.
  
  I stood above watching her. This strange state of being-- without body, without complete control-- seemed to have left me bewildered as well. I knew I loved her. I knew she was important to me. I could not discern why.
  
  "It's strange, isn't it?"
  
  I turned to see a woman sitting cross-legged on a grave a stone's throw away. I knew her immediately.
  
  "Addie!" I cried. I tried rushing to her side, but my faculty of movement was not entirely in my control yet so I remained hovering in place. "Addie, it's so good to see you again. I missed you so much. Please come to me."
  
  She smiled as she rose to her feet. The grave beneath her was still newly turned as well. She strode until she was just beneath me than took my hands in her own, looking up at me lovingly. I felt the touch of her though I knew I had no body. I suppose she had no body either. Gently she tugged me down until my feet were closer to the ground.
  
  "I missed you too, my love," she said from behind the sad smile she wore. "But tell me what it is you did to join me so soon. Tell me it is not as gruesome as it looks."
  
  "What do you mean?"
  
  She didn't say anything, simply reached out and rubbed the material of my sleeve between her fingers. It was then I noticed the dark stain that ran across me. Both sleeves clung close to the image of my arm. I hadn't felt it before, but as I grew more attuned to my not-body I became aware of the sensation of cold and wet at my wrists, across my chest, running down my skin and in rivulets down my legs.
  
  Addie's hand fluttered up against my neck and came away black. Her eyes were full of grief. "Did my death do this to you?"
  
  Memories started to return in hazy waves. Addie had lain in her deathbed, hand burning in mine. She was bursting with fever, it burning her skin, lighting her eyes. When her life had faded so had my own. She was cold in her grave, I was unmoving in my home. I could not rise, I could not eat, I could not live. So I stopped living.
  
  "I.. I did this to me. The wrists weren't bleeding enough so I took a letter opener and..." It had entered my neck with a swollen, ripping kind of pain that makes you think you can't feel anything else. But I did feel it when I yanked it away. I had felt the blood spitting outward, the world growing thin and bright: paper consuming itself in the ecstasy of the blaze... "I wanted to be with you."
  
  The smile at her lips remained sad. She leaned in close and I felt her lips press against mine, gentle and insistent all at once. "However it came to be, we are together again. I will show you the place beyond."
  
  "Wait. Who is she?" I looked across to the woman weeping.
  
  Addie looked down. "That is you're mother. You're death must have been a great shock to her."
  
  The music was still winding out between convulsive sobs as my mother knelt at my grave. I went to her. Yes. How could I forget her. She had loved me deeply. I felt the slightest uncertainty about my death. I stopped beside her and kissed the top of her head, even if it was like kissing a breeze.
  
  Her sobs seemed to slow and the song dissipated. She looked up and around with her tear-stained eyes. She never quite found me. I heard her say quietly "If... if you can hear me. I love you. I'm sorry I couldn't save you. I will always love you, my sweet child." She sat there a short while and I sat beside her, aching and taking comfort from her presence all at once.
  
  "I'll come back to visit," I said. I didn't know if I could, but I knew I would find a way.
  
  Eventually she got up, straightened herself into the practical woman she most often showed to the world, and strode down the path. As she disappeared into the distance, I turned back to Addie, our reunion slightly more solemn than when I had first caught sight of her a short while ago.
  
  "Let's go," she said, and took my arm.
  
  I can't tell you where we went. It isn't your time for that.
  
  But I do know that I went into the graveyard bringing only my casket and left my mortal bonds with the one I love.