Page 27 of Grave Possession

My eyes scan the woman in front of me. Her breathing is ragged, and her pulse is thumping hard from how I can see the vein in her neck jumping. “Back to blondes now?” I query.

“Well now that I have you, I no longer need a substitute,” he responds.

“I suppose.” Little does he know I’m about to have him so tangled up in my web, there will be no escape. I trace the sharp blade up her arm but she doesn’t so much as stir.Come on, lady, wake up.

When I reach her shoulder, I place the tip of the blade in the same spot my injury is. Slowly pressing it into her flesh, I watch how easily the skin splits apart because of the lethally sharp steel.

Adrenaline shoots through my body again, and I feel like I’ve come alight from within. I slam all my weight down on the handle, forcing the knife through her skin until the blade meets the dirt beneath her. The woman’seyes shoot open, and she screams loud enough to wake the dead.

I guess the shock wore off.

She’s flailing, trying to grapple with enough coherence to pull the knife out of her shoulder. In the process, she hits me in the face and I can’t help but laugh. Such a pathetic attempt to fight for your life.

My captor pounces on her as I watch, flipping her over and cuffing her hands behind her back. He wrenches her back over, holds her up by the neck, and punches her square in the face. The crunching sound of her breaking nose is loud in the silent space. I release the breath I didn’t know I was holding when he releases the woman. She flops back to the ground, groaning in pain as he gestures for me to continue.

I rip the knife out of her shoulder, and start a shallow cut. Starting at her wound and moving across her chest, stopping at the top of her sternum. I move to the other shoulder, and begin slicing diagonally down below the clavicle to the top of the sternum, meeting the end of my previous cut.

She’s pleading and crying, sobs wracking her body and making my cuts shaky. If she would just hold still this ‘Y’ incision would look as neat as any autopsy tech could make, I’m sure of it. Leaning over her, I splay my left hand across her breast bone, firmly holding her in place, while I continue the cut down between her breasts to the bottom of her sternum. I can’t go any further because of my tether to the wall, and I’m extremely fucking annoyed by it.

If I’d been allowed to further my education, I alwayswanted to work with the dead. Mortician, embalmer, autopsy technician, or some sort of cemetery worker; it didn’t really matter as long as I was alone, and it was peaceful and quiet. I wanted so fiercely to know what awaited us after we passed, I believed working with the recently deceased would give me some insight. The macabre fascination spreading into every area of my life. My obsession with skulls, true crime, the paranormal, and the occult is only the tip of the iceberg. It’s part of the reason I chose to live in the Pederson murder house, and so close to the Henderson sawmill. The dead can’t haunt me near as badly as my own memories do. Unfortunately, the spirits have been quiet, and my trauma is louder than ever.

Until now.

My ears begin to ring, and my vision blurs as the worst headache I’ve ever had sinks in. It feels as though my skull is splitting in two as the atmosphere around me drops in temperature.

The unknown man’s voice forces its way through the pounding of blood in my ears, “Want to play a game of operation, darlin’?” I nod, trying to push through the distracting pain.

“Cut her again, deeper this time,” he says. I obey, retracing the ‘Y’ cut. The thin welling of blood along the cuts transforms into a thick, pouring stream of crimson. Her screams of pain morph into diminishing wails of agony as she slowly slips into unconsciousness. My captor watches me with such intensity, “Go on,” he says, encouraging me to do what’s frowned upon by society.

Dropping the knife, I sink my fingers into the blood.The warmth engulfs my hands, travelling up my arms, and settling in my chest. The ice I feel at my back sends a shiver down my spine as my captor loses himself in the vision of me succumbing to my darkness.

He pulls his dick from his trousers, coating it in the victim’s blood, and slamming it into her. His ruthless thrusts and moans of pleasure spur me on as I push my fingers into the cut and pull the skin apart.I want to see what her insides look like.

Pain shoots through my shoulder again, just like this morning, as the same voice rings inside my head.

“What are you doing? STOP!”the female voice shrieks.

“I can’t,” I whisper aloud. My mind is crumbling, bit by bit falling away to a place I can never reach. I must be going insane.Skin rips away from the membrane, and blood wells anew with each pump of her dying heart.

“Don’t! You’re hurting her! You’re killing her!”the voice rasps.

“I know,”I think to myself.This is fucking lunacy. Someone lock me in a padded room pronto.

“Stop!”My ears ring at the shrill intensity of her voice.

“I can’t!”

“Stab him.”I swear I feel a jolt in my arm. This isn’t real. Ghosts aren’t real.

“But—”

“Kill him. You’ve got the knife.”My eyes quickly dart to the knife at my side, and then slide up to the man lost in the throes of passion in front of me. Our eyes lock then he picks up his pace, the woman’s broken leg swinging unnaturally with each slap of his hips against her.

“I can’t. What if he doesn’t have the key?”

“Take the risk,”she growls at me.The cold at my back is now all encompassing, and I’m suppressing the shiver that wants to overtake my body

“No.”

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