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"So how exactly did she manage to do it?" asked Michael Tenor, as he shoveled dirt onto the recently deceased body of Nicole Darva.  The white, bed sheet she had been wrapped in for her funeral bore a wet, blood stain. Making it look as if she had been buried in a Japanese flag.  

"I mean, I thought you had people watching her?  You said you had your worries bout her ever since she was brought here." 

Michael stabbed the shovel straight into the ground; bringing a hand to his forehead to wipe the sweat from his brow.  The hot August sun beat down mercilessly from above and he could already feel that the skin had become burnt along his exposed back.

"That's right, I did have my doubts about her," replied Mills Lane. "I had people watching her at all times.  Made it known that she was not to be left alone ever, and if she went walking off somewhere, someone was to tag-along beside her." 

Michael pulled the spade up from its resting place, and resumed throwing the dirt into the box-shaped hole. They were halfway through filling it now. Nicole's body was no longer visible; making it easier to pretend he wasn’t covering up what used to be a life. 

"So how'd she manage to do this then?" Michael asked; though he felt bad for persisting with the questioning afterwards.  He knew it was starting to bother Mills.  Mills, however, put on his best impression that the questions were not bothering him at all, and after he had thrown the last bit of earth over Nicole’s body he began to shed light on Michaels query.

"She was sharin' a room with Sarah Bode, you know, the new girl?" Mills said as he placed his shovel on the ground and picked up the cross that had been made of two sticks tied together by a single strand of rope and preceded to the head of the grave, where he stuck the cross into the ground.  Only until he was satisfied with its placement did he continue with the account of events.

"Well, Sarah got out of bed to use the bathroom last night, leaving Nicole alone in the room for several minutes.  Sarah had been drinking a soda, and had innocently left it setting on the table beside her and Nicole's beds."  Mills paused to wipe the sweat from his face, his dirty hands leaving a brown smear upon him.

"When Sarah came back to the room the lantern had been blown out, and she assumed Nicole had gone to sleep so, she too, went on to bed. It wasn't until this morning, with the aid of sunlight that Sarah discovered what had been done." Mills paused once more; when he started again his voice was shaky, sounding as if he was struggling to continue the story.

"Nicole had crushed the empty soda-can into a sort of crude knife and blew the light out so Sarah would not see what she had done upon her arrival back to the room. She ran that blade across her throat, laid down on her right side so she faced the wall beside her bed and went to sleep. In the few weeks she was here--it was--it was the first time I ever saw a look of happiness on her beautiful face." At this the gates broke lose, and the tears that Mills had fought to hold back streamed down his aged face.

Michael felt the familiar feeling of grief lick his insides and felt his eyes starting to sting.  He looked forward at Mills once more who had now put his head down with his hands cupped over his eyes.  Michael watched as tears fell through Mills' fingers and landed on the ground below; the sight of this only saddening him more.  He turned his back, allowing the man to have his moment, for it is only in the nature of men to be too proud to cry in front of another.    

With a trembling hand he reached into his jeans pocket and pulled a pack of cigarettes and lighter from them.  As calmly as he could he brought the slender stick of rolled up cancer to his lips and fumbled with his lighter until he had lit the end and pulled a great, poisoned breath into his lungs.   The relief he had hoped to achieve from it not being able to overcome the sorrowful sight his eyes now beheld.  Four more patches of disturbed earth with crosses looming over them at the head lay to the left of Nicole Darva's.

Beyond this rested a white, two-story house in which Mills, Michael, and eight others now lived. A house that in previous times had been nothing more than a house, however, it had now become the last remnant of civilization and to its inhabitants it had become the last shred of hope for a way of life that had become all but extinct. In just the previous month five people had realized hope had ceased to exist. With each passing person Michael helped commit to the soil he found himself starting to feel the same as they had...hopeless. Made witnesses to the fall of man and damned to live beyond it.

Michael took one last drag on the cigarette before tossing it to the ground and turned to see Mills was no longer behind him. He picked his shovel up from the ground and headed back towards the house. It was in this moment when his eyes locked onto the white, two-story refuge that despair sunk its sharp talons deep into his skin and he couldn’t help ponder a foreboding thought. "How many more graves would he dig, before someone would be digging his own?"

                                 * * * * *

Night had fallen upon the white, two-story house making its occupants resort to their kerosene lanterns for light.  In a small room on the second floor Michael Tenor lie in bed, gazing at the ceiling and smoking a cigarette in an attempt to calm his exhausted nerves. Wishing he could blow the memories in his head out as easily the grey smoke that he expelled from his lungs.  A clean, neatly made bed sat to his right across the room.  It's former inhabitant having disappeared completely from the house several weeks ago.  Michael reached over to the small bedside table and dropped the still-burning cigarette into an ashtray teeming with yellow, tar-stained butts.

The house had fallen as silent as the five graves just outside. Michael looked out of the window in the direction of the crude wooden crucifixes.  To his horror he saw the eyes of Nicole Darva looking back at him.  Her eyes weren't the only set either.  There was Ms. Turner who'd drowned herself and her nine year old daughter Ashley, who stood beside her, in a creek just a little ways off the grounds.  Mr. Stupps, who had hung himself with Ashley Turner's jump rope. Last in line was none other than Mills' own wife, Vanessa. 

She, though, was not out their by personal choice.  She'd fallen sick and with no where to go in the case of emergencies, she was doomed.  Mills spent every last second by his dying wife's side, watching hopelessly as the love of his life slipped away from him more and more until she was gone. Mills buried her the next day and insisted that he do it alone.  Michael granted him his wish, knowing that Mills just wanted to feel that he could provide his love with the best committal he could after not being able to offer her any help with her sickness.

They all stood there, those spirits of the damned with unblinking eyes that sung a song of pure sadness.  Michael closed his eyes and when he opened them he found that the forlorn spirits of those departed were no longer there.  He turned from the window to find himself confronted by the figure of Nicole Darva.  Her head faced the floor and blood oozed from her throat onto the floorboards.  Her dirt covered body radiated a cold that only ice could mimic.  She lifted her head and now looked Michael dead in his eyes.

Her hands shot out and gripped Michael's arms, the sheer cold of her fingers causing goose bumps to span across his skin. Their eyes never broke contact, even as she pushed him back onto his bed and she slid the now earthen colored dress she'd been buried in down her pale body. She gripped Michael's jeans and pulled them off without even undoing his belt with the greatest of ease, then went his shirt until he was completely exposed to her as she was to him. 

Nicole mounted on top of Michael, those cold eyes of hers never breaking their hold on Michael's. At that moment she was the embodiment of fabled Medusa herself.  The dirt and earth worms in her hair mimicking serpents, and her eyes had turned Michael to stone in more ways than one.  He'd become as helpless as a corpse as Nicole's dead body rode on top of his penis.  His body had become a coffin, holding his screaming soul tightly beneath layers of tissue and muscle.

Her body thrust up and down upon Michael without remorse, as unforgiving as the stare of her eyes. The task of breathing was becoming near impossible; Nicole's thrusting becoming so fast and hard that it drove the air from Michael's lungs.  She was fucking the very life from him and all he could do was watch, powerless to prevent it. Finally, to his relief she began to let up and the speed of it.  She now thrust him deeper and deeper inside of her as if she were using his penis to find something hidden inside; a means of resurrection perhaps?

She leaned forward putting her nose to his and to his complete horror and disgust she stuck her tongue into his mouth.  He could feel and taste the soil upon his teeth and tongue, and smell the stench of her breath.  She withdrew her tongue and rose upwards to put her open throat in front of his face.  Nothing could have prepared him for what happened next as from the wound ejected her tongue and once again forced its way into his mouth. The squishing of the torn tissue upon his lips was more than he wished to bear but was still helpless to do anything about it.

Still driving herself onto him she brought her throat from his lips and began to tear at her esophagus with her fingers, laying strips of skin over Michael's chest until she'd made the shape of an "X". Her body shook and spasmed, her mouth opened wide but no sound ever came due to cut vocal chords. She came to a halt upon Michael and gazed upon the X she'd made on his chest.  When she looked back into Michael's eyes he saw a tear had formed in her right eye and watched as it slowly rolled down her cheek.  It landed right in the center of the X and with a loud bang Nicole's body became dust and fell upon Michael like a sand castle that had been pummeled by an ocean tide.   

Michael shot upright in bed, soaked with cold sweat from his nightmare.  His eyes soaked in the relief that it all had after all been nothing more than a nightmare. He paused and listened to the sound of feet running up the stairs.  Little did Michael know that those feet were helping bring him a message that he'd awoke from one nightmare into another.

                                   * * * * *

The door to his room shot open, and standing there out of breath and with a terrified look on her face was twenty-three year old Katie Belle.  Michael stood up from his bed and waited for her to catch her breath to speak, dread seeping into his guts.

"Michael," Katie spoke, still struggling for breath, "it's Mills."

She continued to talk, but Michael did not hear a word she spoke now.  He took off from his room, blowing past Katie onto the second floor landing.  He nearly jumped the flight of stairs, turned right at the bottom landing, and ran down the hall and looked through the first door on his left and nearly slid as he came to an abrupt halt.  Mills sat slumped backwards in a chair in the middle of the kitchen; his head tilted over. His grayish brown hair was now a dark red and crimson liquid dripped down onto the floor, a pool already having formed.  To his left lie a pillow with a small hole punched through it, some of its cotton stuffing littered the floor. In Mills' right hand rested the culprit.  A small, black revolver hung upon his right index finger.

Michael collapsed in the kitchen doorway, Katie Belle stood beside him crying into her hands.  Upstairs people could be heard stepping out of their rooms, wondering who had snuffed it tonight.  Michael wondered how they would feel when they discovered that the casualty this time was the same man that had told them all not to give up hope, and in time...all would be better?

It was morning now, and Michael Tenor stood looking down onto the body of Mills Lane.  Katie Belle and Sarah Bode had cleaned him up the best they could last night while Michael had gone to dig Mills a place beside Nicole Darva; the chilling image of her corpse raping him in his dreams last night playing through his head like the image of Mills' dead body.

That morning they laid Mills' body into the ground, and the houses nine occupants, including Michael, said their good-byes to the sweet elderly man that had taken them under his wing.  They spoke some words from the Bible, and that was that.  Ashes to ashes, dust to dust. Under his breath Michael spoke two simple words, “the end.” Not just for Mills, but for something else that was growing inside of him.

A few people had offered to help Michael in the filling of the grave, but Michael declined their offers.  He knew they really did not want to do it anyways; he and Mills were always the ones that handled the burials. He needed to be alone, he needed to think.  Mills had been a leader to these people, and now that leader was gone.  Michael knew someone would have to step up and take his place and he knew all eyes were on him to do so.  He had been the first person to be brought here and Mills had regarded him as a son, his right-hand man. It was a responsibility Michael did not want though; he just wasn't ready for it.  He was only twenty years old and there were plenty of people in the house older than him. 

"What do these people think I can do, bring them hope? Mills tried to give them that, and he failed.  Mills knew that it would only get worse, until one day he would wake-up to find he was the only one still living.  It was this thought that drove that bullet through his head, and these people think I can give them hope.  Grant them some sort of fucking salvation."

Michael lifted the shovel from the ground and heaved mound after mound of dirt onto his dead friend’s body, his anger helping to speed up the process.  "This man had been the embodiment of hope, and he realized last night it was a worthless endeavor he was trying to attempt."  The hole was now completely filled, and Michael exchanged his shovel for the stick crucifix and placed it at the head of the grave.

Michael grabbed the shovel and turned to head back to the house. When the white walls of the home filled his pupils he stopped and for the first time felt as if he saw the house for what it truly was. At that moment it wasn’t the ideal American home of two stories, with white exterior and blue shutters. No, it was nothing more than a coffin. An enclosed box that he and everyone else would eventually rot alive in.

Worse yet, they’d lost track of the revolver Mill’s had used on himself. “Hell, for all I know they’re in there right now drawing straws to see which lucky five get to use it next,” Michael shouted towards the house. “There’s probably a fucking line formed outside of the bathroom door right now, with Katie and them waiting anxiously for the prick inside to hurry up and waste themselves so someone else can have the liberty of a bullet.”

 Michael’s imagination supplied him with the visual. He’d arrive back from digging Mill’s grave to find three sobbing wrecks of human beings crying on the second floor landing; devastated that there just wasn’t enough bullets to go around. And in the bathroom Michael would find five corpses without the tops or backs of their skulls. Three bodies, two male and one female, would lay stacked on top of each other in the bath tub, blood completely submerging one and slowly inching up over the second. Sitting on the once white, porcelain toilet was a teenage boy not much younger than Michael, his shoulder and face propped on the wall as if he had passed out while sitting on the commode. The red spatter along the wall just above the toilet told that this man had passed out of existence instead.

Last but not least, was the corpse that lay face up along the light blue tiled floor. His eyes were so wide they looked as if they could’ve easily rolled from their sockets. A black hole in his throat showed that he had been terrified while holding the revolver below his chin, and in the last second before pulling the trigger, a tremor went through his hand, putting the barrel at his throat rather than his head. This poor bastard slowly bled out rather than died quickly and painlessly as the others.

Coming out of the bathroom those unlucky few would look up to Michael with tear-stricken eyes, all pleading him to do something, to help relieve them of their plight. There was Katie Belle, the most desperate looking of the three. The purple bruise in the shape of a circle upon her forehead projected that she was the sixth in line, the one that found the gun to be empty. All three of them began to chime in unison, over and over again, “what will you do Michael?  Michael, please help us! What will you do?” The pleas rose in pitch and desperation until they became a choir of sadness, singing a mournful lament of the damned.

Michael snapped out of the nightmare, his eyes still locked onto the house. Without any hesitation he turned away from it and put his shovel to the ground, starting another plot beside Mills. He had no fear of anyone seeing what he was doing, for no one ventured out to this part of the yard unless they had to. After he had finished with this fresh opening he began on another, and despite the ache of his back and the bleeding of his hands he kept digging.

Dusk had fallen now and Michael climbed out of the box-shaped hole he had created and stared at his hard day's work. Nine mounds of soil rested beside nine apertures much like the one he stood over now.

Night replaced dusk, and Michael stared at the front of the white two-story house.  The light from kerosene lamps penetrated a few of the windows.  He thrust his shovel into the mound of earth beside him, and walked to the back of the house where a small building set.  He walked in, and spotted what he had come for resting on a small work table. Upon retrieving the object he walked back to the front of the house. The windows that had once been radiating lamp light were now only lit by the moon's rays from the night sky.

Michael turned his head in the direction where the graves rested. Though it was too dark to see them he knew they were there, waiting. Waiting with all of the patience of death for what he would soon do. From the darkness ghostly yet familiar faces seemed to emerge, eyes wide and alight with anticipation and smiles playing out across their lips. Tonight there was an extra face in this crowd of familiar spirits and that was Mills himself who stood hand in hand with his wife Vanessa. Beside the reunited couple stood Nicole Darva, whose eyes seemed to bleed a certain hunger and lust when Michael’s eyes met hers. She smiled at him, her mouth seeming to mimic the slit flesh of her throat.

“She smiles as if she were the one that brought me to this, the one that fucked the life out of me.” Michael returned the smile. “Well she may be right about one part.” Michael rubbed his hips which ached from yellow/green bruises. “Little does she know though, there was already no life there for her to take.”

From the dark beyond these familiar faces, what looked like millions of spirits emerged from nowhere. Michael looked back to Mills, who offered him a comforting smile and a nod of his head, as if giving his approval to what was coming. Beside him and behind him, all the ghosts nodded their heads and turned their attention to the house. As if it was what he was waiting for the whole time, the consent of these multitudes of dead, Michael turned away and walked up the steps of the front porch.