They can bury me, beneath ten, a hundred, a thousand corpses. I won’t care. Suffocate me with the dead, fix me in place with carrion for a casket. It means nothing. When morning comes, and it will, I’ll rise again. Same as I always have.
I see them. I see them staring down at me from their gallows of flesh. The ones who see their death and the ones who don’t… they hate me. As they walk to their own slaughter or slide the knife home. They hate me and they judge me and pile more death upon me. I’m their dump, their rubbish pile. They hurl their guilt and fear and hate at me, but I don’t care. This is nothing new and when the morning comes I’ll rise again.
More bodies to bear. Is that what irony is meant to be? Perhaps. I, the one who digs and hauls and heaps dirt on their shame, buried by the lot of them. No matter. Let it cover me, I can bear the weight, they’ve shown me that.
She’s watching me, one of the ones who sees her death but rages against it. Your fear, woman, not mine. More piles on. Your hate, not mine. But why not? Hurl it at me, cover all of me. You’ll be dead soon, I’ll not deny you this. When morning comes I will rise again.
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No Cure for Shell Shock, the collection this is from, is available free on Kindle until the 14th of January. You don’t need a Kindle reader to download it, the app can be installed on any phone or tablet. You can download the book here.