The world around me started to narrow. Graves started blurring together, fading into each other until they became nothing more than pale smears in the dark. The trees at the edge of the cemetery stopped looking real too, turning into long shadows watching from a distance. It was just the ground. The shovel, the movement. In, down, push, lift, throw. Again and again and again. Time slipped, I don’t know how long I was there, I just kept going.
My breathing got rougher, uneven, dragging in too much air and not doing anything useful with it, but I didn’t slow down. Something in me had locked onto it. A single direction, no room for anything else, no thought, no second-guessing, just dig. The hole deepened. Dirt piling up around me, uneven mounds forming at the edges where I’d thrown it without looking.
My arms started to shake, not enough to stop, just enough that I noticed it once, distantly, before it stopped mattering. My grip tightened again. The handle dug into my palm, my shoulder protested. My side throbbed harder now, a steady pulse thatlined up with my heartbeat, each one hitting a little harder than the last. I drove the shovel down again, and again and again, until it changed.
The sound.
It wasn’t the dull resistance of soil, it wasn't the snap of roots, it was hollow. A different kind of contact, more muted and the shovel didn’t sink the way it had before, it stopped, hit something solid underneath. The vibration traveled up through the handle, into my hands, up my arms, different enough that it cut straight through whatever state I’d fallen into. I froze. Breathing hard, chest rising and falling too fast, sweat running down into my eyes, stinging.
Then I looked down, at where the metal edge had met something and for the first time since I started, I stopped digging. Something in me snapped the second I realized what I’d hit. I dropped the shovel without thinking and went down on my knees in the dirt, hands digging straight in where the metal had struck.
The soil was colder down here, heavier, clinging under my nails, packing into my skin as I tore through it faster than the shovel ever could. I didn’t care about the mess, didn’t care about the way it scraped my knuckles raw or how the dirt forced its way into the half open cut along my side when I twisted too fast, I just dug, fast, like if I didn’t get there now, it would disappear again.
The earth started giving way in heavy clumps now, loosened by everything I’d already torn through. Dirt packed itself under my nails and scattered across my arms as I dragged it aside faster and faster, my breathing turning harsh enough that it burned the back of my throat every time I pulled air in. And then I hit something pale beneath the dirt. Barely visible at first, just a streak of white buried under the black soil, but it was enough to make my entire body stop.
My hands stayed buried in the earth while I stared at it, my pulse suddenly beating hard enough that I could feel it in my throat. Then something in me snapped forward again. I started ripping the dirt away faster, throwing it aside with both hands, mud grinding into my skin and under my nails while more and more of the surface came into view beneath me.
A coffin.
The white wasn’t clean anymore. It had dulled, stained in places where the ground had pressed in over time, streaked with brown and grey where moisture had settled and stayed, but it was still there. Still solid, after all those years and that did something to me. I don’t even know what, I just knew I needed it uncovered. All of it. I forced myself back, pushing up from the hole, boots slipping in the loose dirt as I climbed out, chest heaving, hands shaking in a way that had nothing to do with exhaustion anymore. I needed something heavier, stronger. My eyes moved fast over the ground around me, scanning without really seeing until they landed on it. A rock, bigger than the one I’d used before, rough edges catching what little light was left. I bent, grabbed it with both hands this time, feeling the weight drag at my arms, then turned and dropped back into the grave, landing harder than I meant to as my boots hit uneven ground beside the coffin. The force of it tore through my side, something wet shifting under my shirt, but my body pushed past it anyway.
My focus was already back on the coffin, or more accurately, what was inside it.
I adjusted my grip on the stone, stepping closer and then I heard it. A sound, faint, from somewhere beyond the grave. I stilled, head snapping up towards the trees… It came from there. A soft disturbance, branches bruising against each other, something moving where nothing should’ve been moving. I squinted into the darkness. It had crept in without me fully noticing, the last of the light gone, replaced by something thicker. Fog hadsettled low between the trees, stretching thin across the ground, blurring the shapes of everything past a certain distance. It made the space feel smaller, closed in.
My eyes tried to adjust, scanning the direction the sound had come from, but there was nothing clear to lock onto, just shadows shifting in ways that could’ve been anything, or nothing at all. I stayed there for a second longer than I meant to, the rock still held tight in my hands, my breathing the only thing breaking the silence now. Whatever it was, wind, an animal, something else, I almost let it go. Just wind, I told myself. Branches shifting, something small moving through the undergrowth, nothing that mattered.
I looked back down, back to the coffin, tightened my grip on the stone and then it came again, closer this time. My head snapped back up before I could stop it, eyes cutting toward the trees again, trying to pin it down this time instead of brushing it off. The fog had thickened. It clung low to the ground, curling between the trees until everything beyond a few meters blurred together and refused to stay fully clear. I narrowed my eyes, focused.
There, movement, not wind.
Something held its place just behind one of the trees, half hidden, just enough of it visible that my brain could put it together before I even wanted it to, a figure.
I tried to focus harder, forced my eyes to lock in and then I recognized the figure.
Zwierek.
One shoulder, part of his face, the outline of his body pressed into the shadow of the trunk like he’d grown out of it. We locked eyes and everything else dropped. Suddenly there was no distant noise from the world outside this place, just that line between us.
You ever get that moment, little Ghost? Where it stops being about what’s happening and turns into something older thanthat? Something instinctive. Predator, prey. Except, I couldn’t tell which one I was at that moment. Because he didn’t move, he just stood there. Looking at me like he’d always known where I’d end up, like this was inevitable, like I was.
My grip tightened around the stone until my fingers started to hurt. Time stretched long enough that something inside me started to twist, to pull too tight, like it needed to break or it would tear me apart from the inside, and then it did. A sound ripped out of me, a raw noise dragged up from somewhere low and violent in my chest, something that didn’t belong to language at all. It tore through the air, rough and ugly and loud enough to break whatever had settled between us, and I moved. Not toward him, toward the coffin. The stone came down hard. A dull, heavy crack against the surface, again and again. Each impact jarring up through my arms, into my shoulders, into my ribs where everything was already screaming, but it didn’t slow me down, it only made it worse.
Faster.
Harder.
The sound changed with each hit. First solid, resistance, then gradually weaker, the surface giving in to small fractures that spread under the repeated force. The paint chipped, the structure underneath started to strain, wood beneath the outer layer, old, weakened, but not gone. I hit it again, and again. Breathing gone completely uneven now, turning into something closer to gasping between strikes, my vision narrowing until all I could see was where stone met the coffin. Another hit, and something gave.
A split, small at first, then wider as I brought the stone down again, driving into the same point, forcing it open bit by bit until the material finally cracked under it, caving in just enough to leave a jagged opening where the surface had broken through. The sound that followed was hollow. I froze for a second, chestheaving, the stone still raised in my hands, sweat and dirt and something darker smeared across my skin. The hole was there, right in front of me, and behind me, I could still feel him. It wasn’t enough.
The hole was there, jagged and ugly, but it felt too small. Like it still held something together that I wanted gone, so I brought the stone down again, hard. The edge caught, splintered more of it open, widening the gap. Each hit grew sloppier, driven more by raw force than control, until the opening split wider and wider, the wood breaking apart into jagged pieces beneath the force. Just broken material pushed inward, torn apart.
I came to a stop when my arms finally started failing me. My grip slipped against the stone, mud and sweat making everything harder to hold onto, and for a second I just stood there bent over the grave, my whole chest straining hard enough to hurt while my body tried to recover from what I’d forced it through. I looked down into it and there was nothing, just darkness, thick, swallowing everything beyond the edge of the break. I couldn’t see anything inside, just a void where something used to be, and I just stood there staring into it.
Then something twisted in my chest and I straightened up, dropping the stone to the side without looking where it landed. My hands moved on their own, mechanical. I stepped closer to the edge of the coffin, positioned myself over the opening, pulled my dick out and gave my mom one last goodbye.
Poetic, isn’t it?
