Unwept(2)

She jerked backed her talon-like digits from the lid for fear of pain as they caught against the rim under the lid. She suddenly grasped that her bones were rock hard, indestructible. She felt nothing.

Bright anger mingled with the terror of being trapped again; she shoved mightily. Bones creaked; gaping jaw clenched; shoulder blades bit into the slippery satin lining.

The lid sprang open. Air! Ellis longed to breathe. She wheezed in determinedly between her whistling teeth.

I will breathe this air! she promised herself.

The dust rose up around her. Organs, muscles, sinew, cartilage, all gathered to her bones, forming around her writhing framework. Her beating heart pumped blood painfully through veins and arteries in a red liquid haze. And finally a soft downy covering of pink and cream skin covered all—cheeks, neck, breasts, stomach, back, hips, legs, feet and hands. Her hair caressed her form. She breathed in deeply, her lungs on fire with the rich oxygen around her. Ellis’s body was awash in pain as her reunited parts regained life.

A groan, increasing to a full shriek, escaped her lips and her liquid eyes focused. She feebly pulled the flimsy coffin shroud around her weak and vulnerable form. More clearly now, she heard the soft cry of an infant in the distance.

A tall man stood directly above her exposed grave, a lantern in one hand and a shovel in the other. He held the lantern low by his side. He remained dark and faceless. Ellis was illuminated completely by the lantern and felt almost as though she could somehow slip into the light and away from here.

Questions raced through her head. But only a weak “thank you” escaped her parched lips. She lifted a frail arm, expectant of assistance from her rescuer.

“That body! It’s obscenity. How can I possibly help you now?” he said, biting off the words. He turned on his heel and threw down the shovel. The lamplight gleamed off the buckle of his tall, shiny boots. Ellis heard the digger speaking to someone in the blackness and heard an indistinct female voice in response. He retreated into the night, carrying the lantern and cruelly leaving Ellis again in the darkness.

“Wait! I’m alive!” she called out pleadingly. The figure did not or would not hear her. Ellis climbed from her coffin and out of the grave of fresh earth, which was moist, rich and oddly comforting, crumbling coolly under her aching hands.

She stood on a vast landscape of ruined buildings, scorched earth and desolation. The battleground stretched to the horizon under a leaden sky.

She stared back into the dark confines of her little coffin. Relief and revulsion swelled in her and she felt light-headed. She pulled the silken shroud about her newly re-formed, delicate body. Tears poured over her cheeks, her eyes rolled back in her head and a moan escaped her lips. The distant crying became more distinct and closer.

The dark figure wrapped cold fingers around her wrist and started leading her away.…





2

JOURNEY

Ellis! Wake up!

Ellis started and gasped awake. In the dizzy free fall out of sleep she gripped the arm of the cushioned bench. The train swayed and rumbled noisily beneath her. The Pullman car in which she rode was as much of a shock to her now as the dream had been. She took in the rich paneling of the walls, the gentle curve of the cream-colored ceiling, the maroon carpeting and the brass fittings in an instant. It was all very familiar and yet disquieting, as she could not remember boarding the train or, for that matter, the cushioned bench on which she sat.

She inspected her gloved hands. Their shape was familiar and unchanged by the ravages of her dream. She breathed in deeply, fully, and released it. The need for air was with her still. The last binding ribbons of sleep slipped away.

The only remnant of the nightmare was the persistent crying of a baby. Ellis straightened up on her bench and looked about the small train compartment. A large basket with a squirming bundle rested on the facing bench across from her and was being studiously ignored by the thin, pinched-faced woman in a boater hat and nurse’s uniform sitting next to it. The woman had set aside the paper she was reading and was now staring at Ellis with annoyance. The once-opulent railcar was otherwise devoid of any occupants.

“Don’t rouse yourself, dearie,” the stick of a woman said, reaching across to pat Ellis’s hands. Ellis recoiled a little at the stranger’s gesture.

The nurse’s eyes were as cold as the glass of her spectacles. “Poor thing, just be calm. Hush now; we’ll be there soon.”

Ellis felt confused, wondering why the nurse was saying to her what she should be saying to the infant. “I’m sorry, have we been introduced?”

The woman turned her bespectacled gaze on Ellis and spoke in flat tones. “In fact, we have and we’ve been through that already. I’m Nurse Finny Disir.”