Young Writers Society

The cemetery is quiet tonight. The air is hot and humid, thick enough to make a spirit retch on this summer’s night. Husky laughter and wheezing was often heard when the sun dropped from its holy zenith. No one came around these parts anymore. No one came to grieve, to cry or drop to their knees. The dead wailed in place of the family members who should have mourned for them. They were not talkative in the least today. The grave digger was not sure if he were sad or lonely. He had been a husk for awhile now, dry and lame, the waters of emotion long drunken into its last dregs. The passerby often blamed the panting and laughter on the dead.

“Dig ‘till you die. Dig, dig, dig. Sleep with the dead, dig ‘till you die. Dig. Die. Dig. Die.” The shovel hits the tense dirt and is flung over the lanky man's shoulder. His voice was steady, seemingly to be the voice of any common man. In Maryland, some people could slip by without a notice. No one cared about a guy who spent his night digging up dirt to fill with the space of a dead body. Why should they? They all shied away from him. He could not understand why. At times he had considered that it was perhaps the way he carried himself, but it could not be. It must’ve been that he didn’t have enough free time on his hands. Or maybe because of the bags under his eyes. It was always something.

Life seemed to drag on for the gravedigger. Each day seemed longer then the last one, and nothing exciting ever happened. He understood the common people would stray away from a man who buried the dead, a man who was plagued by hallucinations. Sometimes he was fine with that, but when loneliness crowded his mind a heavy mist of depression settled over him. It was 1959 in Maryland, the prime time to be out and about. They called it the dawn of a golden age. The gravedigger often contemplated if he would still be alive to witness the so called golden age. Pessimism always told him no, and he always agreed with it. Optimism was simply a facade of happiness, and he accepted being a melancholy loner. Pushing away his problems like he always did, his mind wandered to other things. 

Isaiah would bring him the misses’ casket soon enough, the French woman Calandre Delamore. The thought of her pallid white skin excited him. Did she have a husband? Was she a virgin? They were all very enthralling questions with no answers. With a huff he sat down, panting from the suffocation of the dusty air. His throat was dry, but the misses’ name was satisfying, a taste of thick honey on a poor man's cracked lips. It would provide enough comfort, to repeat her name over and over. And when he had finished doing so, for even a few hundred times, the moon’s sweet amber sheen looked appealing to his stomach. The grave digger could imagine the luscious, thick honey dripping off its surface. How it hungered him so! But even more than the hunger of food was the overpowering hunger of attraction. Imagining the woman was a delight enough, but to have his hands on her physical form would be a pleasing experience.

All he knew about the women was that she lapsed into a period of solitude. She refused to eat and drink, and did nothing but stare at her bedroom window with an empty look. The gravedigger was not certain if anyone tried to stop her death or figure out why she was acting in such a queer behavior. At least she did not die in physical pain. The soul of Calandre Delamore has already departed, and all that matters now is her body.

He enjoyed the still body of a corpse, how their skin was cold to the touch and how the chilliest of wind did not put a blush to their cheeks. How they could not make noise or refuse when he peeled off their clothes, or when he put a knife to their arm and suckled the salty red drink, like a kitten at its mother’s milk. It was all left up to his dark imaginings. The best thing about it was that it was not a crime if no one saw. In nightfall no one could glimpse his penetrating dark brown eyes, as those of an electrifying blue would stand out. It would not matter anyway. They would think of him to be a madman.

“But I am no madman,” he affirmed, “just a man with different tastes”.

As the night grew on him and the cricket’s chatter swelled into a cacophonous song, the gravedigger could no longer take it. Hands clenching at his sides, he stood and faced the forest’s edge. If only he could grab them all by their tiny throats and hear the bustle of their worried legs rubbing against each other as they choked. Even the crunch of their bodies under his boots would do. Some people were exactly like crickets; they would never shut up. They would go on and on about their day and somehow did not realize no one cared. When he was in the seventh grade, a girl named Jamey was boy obsessed and went through one childish relationship after the other.

They were all clearly of no value, and yet because she was such a sensitive and whiny child they were all serious matters in her eyes. It was disgusting to watch as all of her friends crowded around to comfort her. Not even the thought of Delamore’s flawless body could relieve his mind now. The gravedigger was cynical all of his life and saw no problem with it. If death itself fell into a man’s lap, its wings strained and crooked, he would feel sympathy for it nonetheless. When evil approaches a man, he accompanies it, and complains when it betrays him. It was a vile fault embedded into the lot of them.

Not only that, but Jamey had the face of a horse! What school boy would be attracted to such a horror? That was one of the gravedigger's most popular jokes when he was a boy. Everyone laughed, and so did the gravedigger, even though he felt nothing in his heart.

When the gravedigger acted like them in grade school, his peers adored him and his humor. As the act fell away, they no longer bothered to talk to him. Girls did not interest him either at that age, and so he was left alone in that regard. There was always something so interesting and attractive about the statuesque stillness of the dead. It was magical. As he grew, the bonds around his neck of animal magnetism strengthened until the breath was stolen from his chest. He could not get the thought of it out of his head. What did their blood taste like? How did they feel?

The gravedigger did not have a problem with living women, although the rise and fall of their chests always seemed to bother him greatly, and more so did the realization his did too. Conscious breathing was the worst. It reminded the gravedigger he was still alive. Sometimes he imagined what death would be like. One of those scenarios now emerged into his head.

Two hours from the present time, at exactly 3:16 A.M, the corpse of a twenty four year old man would be identified on these forest grounds. The frontal side of his throat is torn open and he is laying face down, the low swamp waters seeping through his fingertips. His left arm is torn down to the marrow and tufts of his black hair is wedged between his knuckles. Water bugs and roaches slurp off the rivers of his blood. To them, the only difference between water and blood is its thickness.

Smiling to himself, the gravedigger crouched down and squinted, imagining the exact place where his corpse would lay. The temptation to make the scenario come alive was overpowering. “My blood is the finest, and tastes the best,” he whispers in a guttural voice, “and it is too much of a treat for insects.” He stood, hurriedly walking away from the edge of the grinning forest that beckoned him back to its roost. Isiah should have been here by now! Each night he arrived at exactly one a.m, or just about. Something was wrong. The gravedigger could feel it. 

Hopefully the bugs are not after me, the gravedigger thought anxiously. Paranoid, he turned back for another look. Thousands of rotting, black teeth shook aggressively at him from the limbs of the tall trees. As they gnashed together, a high pitched whistle screeched from the depths of the forest. Breath hitching in his throat, the gravedigger stood there. He could feel the brushes of the tree’s spiked limbs on his shoulders. The night closed in on him until he could see nothing at all. Swamp water filled his nostrils and his body melted into the ground. And all was quiet, save for one barbed, sweet voice that resonated through his head.

"Wait for tomorrow."