I've fallen behind, but might do some two-a-days to catch up. Image is in the public domain, source unknown.
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Grave
“You gotta see this!”
Calvin would admit, it wasn’t that first thing he’d have
expected. They’d only turned off the wooded trail behind the school a few
minutes ago, but this space was hidden by thick underbrush and a low rise in
the soft earth. Somehow, here in the trackless woods, someone had brought a
casket, its finish long faded to a mottled rorshach of mold, but the lid and
tapered sides still appearing solid and whole.
“It’s… a coffin”. Moments like this never find Cal at his
brightest. Neither does time with Bruce, truth be told. He always seems to be
thinking a step ahead of everyone. In class. On the track team. Out here
noplace. “uh… why?” IT seemed a good question. They might not be quite old
enough to drink or even vote, but they were past the age at which the mere
sight of a coffin should mean that much.
Not that either had yet seen death.
“I’m gonna take her out here.”
“Take who out here? And… why? Won’t the coffin gross her
out? Whoever it is?”
Bruce laughed. “Does it matter who? And it’s perfect.” He
tapped the top of the casket with the back of his hand. “Solid. And the way
it’s propped up here, it’s the perfect height to bend her over it. And get
this..” he paused. “It’s a grave for her virginity.” He gave that cocky grin of
his that always made Cal either want to punch him or to be him. Sometimes both.
Bruce coaxed Diana to the spot on the very next day. It felt
right to him, her dark hair and affected black-painted nails and dark lipstick
the color of old blood. That’s the kind of girl you fuck on the creepy coffin
in the middle of the woods. Certainly not platinum-blond Lana from the
cheerleading and the debate team. No, this was a place for the pale-skinned
wisp with her darklined eyes and bad poetry. She didn’t gasp in shock when she
saw it, didn’t even have a catch in her breath. Bruce glanced sideways at her,
saw her biting her lip thoughtfully. Maybe this wasn’t right? Maybe Lana or
Diana or someone else would be appropriately spooked and give in more eagerly.
Maybe he’d gotten too much into the looks of the thing.
No matter. He sat boldly on the macabre bit of woodland
furniture, patted the faded hardwood top next to him. “Join me?”
She laughed. Not an unpleasant or cruel laugh, but a laugh
nonetheless. “Do you know,” she said, “that Mary Shelley was said to have lost
her virginity on a grave?” She paused. “On her mothers’s grave.”
“That’s.. very interesting.” She’d still not sat down; Bruce
wasn’t sure he was doing this right. Wasn’t sure why she was the one standing
and him sitting. But.. .she was talking about losing virginity. That’s a good
sign, right?
“And you know…” she leaned in close to him, traced his
jawline with one of those red-painted nails. Up close he could see that the
polish was chipped at one end. That little imperfection drew his eye, “You
know… nobody remembers the name of the guy she lost it with. Just hers.”
Her eyes flick down almost imperceptibly to his lap, then
back to the head of the casket. “So you need to ask… whose story is this? And
whose grave are we about to defile?”
Two weeks later the search was winding down; they’d keep
looking, of course, but it was winding down to the rote performance of those
who know they’d never find who they were looking for. Cal returned to the
clearing for what felt like the hundredth time; off the path into the trackless
woods, over the low earthen hill and… to nothing. No coffin, no half-dug grave.
Just a gentle depression in the soft earth.
Nothing more.
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