Blood & Grunge: A Vermillion Strain Story

Chapter 24

In the beginning, Miranda thought she was in hell. That was the only way to describe it. Although her last breath led her into blackness, it was at some point interrupted by sensations and sounds. Something sharp was used to cut what felt like a giant letter Y into her torso. The pain was blinding, as if red flames were harvested into probes before piercing her skin. Hands thrust into her body, gripping things, and yanking them out. Someone mentioned how sad it all was and asked about parents and next of kin. She couldn't move or speak, no matter how hard she tried. She was locked in darkness. When she heard her brother's voice she thought she might be alive, rather than drifting around in the hell she had never believed in. He was sobbing and rambling on about last chances. He also mentioned something about an early loss of life. The next thing she heard was Scott. 

"I never should have let you walk to the bus." He must have sat something down, it clanked above her. "If I'd convinced you to wait, you'd still be here." 

She wanted to tell Scott he was wrong, and convince him that none of this was his fault. She heard him crying and he mumbled something about how he would name any daughters he had Miranda and Louise (her first and middle name) but that he couldn't imagine touching anyone else. Lane was there, too, crying just as hard. This seemed to happen day after day. She banged her head into the box she was in, she refused to call it what it was, and---wait, she could move! Her eyes fluttered open at the revelation, but it took no time to adjust to the dark.

She was surrounded by ruffled, silky material and a horrible odor permeated the air. It smelled like a cocktail of chemicals, probably from embalming. The silky fabric was stained with coagulated fluids, likely expelled from her body as she healed. She reached her arms out, but couldn't move them more than a few inches from her sides. When she reached up she was met with resistance as her palms hit the top of the box. She repeated this until she could no longer deny reality. I'm in a god damned coffin. She wriggled around and banged on the top of the casket with all her might, screaming at the top of her lungs.  

"Lane! Scott!" she yelled. "I can hear you guys! I'm not dead!" Her cries were met with silence. No one that visited could ever hear her. She screamed until her voice gave out, and when it returned she would scream again. She banged on the casket and even managed to force it open, but in the end it just caused dirt to flow in, trapping her further. She felt around her body numerous times, eventually discovering what the itchy feeling on her skin was. Bugs. She was stuck in a casket full of dirt and bugs.

She prayed to a god she was now sure didn't exist that someone would dig her up, that Scott or Lane would finally hear her. The sound of their voices was comforting for a while, but this comfort transformed into pain. She always knew when they were coming, because she could hear their breathing and the pitter-patter of their hearts. Her throat was dry and hot, as if molten lava wrapped in sandpaper coursed through it. At first, fond memories of loved ones brought a smidgen of relief as she fought her way out of the hellish tomb. The memories grew demented with time. She would think back to sharing a room with Lane and how adorable he was as a child, but her mind raced to the recollection of how his heart sped up when he woke in the morning. It filled with surges of hot, red blood as his body went from complete rest to activity. It had to have shot through his veins like lightning bolts, probably starting in the valves of his heart and permeating everything from his aorta to the long, thick arteries he had in his thigh. She didn't recall ever having known what an aorta was, but she did now. Lane was pale in the winter, and sometimes when they played outside long enough his cheeks would get red, filling with blood that rushed so close to the surface of his skin, just begging to be let out. She noticed faint little streaks of blue and green on his arms, gorgeous tunnels of hot blood that would have spurt out like water from a garden hose had something cut them open.