what up besties sorry i haven't been online much but would u like to read the piece i wrote for my final for creative writing? it's metaporically about being trans n neurodivergent n disabled n ppl loving an idea of you more than you, but also it is about a zombie who comes back, not wrong, but not quite what anyone wanted..
(cw for death, electrocution, being buried (not quite alive), and complicated feelings about gender & name but that journey not being completed yet.)
- - -
Grave News
Amelia Marquez, 34, passed away in a tragic accident…
Later, when anyone learns she woke up already buried, she can see the horror movie assumptions playing out behind their eyes. The thought of waking up, trapped in a tiny, dark, airless space, scrabbling at the walls, gasping for breath, the weight of the earth above pressing down, down, down…
She smiles and accepts their pity, their horrified dismay, and does not tell them about lying awake, perfectly motionless, trying to figure out how to move. About how easy it is not to struggle for breath when pulling air into your lungs takes conscious effort. About pushing at different groups of muscles, her body twitching and twisting in the dark, until she works out forward, works out force, works out the flex of her hand as it pushes through velvet, then oak, then dirt, then dirt, then dirt.
Amelia claws her way out of her own grave, not frantic, not berserk, but deliberate. Gradual. Almost mechanical, as she practices moving by repeating the same thing again and again, her patient hands working their way through wood, through earth, to the surface.
(It isn't until later, standing in her parents' doorway and listening to the screams, that she realizes what ceaseless digging does to the human hand. She realizes that she somehow did not feel the pain as she dug. She realizes she needs to buy gloves.)
…the home she shared with her fiancé…
Cole had been so certain about his repairs. Fifty bucks at Home Depot and a couple of days of work, and Amelia’s concerns brushed aside.
“I’ve got this, Ames. Way better than hiring a contractor.” And she had agreed, had let him do it himself, had made dinner for a week while he spent his evenings messing with wires and fuses, assuring her that he was nearly done, that the video on YouTube made it so easy.
Cole hadn’t been home when the lights went out, when Amelia went to the fuse box and tried to flip everything back on. When the jumble of wires in their walls shorted and flared and spread electricity through her body.
When it killed her.
Once her parents call, Cole drops everything to rush over. He falls to his knees in front of her, staring up into her face through a haze of tears and hope and shock.
“You’re back. Ames, Amy, you’re back, how…”
She stares down at her lap, making sure her hands are covered by the blanket her mother had nestled around her.
…a beautiful light in our lives, extinguished too soon. Her friends and family…
Her memorial photo, the black clothes, the incense on the table, are all gone the morning after she comes back, packed away in boxes or thrown out in opaque garbage bags. Hands hesitate before touching her. They keep her at home, talking about rest, about recuperating.
“Since you’ve been…” She sees the glances, the mouthed no, don’t say it. “…in your condition. It’s important to rest up.”
It’s as though they think one wrong move, one wrong word, will kill her again.
She wonders a little bit if they’re right.
Her mother is the gentlest she’s ever been brushing Amelia’s hair, her hands careful, her voice filling the air. “And I unpacked some of your nice clothes,” she says, working through a tangle. “You don’t have to wear sweatpants anymore, I found your skirts…”
Amelia looks down at her loose, comfortable clothes, the t-shirt worn and soft against her skin. She thinks about struggling with buttons on a nice blouse, thinks about whether ruffles will still itch the way they did when she was alive. Thinks about the way the mottled colors on her legs have lasted too long to be called bruises. Maybe she should call it decay.
Her mother clicks her tongue sadly as a few strands of hair pull loose from her head. “These knots…”
“What if I cut it?” Amelia asks. She’d been thinking about short hair back when she was alive. And it would be easier. “I can’t make you brush it for me every day.”
Concern melds with distress on her mother’s face. “You can’t cut it,” she hisses. “What if it never grows back?”
...bright, funny, resilient, the first to volunteer...
Once, she accidentally sleeps for three days. That’s the kind of thing the living joke about—so tired I could sleep for a week, as impossible as that would actually be. Turns out it’s easy for the dead—easy to lie still, easy to stop pushing, easy to drift away into forgiving darkness.
She wakes to her mother weeping, her father pacing in the hall, Cole pale and haunted and clenching his phone in two hands. The funeral home’s phone number must be burned into the screen by now, but he hasn’t pressed the call button. Not yet.
Amelia makes herself sit up in bed, reaches out to him, and sees him flinch.
Right. Gloves.
Even as she twists her face into a smile, she knows she's done it wrong. Her eyebrows are at odd angles, her lips curled strangely. She tries for light-hearted: "Whoops, close one! Don't want to wake up in a grave again."
No one laughs.
...kept forever in our memories and our hearts...
Late at night, she hears her parents whispering. “Is she all right?” her mother asks. “My little girl, my Amelia—she’s not acting like herself. She’s so tired, so...”
“She just came back,” her father says. His voice is firm, comforting. Determined not to let any uncertainty slip through. The same voice he’s always used when her mother worries—the same voice he used when Amelia told him her own worries, her doubts about the future, about Cole. She always ended conversations with her father sure that he was right.
“She’ll be back to herself soon enough,” he says. “We just have to keep her active. Remind her about being alive.”
“But what if she’s not herself? I know we said not to bring up…” Her mother’s voice drops, furtive. “…the Z word…”
“We’re keeping an eye on her. We’ll notice if she does anything that needs… intervention.”
She closes her eyes. Wonders if she can turn off her hearing. Wonders if it would have been easier, staying in her grave.
The next day, she brings up moving back in with Cole. He says he'd be happy to have her, and she pretends not to notice the look he exchanges with her parents.
…brought out the best in people, always ready to help, to listen…
Cole is attentive. He brings her pastries from the bakery near their apartment and tells her about his day—work, his hobbies, a dog he saw at the park. Shows her pictures and videos on his phone. Mentions people by name, and she's not sure if they're new, since her death, or if she managed to forget people she knew about before.
She knows which muscles to move for an understanding nod, an encouraging smile. She knows how to make herself chew and swallow food, how to bring it back up later so it doesn’t just sit and rot in her stomach. She still remembers the right way to ask questions so Cole shares more.
There’s no real reason not to do it, but the more she thinks about it—the more she imagines forcing her body into the right place, the ordeal she’ll have to go through later—the less she wants to do it. She sits silently, pastries untouched, letting the muscles in her face go slack.
“Ames? You okay?”
It takes a second; she has to fill her lungs to respond. She tips one side of her mouth up in what could have been a reassuring smile, once. “Fine. Just tired.”
He sits next to her, worry pinching between his eyebrows. "Of course. I'm sorry. Let's just sit here and watch TV? There are new episodes of all our favorites."
The shows all feel distant, the plots blurred, the characters unfamiliar. She watches with him for hours anyway.
...a kind and giving spirit, she wanted to create...
Shattering the mug isn't intentional. Even if she's started to resent the comforting cups of tea Cole brings her. Even if she's sick of pulling latex gloves over her cloth ones so she can wash the dishes. Even if the cutesy blobs of yellow and pink painted on it have always been too much, too bright, too false-forced-cheer, from the moment she was gifted it eight years ago.
She still doesn't mean to let go of it, the muscles in her hand (and there are so many muscles in the human hand, so many to keep track of, and most of hers are damaged already) loosening and spasming as she's walking to the sink.
The jagged pieces of it surround her, and Cole's hysterical babble of questions and assurances—"Are you okay, I've got it, just hold still"—fades into background noise as Amelia leans down to try and gather the shards.
A hand wraps around her wrist and she turns to meet Cole's wide, frightened eyes. "Amy, your foot."
A full inch of jagged ceramic is buried in her heel.
She does not bleed, even after Cole pries it out.
...although she will never fulfill those plans, her dream will live on...
"Ames, I'm worried." Cole reaches out, stops with his hand just over her thigh. Puts it down on the chair next to her, not touching. "This is... I know you've been through a lot. But you're acting like—"
She turns her head until she can look at his face. Her neck jerks in the wrong direction a couple of times, but she's getting better at it, faster. "Like?"
Cole's eyes are red, and can't quite meet hers. "Like..." His shoulders drop. "Not like yourself."
He waits a beat—two—and gets up, breathing out harshly. "Ever since you came back, Amy. You barely look at me. You barely talk to me. You don't even like doing the things you used to like. I understand about your... condition, but..."
...pray she rests well, and waits in peace for her loved ones...
She sits in their apartment—Cole's apartment—long after he's gone, watching the afternoon sunlight shift across the space they used to share. Her books are still on the shelf. She remembers packing up her childhood bookshelf to bring to their new home. The painting she bought at a flea market is still hanging on the wall. She remembers joking with Cole about picking up a masterpiece for two dollars.
Looking at them now, she doesn't even particularly want to bring them with her.
...invited to celebrate her life at...
Merely dragging her body across the ground would be easier. But, even though she's wrong, even though she's not the person they think about when they look at her, she's still not a mindless, lurching zombie. Mostly.
She walks. One step forward.
Was she ever the person they thought about when they looked at her?
One step.
Maybe now she'll find out.
One step.
...in lieu of flowers, the family asks...
She settles into her seat on the train, making sure her hands are covered. A new start doesn't mean much if she sends an entire train into a panic.
Someone sits next to her, bouncing in their seat. "Hey there! Looks like we've got eight hours ahead of us. What's your name?"
She hesitates. Amelia. Amy. Ames.
"Mel," she says. It's strange in her mouth. Just slightly wrong, the same way she's just slightly wrong. Maybe that’s the right fit.
