Chapter One: "Bone to Pick"
Roosevelt Cemetery – June 17th, 2:37 AM
Not from rain. From the cold sweat the earth seems to weep every year around this time.
It’s heavy tonight. Thick. The moon hangs low and gold, hazed by humidity, casting a strange glow over the headstones. A dog barks in the distance, hollow and echoing. Somewhere nearby, an owl watches us, still as stone.
Ezra lies beneath me, his bare chest glowing faintly in the moonlight, taut and heaving.
I’ve got my hands planted firmly on either side of him, knees digging into the soil, and I’m riding him slow. Deep. Unrelenting.
“Not tonight,” I whisper. “Tonight, it’s just us.”
The grave beneath us—my grave—presses cold and solid against Ezra’s spine, the marble edge of the headstone nudging at his shoulder. I can feel it, too. A subtle hum. My name is etched inches from us in cheap stone:
Beloved Daughter. Taken Too Soon.
I fucking hate that inscription.
Flashback – Roosevelt High, Graduation Morning
My mother was ironing my sash when she told me to “sit with my knees closed and my chin up like a lady.”
As if dignity was something I could press and fold.
As if grace came naturally when the whole world was waiting for you to mess up.
As a Black girl at Roosevelt High, you didn’t just have to be good.
I played the part well. Wore the pearls, said "yes ma’am," smiled in all the right pictures. But behind my back, I knew what they called me.
Slut. Fast tail. Jezebel.
All because I flirted. All because I used the way people saw me—curvy, brown-skinned, loud-laughed, and confident—to get what I needed. What I earned.
If I kissed someone, it was because they had something I wanted.
If I fucked someone, it was because they were a stepping stone.
Ezra’s hands clench the dirt beside him, fingers twitching like he’s trying to hold on to reality.
“You’re shaking,” I murmur, breathless. My body’s coated in sweat, dew, and memory.
“I’m trying not to come,” he hisses through gritted teeth.
I laugh, low and throaty. “Why fight it?”
“Because I don’t want this to end.”
I slow my hips. Drag my nails up his ribs. Feel the ripple of his restraint.
“I don’t end,” I whisper. “I outlive.”
I lean forward, kissing him hard—claiming his mouth the way I claimed my own damn death. His legs lift slightly, wrapping around my hips, and for a moment he surrenders.
The way he looks up at me, eyes glassy, mouth parted—it’s not lust.
No one looks at me like this anymore. Not since I died. Not since they buried me as some cautionary tale instead of the goddamn woman I was.
Here, with Ezra, I’m not a memory. I’m not a statistic.
Flashback – The Hallways, Graduation Day
The hallways were too quiet when I walked by. People whispered too softly and too often.
Jake, my ex-boyfriend, refused to meet my eyes.
Leslie, my best friend since second grade, told me to “just let it go” when I mentioned my plan to expose what I’d learned. What I’d seen.
I had a folder. Names. Records. A cassette tape with audio of a teacher threatening a student.
“I’m gonna burn the whole damn place down,” I’d said, staring into my locker mirror.
My reflection smirked back.
Like it knew I wouldn’t get the chance.
I pick up the rhythm again—slow and grinding, then fast and deep. Ezra’s legs lift involuntarily, knees trembling as he gasps my name.
I reach behind me and slip my fingers between my legs, not because I need help, but because I want to feel everything.
I want to feel the slickness. The pulse. The life they took from me.
Ezra groans, louder this time, and his hands shoot up to grab my waist.
“I can’t—I can’t hold it,” he gasps.
“Yes, you can,” I growl. “Because I own this.”
He shouts, a cracked, raw sound, and his orgasm hits like a dam breaking. His body convulses beneath me, legs kicking, throat arched.
It tears through me, hard and hot, leaving my vision swimming. I cry out, head thrown back, body trembling, my entire spirit collapsing into that one, blinding moment.
We lie there in the wet grass, chests heaving, wrapped around each other like ruins.
Flashback – Afterlife Orientation, Two Weeks Later
I remember the flickering lights of the waiting room. The elevator music. The fake plant in the corner.
“Welcome to Reapers, Inc.” the sign said. “Where death meets purpose.”
Ezra had walked in, chewing a toothpick. He looked like sin dipped in funeral silk.
He took one look at me and muttered, “You’re the dead girl everyone’s whispering about.”
“What the hell is this?” I asked.
He leaned on the desk. “This? This is your new job, Carmen.”
Ezra strokes my back with slow, reverent fingers. I rest my head on his chest, listening to the phantom beat of a heart that hasn’t pumped blood in decades.
“I remembered more,” I say.
“I think someone drugged me. I remember my tongue feeling heavy. Music slowing down. Faces blurring. Someone whispered in my ear—‘You weren’t supposed to make it this far.’”
Ezra exhales slowly. “It’s coming back to you.”
We sit up together. I glance at my headstone.
Beloved Daughter. Taken Too Soon.
I trace the letters with a dirt-smudged fingertip. “They should’ve written: Buried with unfinished business.”
Ezra stands, pulling on his jacket. “We’ve got a soul to collect.”
I stretch, bones popping. My knees ache, but I grin.
“Girl, fifteen. OD’d in the church basement?”
“Yep. She still thinks she’s alive.”
“Let’s go show her otherwise. I hate doing that.”
I finish getting dressed and I walk beside him, sated and powerful.
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