Mistakes

Some stories I would not share, because I knew they would terrify you. Some tales were better off buried six feet under, where they could never hurt you. Where they would stay there, unmoved, hopefully dead.

But some would rise back up from the dead, blasting out the dirt and mud, climbing up in rotten flesh and no blood, in torn up blue skin, and desires for nothing more than revenge.

Powerful, undead stories like that would always come back to haunt you. To whisper in your ears at night, when you believed you were just having a horrible headache that you could not fall asleep, to remind you of your sins and worst fears.

They would convince you to regret more, forgive less, and forget nothing. To dig your nails onto your own neck, to keep digging until there was blood, until you realized something was branching in your mind.

You buried them. You watched them bleed out and die, you were sure they were done. You sighed in relief that the world would never know what you had done. It ended happily ever after for everyone after all.

Then you woke up one night in sweats and tears, blood flowing thick from your chest. Your bloody nails shrunk in horror. You heard them, those whispers from the past. You felt their hands on your back, around your ankles, around your wrists, your neck.

You knew then that there was no way you could move on, no way you could escape. No way you could run away from the madness you had brought upon yourself the day you grabbed the shovel.