Take that Anger to Your Grave

***Warning: This story contains themes of mental health issues, substance abuse, suicide, physical violence and gore.***

Gray stones built the path running along the Foxwood cemetery in a labyrinth maze. You could get dizzy without a map. Everyone got one at the funeral. The office keeps maps handy in case you need one. But you gotta have a pamphlet to the funeral to get a map, so I'm going to have to make my way through blind.

I wasn't invited, because the family blames me for mom getting sick.

Let me tell you, cemeteries are all mad filthy cash grabs. All of them.

Why does it take hundred of dollars to cremate someone when fire is free everywhere else?

I guess it's legal to burn your own body but not someone else's, huh?

It really should be illegal to charge families a college tuition lump sum worth of money for their grief. Funeral homes may throw in a wonderful consolation prize of some nice mahogany for your loved one's to rot in.

Some say if you follow the voices of your loved ones at the Foxwood cemetery, you don't need a map and they will guide you to their headstones. It's said the more family you have buried here the easier it is to find your way back to them.

Thing is, the last time I followed the voices in my head I ended up at a buss stop with a grocery cart full of stolen TV's, 10 4-lokos, a shinny laptop and 3 different types of wireless headphones.

My dumb ass finally realized that buss stops were not the cliental for such luxury purchases and I should have aimed lower.

The meth and 4-lokos I had on me sold better. But then I was out meth, sober and I needed a fix.

I didn't find one so my Mom picked me up from the buss stop and took me to an inpatient clinic.

We wrote each other letters, I drew her pictures about my feelings and dread for life. Until 1 day the letters stopped coming.

My cousin called me weeks after my mom's the funeral. My dad died when I was 18 so now the only thing left of my parents was broken memories of me pleading them to believe all my lost promises.

When my mom was dying in a hospital bed alone, I was still stuck learning the same shit over and over again. I talked to therapists about my childhood on a loop. I ate ham sandwiches and pudding cups while coloring emotion wheels about what I feel inside.

Now I have no idea what I'm supposed to learn or feel or think.

But I miss my mom, so I broke out and came here.

I didn't cause her cancer, but I did leave, so I guess my family can think whatever they want... It's not like I disagree with them.

I left and never got healthy enough to come back and take care of her like she took care of me. But just because my family lives across the world in some magical cult doesn't absolve them of blame.

I've have this argument so many times in the my head that the words turn stale and my gut can't even make it through the whole thing anymore.

When the weight of words die enough to become burdens, they weight you down like an anchor the more they're spoken.

"Mom if you're out there. How's the weather down there? Better than cancer I bet huh?" I'm saying to the quiet glee of musky air. The air had a weight to it. I can't quite describe where or how I feel it, "I miss you," I said to whoever was listening.

Superstations aside, there is something about this place... "I'll find you mom. Talk to me. I'm here. I'm sorry."

I keep listening for the wind to whisper sweet secrets to me. I'm interrupted by fly buzzing in my ear and jolting a shock up my spine. I shake it out and keep walking. Got a lot of ground to cover.

Mom was somewhere near the middle is what my cousin told me. Didn't have the decency to give me a pamphlet, but whatever, maybe I deserve the hard way.

My entire family has plots here. I have one secured next to my mom, unless they sold it. They all go to this culty church that my mom broke away from. I think that's why she lives way out here, because she wanted nothing to do with it.

During work hours groundskeepers, keep the cemetery clean, my cousin told me. They pick up the food that people leave out with the superstition that it's their grandfather that's eating his favorite cheese burger and not a trash can filled with dead flowers and wasteful wishes.

My cousin told me people burry their loves one at the Foxwood Cemetery, because the grounds are sacred and breathe what one could never say.

You can eventually find your way to the center where you can visit the altar. As per usual labyrinth rules, you give something from your pocket or whatever you have to give and leave with a item placed at the altar or whatever the labyrinth provides.

"You look better."

I pause and look around. It's wind out here and me. I guess my psychosis voices are back and at the worst place and time.

"You know. I like cheese burgers too," says a voice.

"Hello?" I call out.

"It really is you," The voice says.

I lost my body. I could see skulls with human lips sitting on their gravestones and moving their mouths. They wore dirty suits and torn dresses.

There were dirty naked, skeletons. Some dirtier than others.

"Your mind spins. We know you hear us. You hear everything don't you."

"Don't listen to them son. Look go through the path straight ahead and turn left. Don't forget my voice. We get louder the further you go into the center," Mom says.

I hold my gut with my hands. I'm nearly tipping over as I'm walking. The air is colder. My bones feel bare, outside of my skin.

But I keep walking towards tall hedges that stand 30 feet up above me as I began to walk through the entrance to the labyrinth. I counted 12 possible entrances and 12 stones in front of each entrance.

I can see the light fade quickly the further I look down. The sundown is nearly finished. I won't have any light but my I phone.

"I'm coming," I tell my mom.

Floating over my head, I see chomping teeth, rotted black. "You know we still get hungry," a voice tells me.

A skeleton emerges from the bushes wearing an army uniform. "I normally don't eat white boy's, but you'll do just fine."

He reaches his hand out and I smack it away- but miss- no I didn't miss.

My hand passed through! This is just my imagination!

Nothing psychosis can't explain. Nothing some duped up meds and meth can't explain.

But I still can't explain how I hear my mom. "Mom is this because I didn't take my pills?"

I keep going through like she told me too.

"No honey, it's because you didn't take my ashes and spread them on the beach like I told you too," Mom says.

"I thought it was family tradition," I tell.

"It's a trap son. We're all trapped here. When have we ever listened to the family?"

I was speechless. My throat started to choke up.

"Left!" Mom yells.

I see two openings. The left blanketed in darkness, but the right carries a sliver moonlight along the leaves, showing a further walkway.

A numbing squeezes arounds 1 leg. Then the leg muscles compress thin.

On the right, moonlit path a much larger snake slithers slowly behind more smarms of baby snakes chasing me fast through the dirt that glittered silver like sparkles from Moon.

"Left!" Mom yells. "Stay away from the Moonlight!"

The large snake lunges at my jaw and gets a chunk. The blood runs hot over the shoulder and down my freezing neck. The blood clogs the inside of my ear. Other snakes are chomping at my legs and squeezing my legs totally numb and swollen.

My knees buckle. I fall on my back and shake some of the baby snakes off. I flip my body over and crawl up onto my elbow's and knees.

I feel a piece of my ear missing and flapping broken in the wind picking up quickly. Leaves fly up and blow past me. Waves of dirt smacks my face and temporarily blind me.

My shaved skin scraps off my elbows and knee's as I crawl. The larger snake slides up my back and weighs my chin down to smack on the dirt. I bite my tongue and well-up more blood to swallow.

Desperately, I keep moving.

I see a skeleton hand with a wedding ring emerge from a shadow on the opposite side.

The snakes tongue rolls up my back. I feel a sharp spike on their tail rattle slice up the only feeling I have on my left leg. The slithering sound gets louder inside of my ear. "You belong to us." The snake says, slithering afterwards, like it was laughing.

I'm flailing my arms and legs, making front facing dirt angels. I dig my finger into the dirt for traction and come up with enough to stay trapped with a grip.

"Let your bones be our soup. You know deaths face don't you?" The snake says.

I see the 1st time I ever used meth with my dad at 10.

I see the worn faces of my parents the 1st time they found drugs in my bedroom dresser.

I see my eyes chasing my body during psychosis at the buss bench.

I see cop sirens and jail cells and the bright florescent lights of psyc hospitals.

I see a judge slam their hammer on my gut.

I see my reflection in the dirty mirror every time I saw a stranger that I knew I recognized. Their faces remain shapeless, but a warm, slicing pain grips my heart.

Death.

I see my death. My only friend left. My symbol of nothing-ness that comes to greet me at my rock bottom. Well... rock bottoms.

"I do. I know Grim's face and it's not you," I tell the snack.

The snake's hissed was so loud I covered my ears and clenched. I feel the weight off my back lighten.

But the baby snakes squeezed my legs together and wrapped my arms around my back. The mound of snake began to move me backward. Somehow carrying me further into the moonlight.

I see the hand reach out further from the moonlight, showing half a body wearing a long, dark purple dress. 1 leg stuck out underneath wearing my mother's favorite shoes.

"Please! He's my boy! He's my son!" Mom says.

I close eyes and let the black take me.

---

When I wake up a hooded figure holding a long shovel stands before me basking in the moonlight. Their eyes were human and their lips were bright red. They were wearing the moonlight like it like a coat. their hood blinded with silver and their body was made of bones, but brighter and cleaner than the other skeletons.

"Hello, Grim," I say.

"You might be soup right now if it weren't for me," Grim says, leaning on the shovel. Hoards of skeleton's knelt all around him, holding handle and remained still. More skeletons hung on the bushes towering over us. Some whispered amongst themselves, other moved around to get a better view. The crowd grew larger with every passing moment.

The moon was full and brighter than I have ever seen it.

Grim stands at what I assume is the altar of the labyrinth. There are a pile of bones on top of the altar, along with the various trinkets and items that people who visit the cemetery pay tribute with.

"Thanks? What am I now?" I say.

"You are a man with 2 choices." Grim says, using the shovel as a walking stick to pace around the alter.

"Death or my mom?"

"Easy guess. No. Choice 1: you can tell the truth. Choice 2: You die."

"Are you going to heal my probably fatal injuries if I tell the truth?"

"You have more flesh than any of us and going to act as if we have a spare stash ?" Grim says, laughing off the whip comment.

"Fine. So I know your face. You think that's interesting?"

"Many know my face, but not my name," Grim says shaking his finger at me.

"Lucky guess," I say smiling, shrugging my shoulders. I immediately wince in pain, as I realize my missing ear chunk. The shock starts to wear off and I feel dizzy from the gapping neck wound. Who knows how many lovely missing pieces were chomped off my legs?

Grim did not like this answer. His face turned sour. His cheekbones sank and the intensity of his eyes turned piercing.

"I am the soil of this sovereign place. My breath gives air to the trapped souls who find their way imprisoned here. How do you expect me to deal with a visitor who hears all of our cries without ancestorial blood to bind your ears?"

"I was hearing my mother's voice?"

"Liar! You hear us all. Tell me! Was your ancestorial blood was spilled over this entire soil. Are you, as we say a sign of the stars?"

"I want to speak with my mom." I scrunch my nose and sniffle up blood. My jaw bites down. I feel assertive. I see only Grim inside a focused tunnel-vision. I finally have something to bargain.

"Be careful what you wish for," Grim says as the wind around the entire surface spins a whirling tornado.

I wipe off dirt and see my mother's purple dress and favorite shoes. The skeleton wearing them was timid and turned away, clutching their chest and shaking.

"Mom?"

When she turned to look at me, I knew. My mother's eyes were as green as ever, lit like a bright lamp amongst the gray and dim colors around all of us.

"You were supposed to go left," Mom said.

"I'm sorry! I'm sorry I left. I was never the son you deserved, but let's get out of here. Let me save you!" I tell my mom, who looked at me somber and confusingly at peace.

"I knew we would meet again. I didn't know it would be like this. I am not in pain son. But yes I am dead and trapped here, like the rest of us."

"Good. Well let's break you out then."

"Shhhhhh. Be quiet. I am already due to pas. I am at peace. I feel it. So light. So much air. So much room. Thank you son. I will always love you."

"I love you... I"

"We don't have much time. Listen. Grim is not our captor. Grim is our protector."

"Protector? From who?"

"From life," Mom said, as her body turned into moonlight and faded up through a shinning direct beam that led right up to the full Moon itself.

I cry. Harder than I knew I had air for. My fist tighten. My muscles fill with blood. I feel strong and angry.

"You see now. Don't you," Grim says handing me the shovel.

"Yes I do," I said standing up and take the shovel from their boney hand. "Anger is a secondary emotion. I did not see behind what it was trying to tell me."

"Undeath anger, your gut speaks. What does it say?" Grim asks.

"It says that all the drugs, the bull-shit, the mistakes. I was addicted to my anger I needed it. I couldn't let it go."

"I see as you do. The anger was attached to something bigger wasn't it?"

"Yes. Much bigger. This life had nothing for me. I see my purpose now." I look at Grim. His eyes were no longer angry, but sincere and familiar.

I walk over to the altar. I look behind me and see Grim taking off his coat. As he puts it on my back, he disappears.

I take the shovel and dig my own grave. The dirt falls easily. I only dig a layer out until I see it sink into darkness.

I see no sight of the bottom.

At my feet the baby snakes lift me up. The large snake slithers on top of my shoulder.

"Master Grim. You know your name. Protect us. May our right of passage remain."

I fall forward into what I was always falling towards. Every mistake led me here.

To save my mom and wait for you...

I am Grim.

You now know my name.

How will you long will it be until you take my place.