"Miracle"

The lightning and thunder buzz Morton awake. 

At least, he thinks it’s lightning, but the sound is faint, like rain on a concrete roof. The darkness resting on him remained firm in its opaque determination.

Morton reaches his right hand out, expecting to feel Liz’s warm skin. His hand taps against a cold surface. His arm recoils towards his face, only to be greeted by that same surface behind his head. It feels grainy against his numb fingers. It wasn’t his headboard. He brushes his hand across the wood, feeling its coarse firmness above his head.

Shallow breaths fill Morton’s lungs. Was he locked in the trunk of a car? He had no idea why someone would have kidnapped him. The last thing he remembers was a truck heading straight for him.

He tries to stretch his legs, but all he succeeds in doing was pushing his head against the surface in front of him.

There is just enough space for Morton to flip onto his stomach. His ankle twists awkwardly during the motion, sending a jolt of pain up his shin. He whimpers and tried to move his ankle to the correct position, but it won’t budge. He’ll have to deal with it once he gets out. 

Morton presses his palms against the boards above his head. Slivers gently prick at his thumbs. Taking a deep breath, he pushes. He hears a wet crunch, and the smell of dirt shoots into his nostrils.

Morton’s rasping intensifies. Was he buried? Was this some sort of sick torment?

It didn’t matter. He couldn’t just stay here and rot. With another concentrated push, the board above his head gives away. A sharp pain shoots through his stomach as if a cheese grater had been rubbed against it. His entire chest feels like it’s covered in thick mucus.

With the plank gone, cold dirt rushes out against Morton’s head. He tries to pull back, but there’s no space. He has no choice but to leave his face submerged in the sopping pile, lifting his head up to breathe.

The air around Morton feels thinner. His lungs burn, and no matter how much air he gulps, his breathing gets duller and duller. This veritable prison of dirt and wood is sealed off. If he doesn’t get out soon, he may suffocate. 

Morton digs his hands into the mush before him, trying to pull it away, but with every pull, more dirt tumbles in to replace it. All he’s doing is submerging himself in the muck. His eyes feel heavy. A pebble pokes into his chest, sending rivulets of pain through his already tender stomach.

There’s no air left. Morton needs progress now. Taking a deep breath, he shuts his eyes and pulls himself into the mud.

The mud swallows him. Morton feels like it’s crushing and contracting around him, but he keeps pulling, inch by inch. He has difficulty thinking. The ocean of dirt feels infinite. If he died here, he would just disappear. The worms would burrow into his chest, his bones would mulch, and would become a part of the muddy expanse. He’d become fertilizer.

 Every movement feels heavier. Morton feels his legs giving up as he reaches his hand up one last time.

He feels grass and pulls as hard as he can. His head squelches out of the ground. Rain buffets Morton's head as he gulps in air. Lighting bleaches snapshots of headstone into his eyes. 

Morton is shocked, but his burning chest prevents him from thinking further. With one final push, Morton pulls himself out. Finally able to see, he looks down. Under the thick mud plastered on his forearms, his skin looks gaunt and grey. 

He shuddered and looked around. At his feet, a sunken headstone rests. In the snapshots of lightning, a name is engraved. Morton runs his hands along the indents, seeing the words emblazoned in his mind: MORTON DANIELS. 

Morton stumbles backward. How could they have buried him? Did they not check for his heartbeat, see him breathing, or try and wake him up? 

A streak of lightning to right cracked his thoughts. To his right, the dirt rustled.

A four-fingered hand broke through the surface. The index and ring fingers were stripped like wires, leaving gnarled joints and yellowed bones. The bones creaked and wriggled, grasping at the air, tearing at the grass, searching for some way to escape their fate.

Morton yelps and jumps backward. A muffled scream vibrates the ground beneath his feet. The fingers stop wiggling, becoming nothing more than lightly colored twigs in the tangled mess of weeds and twigs before it. 

All around Morton, the graveyard slowly churns Grass rustles, head, arms, and feet poking through. Headstones rumble, unsettling decades of slow, firm attachment. Beneath it all, an awful din rises, and hundred of screams, cries, and yells explode forth, many slowly fading away, like infants dying in the womb.

Morton’s side roars with pain, but all he cares about right now is getting away from the horrifying mayhem around him. Morton tumbles through the graveyard. His knees feel like they’ve been dipped in concrete. He trips, sprawling forward into an icy puddle. His face burns as he lurches up. 

“I-I…” A raspy voice trails off, metal scraping metal.

Morton looks behind him. Something is standing there. At some point, it must’ve been human, but not anymore. Its face hangs off, only connected at the lips. The whites of its eyes are brown. As it moves towards Morton, the exposed bone of its shins creaks. Its gangrenous hand is nearly stripped clean, exposing yellowed bone segments. Its thumb snapped off long ago, leaving four bote talons.

“That lighting… it brought me back,” the creature mumbles. “But I can feel my face leaving me. I-I can feel the maggots eating my legs. I’m dead but… I’m alive again, just like you.”

The creature groans forward. Morton inches back.

“Please… we’re together in this. Your face is… like mine. Please… it hurts”

Morton reached a hand to his face, expecting to meet a soft cheek. Instead, chipped bone welcomes him. He looks down. His shirt is stained red. Intestines dribble out from under the hem. 

The creature groans, his teeth shaking.

“You need to help me! God, oh God, I feel rotting. Please do something…. Why? Why me, why?

The creature lunges, tackling Morton to the ground. Using his talon fingers, he shaves away bits of Morton’s arm. 

More corpses gather around, emerging from the brush, and piling onto Morton. His wailing is muffled, drowned out by the groveling and begging of the moving corpses.