Barbara Stone (or Babs to her friends) had spent her young years growing blissfully older in the small town of Harken, knowing full well that she had the rest of her life to get serious. This time that she had right now, at the sweet age of seventeen, was for living foolishly and she didn’t intend to waste a drop of it.
She had been doing exactly that the night she died, when she had the bright idea of going skinny dipping at the beach after the annual November bonfire party at Harken Heads, a stretch of sand she knew as well as the back of her head.
Barbara’s friends were wary of her spirited idea and decided to keep an eye on her from the shore. They all laughed as she splashed nakedly into the frothy black surf. “Here we go,” they all said. “You just watch; in about five minutes we’ll be warming her by the fire.” After six minutes, someone said “can anyone see Barbara?” No one could, because after four minutes in the water she had been pushed down hard by a sturdy wave, and then another. Her body had been thrashing around in the under current ever since. Barbara’s panicked friends shot into action, despite the liquor coursing through their bodies, but by the time an ambulance and the police had arrived, her lifeless body had begun to drift back towards the shore. She lay there, slumped over and sopping, while the police frantically stuck sticks wrapped in yellow tape into the sand, and ushered Barbara’s tear-soaked friends into police cars. They were being taken in for questioning, but everyone knew it was only because it was procedure. The truth was clear; Barbara Stone had taken the fun too far, and for the last time.
The small funeral had been simple and elegant, but a nauseating feeling of tragedy permeated the event. So bereaved were those closest to Barbara, that some secretly believed the taking of such a young and brilliant life to be the fault of something much bigger than an errant wave. They had thoughts of devils, revenge, curses, though no one dared to speak these mad thoughts aloud.
Barbara was laid to rest in an ashwood casket, wearing the blue dress she had bought three weeks before her death to wear to her sister Amelia’s engagement party in the new year. When Amelia approached the grave to toss a handful of dirt over the lowered body of her sister, she whispered to the muddy hole in the ground “Where have you gone?” The soft thud of earth hitting the casket was the only reply.
When the last mourners finally exited the cemetery gates, and the only movement all around was the first pattering of rain and whispers of wind from the oncoming storm, Barbara Stone’s soul became the quietest it had ever been in her short life.
She’s not sure what is roused first; the version of herself that is still standing at Harken Heads, ankles socked with salt and sand, or the version of her that is cold and blind. A flicker of memory, a twitch of a pinkie finger. Perhaps the moments are simultaneous, a joint awakening.
Barbara notices right away that breathing is not necessary anymore. But as she tries to reach her hands up above her head, and finds them hitting something hard and hollow, she gasps anyway, a dry raspy sound. Wherever she was now, it was dark and small, and far away from anything living. With her palms placed flush against the pillowy soft roof of the confines she lay in, Barbara pushed with all her might and felt a strength in her bones she had never felt before. The lid of the coffin cracked and shuddered, but she could feel something weighing down on top of it. She pushed again, and the ceiling crumbled down on top of her, showering her with something dense and clumpy. She opened her rotted mouth; dirt, she knew from the taste.
Across town, Babs stirred too. She found herself sitting naked on the sand, watching the water crash over the shore at Harken Heads. She was watching the memory of herself strip down and wade into the water, shameless and brave, as her friends pretended she was already impossible to save. Babs felt a sharp pang of unease as she heard one of them shout “you’ll catch your death in there!” She watched as her own body dived recklessly into the dark water. She felt herself choking, but none of the pain, as the water pulled her down. She felt her back hit the underwater sandbank, but she no longer had the breath to have it knocked out of her. This memory was less painful than the real thing; all the battering she had felt from the waves, now only felt like rolling around in the softest bed she had ever felt, her face and legs brushing pillows of feather. Babs stood up, put her back to the water. She understood what her fate had been now. That didn’t mean she had to accept it.
Barbara could feel the fresh night air on her stiff, cold skin. She didn’t bother brushing the dirt from her hair, or the mud from her blue dress. Crawling out of the ground, she stood up on unsure legs and began her jilted walk. She had lost her kitten heels in her scramble through the dirt, but the cold early-morning dew on the grass didn’t bother her in the slightest. Barbara walked out through the cemetery gates with the same willful sense of purpose she had possessed when she was alive. There was a long walk ahead of her, but she didn’t falter, didn’t look back in the direction of her headstone even once.
Babs floated slowly through the quiet streets of her hometown, pulled along by a need she couldn’t name. She peered through the window of the hair salon where she had had her head shaved as a fifteen-year-old and gazed longingly at the playground where she first found her bravery as a six-year-old, climbing the monkey bars without the help of her dad. Babs savoured these sweet memories as she passed under the warm-hued streetlights of the Main Street. She had lived deliciously, and though she couldn’t really feel anything in this new incorporeal form, the thought warmed her. She wandered through sleep-quiet Harken with a sense of gratification that glowed within her.
Barbara didn’t think it concerning that she couldn’t feel her hands. Or her thighs. Or the top of her head. She pushed her body forwards through sheer muscle memory. Step, drag, step, drag. The rigor mortis had long seeped out of her limbs, and decay had moved in in its place. As Barbara crawled over the chain-link fence that blocked her way into town, she barely noticed the clump of hair or the toes on her right foot that got caught and tore without resistance. She pushed her body forward and over the fence, leaving brown strands and dismembered toes marking her trail. So strong was her devotion to this journey, she barely noticed. Barbara continued her hobble forward, unfazed. Not far to go now. She could feel she was close.
The first fingers of light were stretching over the horizon, as Babs travelled quickly down Maynard Road. The pull that had drawn her from the beach was now at its strongest. At the end of the road, she could see a blue and brown figure slowly stumbling towards her. Babs could feel her spirit lighting up in recognition.
The wispy silhouette approached Barbara with a lightning quickness that reinvigorated her bone-dry corpse. With what little control she had of this body, Barbara stretched out her arms and invited the embrace of her other half.
It had been mere days since their separation, but the figures threw themselves at each other with the vigour and passion of young lovers.
Reunited, Barbara Stone wiped her hands down her dress, smoothing out the wrinkles and smearing the mud. She stretched out her arms high above her head and felt the cracking of her weary bones. As the tangerine sunrise spread out over the waking town of Harken, Barbara Stone turned back in the direction of the cemetery to collect her forgotten heels. It was time to get serious.
