With bloodshot eyes, she pointed at Lewis and Elsie standing at the front. “Only heartless people like you would fail to recognize
your own flesh and blood!”
The Hendersons were stunned into silence.
Samantha murmured something under her breath as she looked up at the sky.
I read her lips.
“I’m not wrong. I’m just avenging Joziah in my own way.”
Mom was quickly escorted away by security.
I scanned my surroundings and suddenly noticed something strange.
Although Lewis and Elsie were present at my funeral, Isaac was nowhere to be found.
My heart raced
Samantha claimed she was avenging me. Did she…
If the body in the coffin wasn’t mine, whose was it?
I had to know the truth!
1/2
Chapter 9
After the funeral, I followed Samantha into a secret room.
It was unexpected but not entirely surprising.
+15 Bonus
There, my body lay encased in a crystal–like container submerged in thick, viscous fluid. My corpse had been repaired. It was no
longer the horrific sight it once was.
There was no way I could be wrong about it. The wedding ring was still on my finger.
“It’s been a day, honey. Did you miss me?”
Samantha leaned over the container. With eyes full of tenderness, she tentatively extended her finger,
With a soft hiss, the skin on her finger began to corrode, peeling back to reveal her bare bone.
The solution that preserved corpses was lethal to the living. Yet Samantha seemed unfazed.
She even plunged her hand into the liquid to caress my skull. “I’m back, Joziah. I’ll never leave you again. I’ll stay with you forever. We’ll have so many children. Please come back to me.”
Samantha’s voice faltered, and she fell silent. She just stared vacantly at some distant point in the air.
One living person and one soul, separated by space, yet we gazed at each other from afar.
After a long pause, she slowly pulled her hand out of the solution. It was no longer a whole hand. It was a bleached white skeleton.
Yet Samantha appeared unaware of the pain. Without any expression, she tucked her skeletal hand into a black, specialized glove.
I watched in silent sorrow.
Maybe Samantha had truly cared for me.
Had I still been alive to hear these words she said, I might have been overjoyed. Perhaps I would have forgiven her.
But now, it was all too late.
Comments
