The Sowing of the Sevenths

I awoke with my tongue stuck to the bottom of the coffin, licking a crack through which an otherworldly chill seeped in. My family was cursed centuries ago: every seventh child lives, not dies, but becomes seeds.

My arms were jammed, not for lack of space, but because something gripped them from below with creepy, decaying fingers. I heard my mother's weeping dripping through the earth, but her grief was a feast for me.

The shadows were not darkness: they were a dense, hungry mass that caressed my eyelids like an ancient lover. I knew then that all my great-grandparents were there, writhing in the same bottomless pit.

Their silent tones shared the first rule of decay: "Don't ask to get out. Ask for a deeper descent." The worms didn't devour me; they clothed me.

They wove a second skin that burned at the touch of the air I would never breathe again. The curse demands that I dig upward with the broken nails, not to free myself, but to touch the feet of the living.

Each night, a victim. They will wake with a cold feeling under their blankets and sand in their mouths, no matter if they are on the tenth floor. My first touch was for the priest who buried me without praying.

They found him holding his own tombstone, his eyes filled with maggots spelling out my name. Now I know I am not alone in this hole: all the sevenths form a single flesh that breathes in unison, always pushing upward, always silently. When the ground creaks beneath your feet, do not look down.

The curse remains even after death. Everything is arranged. My fingers no longer have bones, only an eternal urge to scratch the wood of other coffins and whisper, “Switch places with me.” I have learned to move among the roots like a shadow eel, and I have found the living sleeping in poorly sealed graves. I plant dreams in them with their faces torn apart, and when they wake up, they're already digging their own graves with bare hands.

The earth has taught me that true terror isn't darkness, but knowing yourself awaited from below by something that should never have been born. Someone who has memories of being a guy. Something that still smiles.