Our first date was in a graveyard.
She was a goth. She did this thing with make-up around her eyes that made my heart melt. Her eyes themselves were the most amazing emerald green.
I was crazy about her.
She was walking a few paces in front of me, trailing her fingers over the tops of headstones. It was late on a summer’s evening. The sky was turning red.
“It’s like the sky is on fire,” I said. This had sounded impressive in my head when I’d thought of it a moment before.
She glanced back at me and smiled, and forget the sky, my insides were on fire. I’d never really had a girlfriend, and this was now the best day of my life.
I had first seen her a couple of months before when she started at my school.
She wasn’t like any of the other girls, wearing what looked like a thrift store dress flowing over the top of big boots. Her long black hair was tangled and had bits of torn ribbons and colourful plastic beads tied into it.
On that first day in particular she was getting a lot of dirty looks.
I was staring at her with my mouth open while my pulse went into overdrive.
I was immediately smitten.
I pretty much spent every waking hour after this thinking about her. There were a lot of daydreams involved.
I would step in when she was being bullied for being different and she would tell me we were soul mates, then she would kiss me.
She would be sitting alone in the cafeteria, on her own as always and looking sad, and I would sit next to her and say something funny. Then she would kiss me.
Kissing made a number of appearances.
That and other things.
When I wasn’t fantasising, I was writing out opening lines. I would then practice them.
More than once, I started walking towards her, telling myself this was it. That I was going to talk to her.
I got too scared every time and carried on being in love from a distance.
Then she tapped me on the shoulder.
It was after lunch and I was putting a book in my locker and didn’t realise it was her. Until I turned round and she was there, within… well, kissing distance.
“Hey,” she said.
I tried to say something back but I seemed to have lost the power of speech.
Thankfully she kept talking.
“So, I’ve seen you around and I get the feeling you want to talk to me but something is holding you back. And, it’s just, I believe life is for living to the full. You know, seize the moment and all that, so if there is something you want to say to me…?”
She left the question hanging and I knew I had a life choice to make at this point.
A: I could stand there mutely until she went away and then ignored me for the rest of time.
B: I could pass out.
C: I could say something.
Somehow, I went with answer C and blurted out at speed:
“I think you are beautiful and will you go out on a date with me?”
Then I gasped for breath.
She was looking at me but not answering, and I knew I had messed up and made a total fool of myself and answer B was looking like my next course of action.
Only she laughed and said, “We can hang out after school if you want. And if you want to call it a date, that’s cool with me.”
I may have said, “Sure,” at some point after this. Then we swapped numbers. I spent the rest of the afternoon until school broke in a total daze.
When she appeared at the place we’d agreed to meet – after I had convinced myself she wouldn’t – I decided I was the luckiest kid on earth.
I’d got back some of my powers of speech. “So, um, where would you like to go? There’s a new movie that’s got rave reviews, or maybe we could go for a pizza, or just, you know, stand here.”
“They all sound good, apart from maybe the last one,” she replied. “But I have something else in mind. You OK with that?”
I definitely said “Sure,” at this point and fell into step alongside her.
Going on a date, I thought, with the girl of my dreams. Sweet.
We headed away from the centre of town, past a couple of abandoned lots. The rusted skeleton of a bicycle lay in the middle of the sidewalk.
There was no one else around. Just the two of us.
Before long we reached a pair of cast iron gates in a tall stone wall which would not have looked out of place in a late-night TV horror movie – one made on a very limited budget. A sign hung at an angle on the gates.
It read: No Trespassing.
I was not the rebellious type. I never had been. I had always done what signs told me up till then.
She was different.
She opened the gates and stepped through.
Swallowing nervously, I followed.
No sign would have stopped me now. Apart from maybe one saying, Minefield, but I seriously doubted there were any of these in my hometown.
I found myself in what felt like another world.
There were weeds everywhere. They overhung the path I was on and rose up the sides of the stone walls and grew tangled and wild around dozens of graves.
The headstone nearest to me was faded with age. I could just about make out the year, 1805, and the beginnings of what looked like a name, but the rest was too worn to read.
She was just in front of me, trailing her fingers over the headstones.
And that’s when I said my thing about the sky being on fire, and she glanced back and smiled, and I knew without question this was the best day of my life.
And it kept on getting better.
She twirled round in a circle, her arms outstretched and said, “This is my favourite place. I feel so alive!”
Then she held out a hand.
I took it – hoping she would not notice I had started to shake.
She was looking down at the ground though.
I followed her gaze.
There was a tiny corpse lying nestled in the weeds. It was a bird and it was decayed. There were little white maggots wriggling in its rotten flesh.
I felt a bit sick – and was about to say so when I noticed how intensely she was looking at the dead bird. She looked captivated.
“There is beauty everywhere if you open your heart,” she said then turned to look at me.
My head was spinning. I had no idea what to do.
I just stood there as she leant towards me and as her lips touched mine.
And that was the best moment in the best day of my life.
After she had kissed me, she said it was getting late and we should call it a night.
I nodded dumbly and followed her back out of the graveyard.
I offered to see her home but she said she was fine and walked away, turning once to wave.
I pretty much floated home.
The next day was a Saturday and I woke early. Monday was a holiday, which meant a long weekend, which would have been sweet enough anyway, even if my life had not been transformed.
I was absolutely buzzing as I sent her a message:
Hey beautiful. What time and where do you want to meet up for our date part 2!
I added five kisses. Thought that was too much and deleted them. Added one kiss, which did not seem enough, so I deleted that and pressed send and waited for her reply.
She did not get back to me straight away, which was fine. She was probably still asleep, I figured. So, I had a shower – a very quick one as I did not want to leave her waiting for my reply to her reply.
Still dripping because I hadn’t dried myself, I checked my phone. Nothing.
I sat on my bed wondering if I should have left the kisses in.
Or sent a completely different message.
I was re-reading it and wishing I had, when her reply came:
Sorry. Can’t. Busy today.
No kisses. Four words.
Result: Devastation.
I didn’t understand.
What had happened had been so special and it was like now she didn’t care.
I wanted to phone her, to ask her what was wrong. To tell her I had to see her.
But if I did that, would it scare her off? Did I need to play it cool?
I had no idea and in the end I just sent a thumbs up and spent the rest of the morning feeling pathetic and sad.
My parents were away for the holiday weekend visiting an aunt, and would not be back until Monday night, and I was free to mope about the house in my t-shirt and shorts and there was no one around to care.
At lunchtime I decided I couldn’t stand being in the house any longer. I had to do something or I would go mad.
I set off walking to the graveyard. It was the only place I knew where she might be.
The sun was high in the sky and merciless and by the time I got there I was sweating heavily. I gave my armpits a quick smell.
It was not good, and I considered turning back.
Not just because I smelt so bad but because I had no idea what I would say to her if she was there.
Hey, I was just out for a walk. I didn’t expect to see you here.
No, I couldn’t say that.
Maybe I could go with honest:
I am hopelessly in love with you and needed to see you.
Ugh! Thar was worse.
What was I meant to do!
One thing was for certain: If I turned round and went home there was no chance I would see her.
But if I went in the graveyard there was a remote chance I would – and maybe she’d be happy to see me. Maybe we would talk. Maybe we would kiss.
I took a deep breath and pushed open the gate. No Trespassing signs meant nothing to me anymore.
The headstones rose above the weeds. I started to wonder about the dead whose presence they marked.
They would have been mothers, fathers, brothers, sisters, and children. They would have been loved and mourned.
But, as the inscriptions had faded, had the memories of those buried there also faded?
Feeling very down, I walked past grave after grave. We’d not gone this far into the graveyard the day before and the graves started to look even older. Some headstones were cracked. Others lay flat on the earth.
Part of me wanted to lie down among them and never move again. And then I saw her.
It was just a glimpse before I lost sight of her behind an ornate stone structure.
I ran after her, my heart beating hard in my chest, and everything else forgotten.
She was there.
I was going to see her.
I reached the other side of the structure. It was an elaborate resting place for a dead person. I struggled to recall the name. Mausoleum? I wasn’t sure but it was seriously creepy. Its walls were darkened with age and a gargoyle perched above a door. Two big, heavy looking broken headstones were propped against the wall by the door.
But there was no sign of her.
Unless?
I moved closer to the door. It was open, just about.
I looked all around me. There was only once place she could have gone.
I gritted my teeth and squeezed myself through the gap in the door. Shafts of light falling through narrow cracks in the stone meant I was not blind as I moved along a narrow passageway. There was a low arch over an opening.
I stepped through it, and into a chamber.
Where my world collapsed.
She was in there.
And she was not alone.
She was sitting on a stone coffin resting her head against someone who had messy, long brown hair. They both had their backs to me and had a blanket draped around themselves.
My heart was breaking. I felt so stupid. So naïve.
She was with her lover. Her actual lover.
Not me. Not a stupid kid.
And now she was turning to her lover and running her fingers through their hair… and now moving their hair away and leaning towards them for a kiss….
The sweat coating my body turned to ice.
I could see her lover’s face.
The cheekbones, the jaw, the exposed teeth.
It was a skull.
She pressed her lips against bone and kissed. A long, loving kiss.
I began to shiver all over.
Finally, she broke the kiss then whispered something to the bone-face and smiled.
Then she stood and turned and saw me.
Surprise flickered across her face, then she seemed to recover her poise and she smiled again. At me.
“Hey,” she said. “It’s good to see you.”
She sounded like we had bumped into each other at the Mall.
Not in a tomb where she had just kissed a skeleton.
“What… what are you doing?” I managed to say. “With that…” I pointed at the skeleton. My hand shook uncontrollably. “With that thing you took out of its coffin.”
She looked confused at this, but just for a moment and then she laughed.
“Don’t be stupid,” she said. “I didn’t find him in a coffin. I met him at my old school. We started dating and the graveyard was our favourite place to meet, especially in here where it was so private. It was our place, and it was where he told me he wanted to be with me forever.
“I told him there was a way that could happen, if he truly did love me.
“He never left here after that, and each time I visited he was a little bit more decayed, and it was beautiful. He was my special secret. And now all that’s left of him is bones.
“But don’t be upset. I was kissing him for old times’ sake. I’ve told him its over between us. Because I’ve met someone new. You.”
As she said this she moved towards me. Then she took me in her arms and told me, “And now you can be my special lover – when the skin on your body darkens and dies and the insects begin to feed on your sweet decaying flesh. I will return when you are dead and embrace your rotting corpse.”
She kissed the tip of one of her fingers and placed it gently against my lips then she left.
I heard stone moving but could only stand there. Horrified.
I don’t know how long passed before I managed to shake myself free of my shock.
I needed to get out of there.
Still feeling very shaky, and sick to my core, I retraced my steps to the door. There was no gap. I swore. She must have dragged it shut.
I tried to dig my fingers in-between the door and the wall and slide it away but it was hopeless. So, I started to push with all my weight against it.
Again, it wouldn’t move. I remembered the broken headstones that had been propped against the wall outside.
Had she moved them against the door to barricade me in?
As I considered this a terrifying thought trickled into my mind.
I was trapped.
My chest started to hurt and I felt like I could not breathe.
I tried to swallow, tried desperately to take a breath, but it felt like my throat was constricting.
I was suffocating.
I told myself that this was in my mind. It was because I was panicking.
I managed to gulp in some air.
That was the trick, I told myself. I needed to stay calm and think straight.
And I remembered my phone. Of course!
I took it out and felt sick when I saw I had no bars.
Rule that out then.
Still, there had to be another way out of there. It was Saturday afternoon. People would be out in their gardens barbecuing, they’d be shopping, hanging out.
I began to shout for help. I walked around the constricted space yelling at the top of my voice again and again. Surely someone would hear me.
I kept yelling for ages and nothing happened, apart from my spirits sinking even lower as I thought how I hadn’t seen a single other person in the graveyard or on its outskirts both times I was there.
Which meant I was in a no-go zone.
I was completely alone and no one would be coming along to rescue me no matter how much I shouted.
Until my parents came back on Monday night, no one would even realise I was missing and in the worst trouble of my life.
Realising this, I broke down in tears.
I lay on the cold stone floor of my prison and wept uncontrollably. After a while I curled up into a ball and watched the shafts of light coming through the cracks in the stone fade until I was in total darkness.
At some point I must have fallen asleep because when I opened my eyes I could see faint light bleeding through again.
I sat up, feeling from the way I ached like I had aged fifty years overnight.
My mouth was horribly dry and I needed to pee really badly.
A random thought occurred to me about something I had read in a textbook, about sailors back in history who were stranded at sea having to drink their own urine to survive.
Gross, I thought. It wouldn’t come to that for me.
I just needed a new idea and I would be free in time for the lunchtime specials at my favourite diner.
I was going to get an extra-large cola, so overloaded with ice that it was spilling out over the sides.
Then I was going to eat three burgers in a row with so many sides I wouldn’t be able to move for hours.
I hadn’t been hungry until I thought of this, but suddenly I was ravenous.
And I still couldn’t think of a single thing to do that would get me out of there.
I hugged my knees to my chest and wondered if I should just wait for my parents to get back and discover I was missing.
They’d phone the police for sure and a manhunt would be launched. There would be helicopters, police dogs. The search would probably be all over the news channels.
I’d be a celebrity.
After I was found – with the tearful reunion played out in front of the cameras – I’d be on the talk shows.
It would be amazing.
I was happily lost in thinking about this, when I felt a sharp pain in my ankle.
I looked down to see a rat next to my foot. It had blood on its teeth.
My blood, I realised with horror.
It had bitten me.
I swore and kicked out at the rat.
It snarled and stood its ground.
It was big, way bigger than I thought rats were meant to be. Its fur was matted and filthy and its eyes were a disgusting reddish-pink.
I was convinced it was about to attack me again – when it turned around and walked away.
I had been holding my breath without realising it, and gasped painfully to catch my breath before gingerly lifting the leg of my jeans.
The rat’s teeth had gone all the way through and a line of bite marks shone with fresh blood.
It stung like hell.
I cursed the rat and its parents and the rest of its family and the entire rat species.
I could not believe it had bitten me.
I was clearly alive and moving and it really wasn’t OK.
Fresh tears ran down my face.
Being a celebrity wasn’t worth this, but I did not see I had any choice other than to wait for my mom and dad to come through.
Only as time passed – and I had no idea what time it was beyond the fact I could still see light coming through – I started to think through logically what would happen when my parents got home.
It would be late and they would probably assume I was in bed asleep.
On Tuesday morning, they’d leave early for work – though they would leave fresh milk out for me for cereal and a note saying how much they’d missed me.
My parents were nice people but they were too busy and distracted – I knew they had money problems because I’d overheard them talking about this.
I was in no way a neglected kid. I just had a lot of space.
That had always been cool by me, until now.
Because it meant it would be Tuesday evening before they had an idea something was wrong. Even then they might think I was out. So it would be Tuesday night before any kind of alarms would be raised.
And then how long would it take for the police to do anything, let alone unleash the dogs and helicopters?
I lowered my head between my knees as the hideous reality of my situation continued to sink in.
I was going to be there for a long time if I was waiting on being rescued.
My stomach hurt really badly and I was so thirsty. I had a blazing headache as well.
I tried to recall how long a person could go without food. I seemed to remember that it was at least a week before any real harm was done, but I had no idea where I plucked this knowledge from.
So that was maybe do-able.
What about going without liquids though?
I had an awful feeling that was a matter of two or three days.
And then that would be the end.
I would check out.
Die.
Alone and terrified in a tomb.
I closed my eyes and began to cry again, only this time I was crying like a little kid, asking out loud for my mommy and daddy to come save me.
I was still doing this when it fell full dark again.
I was going to spend my second night as a prisoner.
I did not sleep at all. I kept hearing the sound of something moving about on the floor nearby. I couldn’t see what it was, but I figured I knew and at regular intervals kicked out and shouted to try and scare the rat away.
I wasn’t going to be its midnight snack.
When the light returned I dragged myself to me feet. I’d been so wrapped up in myself I hadn’t even thought about the thing I was sharing my confinement with.
The skeleton was still sitting on the coffin.
She must have propped it up, I figured. So, she could make out with it.
I shuddered.
As well as having straggly hair, its fingernails were very long.
Another snippet from my vault of useless knowledge came to me: that hair and fingernails continue to grow after death.
How long must it have been here for all the fleshy stuff to be gone and for the hair and nails to have got so long?
Long enough for this to count as a long-term relationship, I guessed, and that actually made me laugh.
Once I had started laughing I could not stop. I ended up sitting next to the skeleton laughing so much my sides hurt.
As the laughter finally subsided, I wiped tears from my eyes and took a deep breath.
I had definitely lost it there for a bit and that had contributed nothing to me escaping.
I turned to face the skeleton and told it, “I guess you’re the one person in the world who knows how I feel at this moment in time.”
The skeleton’s empty eyes peered into a distance only they could see.
I sighed and covered my face with my hands.
Death was coming for me, and once Death had done its worst, she would be back to satisfy her sick desires on what I had become.
If I gave up.
I yelled out and slammed my first onto the coffin lid.
No, I wasn’t done yet.
I would do anything to survive.
I was now in the gross zone.
It was urine drinking time.
The problem was, no matter how hard I tried to go, I couldn’t.
I gave up.
The rat had reappeared while I had been trying, its ugly nose twitching – biding its moment, I guessed, for when it would start eating me.
Unless….
The rat wasn’t expecting me to leap at it. I didn’t give myself time to stop and think. I bit down and I drank its blood.
I did what I had to do to live.
Afterwards, filled with self-disgust, I lay back down on the floor and closed my eyes. I was so tired I spiralled down into a deep, empty sleep.
Until something crept into my sleep. A sound.
My eyes flickered open. The rest of my stayed put. I was too drained to move.
Then there was another sound.
Footsteps.
My entire body tensed, and I closed my eyes.
I did not need to see to know she was back.
She must have thought I was dead. That enough time had passed.
Which meant the rat had saved my life.
My mind raced with thoughts as I listened to her moving around the chamber. I pictured her big boots, her flowing thrift store dress, her long black hair decorated with beads and ribbons. The make up around her green eyes.
And still I didn’t move.
My heart was beating very fast and I wondered if she could hear it.
If she knew I was still alive.
Surely she must do.
Surely.
If not, I had my chance to escape. I could play dead like this then surprise her and make my escape.
I felt her touch my cheek, with her fingers. She ran them down my cheek and onto my neck. And then she kissed my neck, a lingering, passionate kiss.
Then she whispered, “I can wait.”
She knew!
It was now or never.
I opened my eyes. The shafts of a new day’s light met me. I grabbed out at her.
But she was too quick and stepped back, against a wall. Her eyes were wide and she hissed at me with feral anger.
I did not hesitate.
I ran for the opening beneath the arch, towards the door.
Behind me she screamed, but I wasn’t going to stop, not for her, not for anything.
I stumbled out into the daylight. My legs felt like they were going to collapse at any moment but I kept running, tears streaming down my face, and the memory of her touch on my skin burnt into me.
When I got home, milk sat on the table in the kitchen along with a little note. I read it and cried some more.
I looked at the clock. I should have been at school, but that was fine. I could say I woke up feeling ill and my parents would believe me when I needed them to speak to school for me.
I was already beginning to build the lie.
Love is the weirdest thing. It’s so extreme. Every moment is defined by the actions of the person you love. It is either agony or bliss.
And the craziest part about all of this as far as I am concerned, is that after I had escaped from the tomb, I still loved her.
I couldn’t stop thinking about the way she had kissed me as I lay unmoving on the floor.
I couldn’t stop thinking about the way she smiled at me when I said my thing about the sky being on fire.
So, I told no one what had happened and lied where I needed to, and the next day I went back to school as if nothing had happened.
I’d spent hour after hour beforehand writing out messages for her, like I used to write out opening lines. But I never sent any because none of them felt right.
What do you say to the girl you love who has left you to die trapped in a tomb so she can go back and make out with your rotting corpse?
In the same way, I had no idea what I would say to her when I saw her at school.
But I had to see her.
I had to.
Only, she wasn’t at school that day.
Or the next.
And every night, I woke up stifling screams because, deep in sleep, I had been trapped again in the tomb, and this time she was there, just out of reach.
Soon, the weekend was looming, and with it, the terrifying prospect that I needed to return to the graveyard. It was the only thing I could think of. The only place she might be.
Then, on Friday afternoon, I was going to put a book in my locker when I saw there was a note taped to the front.
My hands shook as I unstuck it and began to read.
I’m sorry I hurt you. You’re a nice guy and one day you’ll find someone who deserves you. Don’t try and contact me. I’ve gone away.
There were no kisses but there was a P.S.
I’ve hidden the evidence.
And that’s the last I ever heard from her, the girl of my dreams who became the girl of my nightmares.