Returned

A Story by JessaJ

Short story about a man desperate to find a cure for death.

This is my contribution to a flash fiction challange

The sentence I chose is: It took her six months to return from the grave where I put her. by kathleea and this is her website

I don't know how to hyperlink or anything as this is my first attempt at writing anything online. I hope I did her justice :) x

Returned

'There is still no news to the whereabouts of Tracy Dennis who went missing approximately a month and a half ago. She was last seen leaving the Angel Falls campus at round eleven fifteen pm on the third of June. Parents have now put out a reward for one thousand dollars for any information regarding their missing daughter'

I turned off the sound of television at this point. The news of the missing girl has been getting less and less, so much the better. What a depressing way to end the evening. Tracy wasn't the first girl to go missing, but hopefully she would be the last. Fifteen girls, women actually had disappeared within the last three years, varying in age, all over 21.

I picked her because she was the invisible girl. I laid on the charm from the day she stepped into my lecture hall. It wasn't long before she developed a crush on me and I returned the flirtations while keeping it all casual, I am a married man after all.

I don't enjoy killing these women. If I didn't have to do it then it would all be ok, fifteen women might still be alive and the world would be a little happier for it. I can't say I didn't enjoy the carnal act of making love with them - that was just another step that weighs the scale in the direction of success.

I heard the back door open and smiled into my glass of red wine. I knew Tracy was special. It took her six months to return from the grave where I put her. Tracy was the quickest to return so far.

I sat and waited for her to come into the room, stand in front of me. She was beautiful. Beautiful and disgusting. The smell emanating from her dead body was truly horrendous. Her nails were missing from the effort of digging herself out of the dense earth. She stood there caked in mud, long blonde hair sticking to her pale skin, sunken dead eyes. Her mouth moved to speak, but nothing other than a horrible croaking escaped those cracked purple lips.

"Thank you for coming. No, don't try and speak, your vocal chords are damaged" I stood then. I reached forward and took her cold hand, and unclenched her fingers to retrieve the note I had put there. The words saying only 'Come find me' I reached out my fingers to touch the bruises around her throat. A vivid reminder of what the universe had forced me to do. It takes a lot of effort to choke someone to death. I ran my thumb over the side of her neck where the needle punctured shortly before her life ended.

"Come, you must be hungry." I wrapped my hand around her once more clenched fist and led her to my kitchen. It isn't much to look at, but there was a fully stocked refrigerator. I opened the doors and gestured to her. "Please help yourself"

Tracy didn't hesitate, but dived straight in, eating from the fridge, teeth digging into a raw lamb’s leg that would have served as my Sunday dinner. I'm sure she didn't even notice when I left the room.

The food would keep her busy for a little while, they always come back with an appetite.

I walked through the unlit hallway toward a door you couldn't see if you didn't know it was there. I know it is a bit cliché for a scientist to have a secret door at the end of a long hallway, but it works. I pulled a book out of the small bookcase that covered the wall at the end of said hallway. A click sounded and the wall opened like a door with no handle. My wife designed the mechanism; she is - was - a top mechanical designer before the accident.

Through the secret door is what looks like a hospital room, the beeping of a heart monitor can be heard and the faint whoosh sound from the machine that keeps the body on the bed breathing. I don't know the exact details of the accident that caused my wife to go into a coma. My only focus was her. I am a medical scientist and one of the top ones in the country at that. I was - am - determined to save her. Brain dead. Pull the plug. I refused. She might be brain dead, but that doesn't make her completely dead.

That's why I started my experiments. That is why those women had to die. Didn't someone once say that the needs of the many outweigh the needs of the few? Once I get this right, how many lives would be saved? I just need to find that one formula that will work. It only takes one, and then history is made forever. Sure some will scoff and condemn me for the practices that lead me to my discovery, but I'm sure they will all come around. I mean...who actually wants to die?

Tracy was the first to come back in less than six months. The first three didn't come back at all, but they are serving their purpose by being food to the creatures that live below the earth so their deaths weren't complete losses.

I kissed my wife's forehead and moved a stray hair from off her face. "Soon my love. You will be back with me soon. The new girl I was telling you about, Tracy? She is already showing promise. Just over a month it took, and judging by the mud and the state of her dress, she came straight to me after digging herself out. I know you think that burying them is a waste, but it shows their determination and proves that the brain is functioning fine or else they would never think to get out, nor would they read the note and come back to me." I moved toward the door and scowled at my wife over my shoulder. "That step may not be necessary, but I am a man, and I have needs! Do you think because you are in this position that I should deny myself? Oh for God sake! I'll come back when you're feeling better."

I shut the door on her and walked back to the kitchen. I heard it coming and stepped out of the way, there was a dull thud as Tracy's form smacked into the wall beside me. She slid to the floor, in no mood for these games, I walked over, grabbed her by her arms and jerked her body backwards toward mine. I wrapped my arm around her two behind her back and started marching her toward the basement.

She was hissing and snarling, baring her teeth like a rabid dog. I grabbed a key from the top of the door frame and opened the aluminium door. I shoved her into the darkness, could hear the sickening sounds of bone crunching before closing the door and locking her in. To be acquainted with her new friends. It is time again to start preparing for the next one. One that won't try and rip my throat out.

So close.