The wraith-girl wandered through unflinching shadows, unaware of their scornful gazes. She had long since fled from the light, escaping the burning judgment of the golden eye above. The catacombs were her savior, moldering chambers buried deep in the festering gut of Mother Earth. A desperate, rotting place where the air bared its teeth at unwelcome visitors, gleefully sucking the life from every patch of foolishly exposed skin. It kissed the wraith-girl’s lips deathly blue, but still she wandered on. 

The darkness parted like flesh from bone, making way for the path of the damned. Her starless eyes gazed upon rows and rows of yellowed bone, their empty eye-sockets watching, waiting in eager anticipation. The jury’s rotting grins jeered at her, manic laughter trapped behind unmoving jaws. 

The girl roamed for ages, brittle bones crunching beneath bare feet. But no matter how far she descended, she could not escape the past. 

It followed, flickering in her twitching eyes, gnawing on her hollow stomach, boiling inside her stuttering heart. The guilt set fire to the icy blood of her frozen veins, scorching her from the inside out. 

The shadows in the corners sat watching on their haunches as the wraith-girl’s penance crept nearer. Razor claws unsheathed, thirsting to flay her serpentine skin and feed. For the girl had done something bad, something irredeemable, something no man nor god could ever forgive. 

She had tried to erase the memory of her crime from the swarming contents of her decaying mind, had long fled from the reminders the light above had brought. But her broken body grew tired of running from the blood-soaked past. 

As the hammer of judgment arced through the echoing cavern at last, the shadow girl’s sightless eyes were pried open. The past caught her fleeing form and dragged her back into the light. The sickening scent of truth crept into the ringing ears of its prey, seeping into her forked tongue, forcing itself down her protesting throat, unwinding her from the inside out. And the shattering girl knew there would be no more running. 

All she could do was wail, begging for redemption that lay far outside the reach of her outstretched hands. But the unforgiving Earth shook with cruel laughter, burying the wraith in jagged bones of victims long past. Drowned in her sins, the dry skulls tumbled down to kiss her anguished lips hello.

Isabella Kaufman