This is a short story written for the Halloween competition for the Big Closet web site. There is nothing funny or entertaining about the dead rising from their tombs, even for one night. This is my first attempt at writing a transgender horror story. It is deliberately short and much of the content is left to the imagination of the reader. It could have been much longer.This is offered as a warning to those who might be sensitive to such things. It is submitted early as I have no wish to enter the competition formally. I hope my idea will be a stimulus for others.

Awareness was gradual, but no sense of waking from a long sleep. The space I was in was cold and and still!

Too cold and too still, it seemed.

As cold as the grave in fact. Feeling round the space with numb fingers showed that I was in a box that could have been a coffin, but much of the wood had crumbled. A cascade of dry earth fell on my face and chest as I moved.

The earth continued to fall until wan moonlight from a baleful moon bathed my face. Could I really have been buried, entombed even, in a rotted coffin and buried so close to the surface. Getting out wouldn't have been so easy deeper underground.

I didn't feel any fear but I didn't know how I got there either. Perplexity was my main feeling.

So what did I remember?

Being in prison ... yes being in prison and being very old. A prison for old people, but I had been in prison for a very long time, over 40 years in fact. I had been given a whole life tariff a very very long time ago.

Did I remember my death? I remember having a fall down some stairs when my walker slipped. I remember the pain, such pain, excruciating pain of my shattered pelvis and shoulder, and the staff couldn't stem the internal bleeding. They were caring, but nodded sagely, and watched on as my life ebbed away ... then there was no pain and no consciousness after that.

Could I have died then? If I did, why am I conscious and in a rotted casket in a shallow grave?

Could I move?

Yes, my arms and legs could move but I didn't seem to need to breathe.

I sat up and found that my sole garment was a dirty smock, like a nightie or was it a shroud? No it couldn't be a shroud because my face wasn't covered.

It was the long nails and the hair past my shoulders that was the next surprise.

Traces of red nail varnish showed that this was not normal for a prison burial. I know that I would not have been buried in prison uniform. Someone would have found me civilian clothes for my final journey.

Pushing up with my left hand showed that I had a photograph held in my palm.

I looked at the browned grainy photo and recognised the two children who were still visible. Both smiled at the photographer as they held buckets and spades. There was a beach behind with miles of golden sand that mirrored their flaxen hair blowing in the wind. Two children, a boy who seemed to be about eight at the time the photograph was taken, and a rather younger girl.
Who were they. Were they my children? The names of Petra and Giles came to mind. Could that have been their names?

Where are they now, I wondered?

I knew the answer as it drifted back through my befuddled brain

Both were dead. They had died violent deaths as children.

I felt angry, but I could not say for sure why that should be so. Did I know more about their deaths?

I felt an anger from all those years ago with a clarity that defied logic. I had always had a temper, but this anger spread throughout my being. An anger that washed through me and over me. I remember shaking with anger. My whole body was contorted by my anger.

It came back to me slowly. My breathing at the time of their deaths was rasping and ragged. I remembered that well. I remembered seeing the corpses of the children, each in their own bed. The sheets awash with blood that had soaked through to the mattresses. Petra lay with a large slash across her chest and her severed head lay on the floor beside her bed. Giles had died from multiple stab wounds from a large bladed weapon of some sort.

That night of all nights I had had a great deal of booze mixed with a handful of pills. The chemicals had taken me over, bathed me an a warm fuzz of semi-consciousness. I felt held aloft by a sense of my own invulnerability and well-being.

I remember the injustice as I saw it of the injunction against me from my ex-wife that prevented me seeing my own children or visiting the town where they lived. It had gnawed at my soul as I sat alone in my bed-sit. I was consumed by a seething anger that distorted my reality. My heart fluttered and raced. I was unable to do anything to make matters right as I saw it, but a glimmer of an idea grew within me.

It was not me that was flawed, it was Sharon and her wretched lawyer. They had destroyed everything that was meaningful to me. The home was lost and the family went with it.

The job went as soon as the Press got hold of the story of the injunction. I had abused Sharon one time too many, pending our divorce. I lived in a twilight World of rejection after that. People crossed the road to avoid me and local shops would not serve me. I was judged a pariah and had to move away to get some anonymity and freedom.

I can only remember that my anger seemed to take on a life of its own. It became my third child. I loved it, and my anger and I, loved the machete that was bought from the Internet, clandestinely of course. We polished the blade until it shone, and it was made razor sharp. A piece of paper sang as it was drawn over that blade. No child could have had more attention. We greeted it each morning and I wished it well at bed time. During periods of wakefulness it glowed dully on the other side of the room.

I now dimly remember the drive over to my old home in the small hours after the Halloween festivities had died down. I wasn't fit to drive through the red haze that clouded my vision, but no one noticed my erratic progress after all the Trick or Treaters had gone home to bed with buckets of sweets.

On this eve of Halloween the police were occupied elsewhere in that rural location. Even without a door key I knew how to get in to my old family home silently.

All was quiet. Petra made just a slight wheezing sound as the machete did its work. Giles was curled up in bed, but the result was the same. Several huge gaping wounds traversed his slight body before I moved on.

Sharon woke as I entered what had been our bedroom. She awoke as the blade cut deeply across her chest. Her aorta was severed and her blood gushed out in a torrent. Over me as much as the bed. I fancy she was conscious long enough to murmur a curse, but it was soon over.
I felt exhilarated, and free. A great burden had been lifted from me. I sobbed with the relief of it. For now, my anger was assuaged.

I felt that everyone would see it the same way as I did, even though I was soaked in drying blood and still carried the tool of my ‘redemption’.

I wanted to share my wonderful release with others. As I passed the local Police Station I felt that there were people there - even at 4am who would understand my story and share it with me.

The result was not what I had expected. The young woman on duty appeared deeply shocked by my appearance and pressed a button under her desk. Several officers appeared and gently removed my weapon before guiding me to an interview room. They seemed to share my story and an ambulance was quickly dispatched to attend to my family.

I seem to remember talking as if a flood gate had opened. All the years of being rejected and being systematically loathed, bubbled up in me. I was euphoric over the night’s events and continued to ramble on even when I was being examined by a doctor and given a change of clothes. I never did see the machete again. I felt the loss of it of a little while.

I had already admitted my guilt at the Police Station so the trial was short. A remand in custody for reports, then the whole life tariff sentence. I was numb but mentally prepared.

It was the first few months of jail that were the worst, after that, one was habituated to the routine and physical limitations. I had no visits, and would not have welcomed them even if someone had come.

As a lifer I had my own cell in a prison wing for lifers. I read and studied for a second bachelor’s degree, even though I would never be able to work. Retirement age came and went. When I was 72 I was moved to a prison for elderly inmates, and eventually to a prison for those with life limiting conditions when I was 80.

All this went through my mind in what seemed to be a fraction of a second while I was sitting in a trench in a graveyard. The wind blew my long dirty, but still blond hair into my eyes. I swept it back with a flick of my hand. A movement I knew so well from the past. A movement that Sharon did unconsciously. I noticed the chipped red mail varnish again.

I had never had blond hair or had worn nail varnish, and red was definitely not my colour.

A lump of something fell from my chest through the bottom of the nightie and onto the earth. I picked it up. It appeared to be a lump of flesh coloured wax the shape of a large chest wound.

I probed underneath the nightie and felt the rotted and rough stitches that had held together a gaping wound in my chest. I also felt the remains of two breasts. Both had been sliced open by a deep cut.

I began to understand that the slashed breasts, hair and nail varnish were all features of Sharon’s body. I felt under the nightie for signs of my manhood. All there was were the signs of a woman’s groin. To all intents and purposes, Sharon’s groin.

Panic rose in my head. I understood nothing of what had happened, but I heard a high pitch keening sound. It got louder and louder until I realised that it was my voice, or rather Sharon’s voice. I levered myself to my feet and staggered towards the exit to the graveyard.

There was a banner over the village square announcing the Halloween festivities for fifty years after my death and a hundred years after Sharon’s death. I didn’t have time to dwell on my predicament before groups of merrymakers rushed past.

“Great outfit mate. You make a great looking Zombie!”

The next group grabbed me by the hand and I was whirled into a macabre dance round the square.

“Where did you get the make-up. Brilliant. Would suit a horror movie. Must have cost an absolute bomb to get done.”

An elderly priest dressed in a cassock and biretta saw me, and grabbed me from the throng.

“Come with me!”

There was no option. I felt compelled to follow.

We recrossed the churchyard, but by the path and into the porch and then into the church. A purple cloth had been laid before the alter. I was required to lie on it. His thought alone held me frozen to the spot. I could not have moved however hard I tried. The priest quickly donned the purple vestments of the Exorcist.

My memory is dim over the ritual but at some point my anger reasserted itself, next I seemed to become very distant from Sharon’s body. It was almost like one of those drone sequences where one climbs away and a vista expands. I lost the sense of myself in those moments and found myself back at another tomb in another place. As I drifted away I heard the intonation stop.

I saw very distantly the priest remove his purple stole, kiss it reverently and fold in with great care.

The last thing I heard was the priest saying. “Sharon … be at peace, the Devil has been driven out. You are now in a State of Grace and this crucifix will keep you safe. In the morning you will be reinterred.
Now, be at your eternal rest.”