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I close my eyes, hoping I’ll see him. The real him. Innocent.Alive. So eager to please me like he’s doing now, except not in the form my mind created out of lust. Hoping it would overshadow my guilt with my fantasies.

I open my eyes, and the Harlan of my living nightmares is gone. No longer hovering over me. Stabbing my eyes with his vicious blue stare. He’s gone. Really gone. Though I still feel the tempo of his cock pounding into me as he summons my impending release.

“Where are—”

“Shh,” he whispers. “Close your eyes.”

I do as he says and my lids fall shut. Suddenly, we aren’t in a filling hole in the ground. We’re back at Heathen’s Cross, back to years ago.

His head is buried between my legs, but where my skin feels warm, his is cold. Ice cold.

“Araceli. I. Can’t.”

“Shut up!” I yell.

“Araceli. I. Can’t. Breathe.”

Just like brother’s gruesome, greedy, and high off her ass whore. I heard him, but it didn’t register. His tongue, in one piece, not split, felt so good, as did the high I was riding. Hisplea only made me squeeze my legs around him tighter. He licked me until he couldn't anymore. Until he began his descent into unconsciousness while buried in between my legs and I blacked out.

It all becomes blurry until I hear the sirens. All over again, just like that night. Except when I look down, I see my feet, and when I look up, it’s Harlan tied and bound on the cross. Not me. Blood mars my hand. A voice whispering from deep within. Screaming at me. Telling me it’s all my fault. I did this to him. I killed him.

I killed the wrong one.

“No!” I open my eyes, peering down at my center. My naked, blood-stained body is covered in dirt… so much dirt. But Harlan isn’t there. It’s just my hand and the bone from my necklace. Harlan’s bone. The bone that I recovered, that I dug up, the night before… from his grave.

His fuckinggrave.

He’s not here.

This can’t be real.

“Except it is, little sister,” Harlan hisses in my ears. His deep whisper sends a trail of raised bumps down my spine.

“How?” I cry out. Voice trembling. My lungs are burning from lack of oxygen. The pressure on my throat and the dirt filling the hole we’re fucking in, it’s too much. I don’t know how much more I can take untilittakes me.

A response doesn’t speak to me. Not audibly, or from within. But my hand moves, accelerating to a dizzying speed. In and out, the curved edge of his rib bone scraping at my insides.

“How?” I repeat to myself, now staring up at the night sky expecting to see nothing but the stars… but he’s there. I can see him. I can feel him. Fucking me. Punishing me with every violent thrust that may not look like him, but I know it’s him.

“Because your heart is haunted, that’s why. Keep going,” he whispers. “You’re so close.” Encouraging me from beyond. “You’ll learn the truth soon. Keep. Going. Don’t. Stop. You’re doing so well, taking my punishment in that greedy, dying cunt.”

I do as he says. Taking my punishment —my penance.

“Thank you for remembering me this time,” Harlan whispers, bringing his lips to mine. His tongue darts out of his mouth, breaking through the barrier of earth, filling my mouth with its suffocating promise.

The crest of my orgasm now, on the horizon. I pinch my eyes, bracing myself. A violent quiver explodes throughout my body as I give him what will surely be my last living burst of pleasure.

Ignoring the gritty mound of soil sneaking past my lips, expecting the split muscle of his tongue to war with my boring intact one, I keep my mouth open for him. As expected, a warmth emerges between my lips, but it’s not his tongue. It’s slimy, thick, andserpentine.

I gasp, folding my tongue forward, trying to fight it off, but it’s relentless. My airway, as if it already couldn’t stand a chance against the burial in progress, becomes blocked. Harlan laughs as he drives one final thrust inside me, as he steals my release.

“You’re vile, little sister. I’ll give you that. Vile and savage. What made you come harder, the memory of my cock or the dead serpent punching your tonsils?”

Dead?

It’s dead too?

I peer down towards my chest, and somehow, through the earth that’s engulfed me, I see a long strand of thin, curved bones jutting from my mouth.