SCARY STORY CONTEST
15-18 YEARS CATEGORY
THIRD PLACE
Post-Mortem Depression
By Kiara Grant, 15, Coquitlam
When I first died, I was like an attention seeking toddler with ADHD. I jumped from thought to thought like a rubber ball in a tube and erratically moved from kitchen to Jim's room to the living room. I could see myself, but no one else could. My greatest desire was to be noticed. However, despite my incessant shrieking and stomping, to my daughter and son-in-law and grandson, I was as noticeable as a dust-mote. Still worse, I could not leave the house. Each time I tried, there seemed to be a kind of gravity pulling me back to my 1000 square foot prison. Life was maddening. Or, I should say, death was.
After I had finished the screaming and stopped to listen to the world around me, plans began to form in my head. Ways to make them notice. Over time, I transitioned from ADHD to OCD. Obsessively, I performed the same routines each day, breathing in Jill's ear, hoping she would feel a chill, then stepping through my grandson Jim, hoping to cause a jump or a sickness or something.
Then, Jillian had another baby. Her name was Ivy. In my life - death, I mean - Ivy's gurgles and the rise and fall of her delicate chest were my only sources of joy. One June day, I was in Ivy's room, grimacing giddily, the pale infant stared directly at my face and let out a faint giggle. The euphoria which flooded my being is incomprehensible.
As she grew, I tried to be to Ivy what any other grandfather would be. When she began to speak, after seeing Dora call her grandfather Abuelo, she instinctively knew that I was that to her. To her parents, Buelo was a peculiar imaginary friend who existed in the mind of a curious child. But when she reached the age when other little girls had forgotten their imaginary friends, and she insisted that I was more, the uneasiness began. Hushed arguments that went into the middle of the night and worried glances from other parents. I did not have the strength to let her go. And so I let the unease escalate to apprehension and the apprehension escalate to fear and the fear escalate to horror and I watched as the women in white uniforms dragged her screaming into a van and she disappeared forever. 3 months later Jillian received a phone call saying that Ivy had become violent and had been moved to the criminal ward. A month later, my pale granddaughter was tragically killed by another inmate.
Seven years have passed, and I have not smiled since. I like to think I suffer from Post-Mortem Depression. My strength grows every day. The putrid sacks of meat that now live in this house are afraid of the ominous noises in the night. The wife thinks there is a malevolent spirit. She is right. I hope to kill them. Perhaps on that day I will smile.
