Suffocating // Toni Shalifoe

eleven

"We should be prepared for anything," she answered carefully, attempting to be gentle with the blonde. Thus, that was exactly what they did, they were prepared for the worst and to be prepared for a wild, dangerous animal to be on the island with them, they needed to make sure that something else was even further away from them.

------ eleven ------

"Predators ain't no joke, man," Dot's statement was followed by a loud howl coming from the woods, making Grace shiver a bit. She couldn't deny what Toni had heard anymore. She couldn't or wouldn't deny reality. Noticing the girl's fear, the brunette sent her a small, yet comforting smile.

"That was disturbingly on cue."

"Yeah, and coming a hell of a lot closer every night," Dot added to her worry. It was then that Toni came closer to the blonde as if to make her feel safer, to protect her from the predator in the woods.

"Then why exactly are we traipsing around in the dark, making ourselves easy prey?" Shelby questioned, referring to their current situation. The sun was long gone and replaced by nothing but pure darkness, the moon being their only source of light.

"This," the other Texan sighed from the front of the group, seemingly stopping in the middle of nowhere. "It's Jeanette's grave. Or what's left of it, anyway. Keeping her here was fine when we thought rescue was coming right away-"

"But it's been a week," Rachel concluded, bidding farewell to her dreams of rescue coming soon. She had been the one to hold on to those hopes the longest.

"A shallow grave, right near camp, it's going to attract company we don't want." It looked different the last time the girl's had seen it. Both, the nosegay and the little heart they made out of seashells, weren't there anymore, making it appear even colder and sadder. Yet, it was still recognisable. Grace knew for sure that this was where Jeanette rested.

Only that it wasn't. The plan was to bury her deeper and much farther away. There was just one problem with their plan, Jeanette's corpse was nowhere to be found. Grace had to swallow her morals as they tried to dig her back up. It felt "sacrilegious" as Shelby had put. But no matter how deep they dug, her body wasn't there, it disappeared, not leaving a trace of its existence.

"Where the fuck is her body?" Leah asked as they sat around an empty hollow.

"Do you think whatever is out there has already-" Grace paused a second, searching for the right word, "taken her?" Her question was more directed at Dot than at any of the other girls, but the Texan didn't get to answer her.

A huff was heard from the other side of the hollow. "Yeah, a wild animal fed on her body and cleaned up everything afterwards." Rachel commented sarcastically. "God, stop being so stupid, Grace."

"Stop being such an asshole, Rachel," Toni defended the blonde, starring the athlete down.

"Maybe, we didn't dig deep enough," Martha said, ignoring what had been said beforehand.

To which Toni shook her head. "No, we didn't bury her any deeper than this. There's no way." Her statement earned approval by Dot.

"Then, maybe this isn't the right spot," Martha concluded.

"No, it is. I counted," Dot confirmed. "120 feet away from camp." The whole situation grew stranger with every second.

"So, what, are we saying that she just, like, re-animated or something and walked off like a zombie?" Fatin spoke totally weirded out.

"A resurrection?"

"No, this is weird as hell," Rachel spoke up again, trying to figure out the situation like the others, but just like them not having any logical explanation for the corpse's disappearance.