Embers We Bury

i. a prank and a corpse

i. a prank and a
corpse | reese

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One Monday morning when Ember Sage was declared missing, the police who were looking for her had no idea that she is already dead.

Both Toni and I (Ember's close friends) know where her corpse is; but that we would never tell . . . yet.

There's still blood on our sneakers, cuts on our palms, and we can still remember how dirt felt like against our skin as we carried Ember's dead body through the streets that Saturday midnight. The heavy breathings. The smell of grass and air. Shared glances of panic and hesitation. Tears and sweat on our faces. How Ember's frail corpse looked like as we pushed her down the basement of Toni's empty house.

One thing we can assure ourselves as of now though is that we aren't the ones capable of Ember's death.

We just need her dead body.

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When I turned fifteen a year ago, Ember Sage was the first person to greet me a happy birthday. She did not send me a normal happy birthday message, or a basic happy birthday gift. Ember went to our house at the stroke of midnight with two birthday hats and a box of small cake for the both of us. She climbed up the tree branches near my windowsill, and her face was glowing as she brightly smiled and said, "happy birthday!"

We ate the cake on the roof of our house, wearing her handmade birthday hats.

"Bitch," I said which made her laugh. "You didn't have to do this, you know."

"I know, but I did it anyway," she replied, munching on her cake. "And I made you smile . . . so I kinda won."

Ember's long, curly hair cascaded like a black ocean wave if that makes sense, I'm not really poetic; they resemble thick flowing dark threads sprouting from her skull. She's the kind of person you would slap and she would ask you if your palm hurt, and would mend your wound as her own cheek bled. Ember's selflessness knew no bounds. She's the kind of person who would run off to the edge of the world if you told her that would make you happy, and even if it hurt her ankles and it broke her bones, she'd come back smiling and ask, "did that make you happy?" and if you said no, she would run from the start all over again.

She's the prettiest, the nicest, the kindest, the warmest person I've ever met . . .

Sometimes to the point that it irritates me.

Ember didn't have to be nice to me. She didn't have to make me birthday hats, or to bake me cake, or to sit by me on the roof of our house. She didn't have to smile at me, she didn't have to consider me as someone she considers dear to her. She didn't have to befriend someone like me, or like Toni, but she did anyway, and now that she's dead, I don't know how to feel about it.

Sometimes, even Toni herself says that she doesn't like Ember. She seems fake, she says. She seems like a bitch inside, she says. I can't say that those weren't entirely true, because at times, Ember could be a bitch too, and in ways that surprise us the most.

Ember Sage is a bitch . . . but whenever I remember her climbing up that tree on my fifteenth birthday, whenever I remember her bright, bright smile and dark, dark hair, I think maybe Ember Sage isn't a bitch at all.

Maybe we just see her as one because we are.

The longer I think about it, the more it makes sense . . . and the more frightening that sight of her dead body becomes.