Once upon a time, there was a girl.
This isn't her story.
Once upon a time, there was girl.
This is her story.
Once upon a time, there was girl.
She was young, and beautiful…
…And dead.
She was undoubtedly, irreversibly dead.
This is her story.
;;
No one knew her.
No one knew her name.
Her age.
Her life.
All they knew was that she had washed up on there shore just as the morning fishers went
down to the docks.
;;
She was pristine.
The people knew what a person looked like when they washed up dead from the ocean.
Once, back when the oldest among them was but a child, a man washed up on the shore of their land.
He was bloated, and rotten.
He was a fisherman, lost at sea for but a day.
He wasn't pristine.
;;
The fishermen brought her body to the town.
Men looked at her with awe.
Woman looked at her with pity.
Children felt tears come to their eyes when they saw her.
She was dead.
;;
The people buried her.
The people buried her in their own graveyard, and rested a large stone over the ground.
;;
Once upon a time, there was a girl.
She was beautiful, yes, but not that bright.
She was the demise.
;;
The sound of a shovel entering dirt could be heard by any near.
There was no one near.
;;
In a boat that wouldn't last a day out in the ocean they came.
Darkness-darkness-darkness.
They'd been traveling for twenty days.
;;
Shhh.
Shhh.
Shhh.
Into the fresh dirt the shovel slid.
;;
Cold, dead eyes.
White, lifeless eyes.
;;
The men who came in the boat left that night before the town had awoken.
;;
Hell…o
He…llo
Hello
;;
The grave of the girl had been dug up.
;;
Grave robbers, the people told themselves, hoping that was that.
None voiced there doubts.
;;
If it was grave robbers why only dig up one grave?
;;
And why take the body?
;;
Death
death
deatH
;;
Once upon a time, there was a girl.
Is this her story?
;;
The children went first.
Deadeadead.
The children died one by one.
;;
Accidents, the people whispered as mothers cried.
Just accidents.
;;
Next went the woman.
Deadeadead.
All stabbed with a knife in there hands.
;;
Disgraceful, the men whispered, looking at the knifes they did not recognize.
Disgraceful to kill oneself.
;;
The oldest among the survivors went first, a man of seventy-eight.
Deadeadead.
;;
Old age, the men hoped.
Just old age.
;;
Seventy-seven.
Deadeadead.
Seventy.
Deadeadead.
Sixty-five.
Deadeadead.
Sixty-two.
Deadeadead.
Fifty-nine.
Fifty-four.
Forty-eight.
Forty-two.
Forty.
Thirty-seven.
Thirty-four.
Thirty-one.
Twenty-six.
Twenty-five.
Twenty-three.
Twenty-one.
Nineteen.
Deadeadead.
;;
The last man fled.
Eighteen, just barely a man.
(No more death, he cried.)
;;
The ocean was the town's safety – he could flee there.
But…
;;
Standing on the shore,
Red mouth smiling,
Cold, dead eyes.
White, lifeless eyes.
;;
The last man fell.
;;
Deadeadead.
;;
Once upon a time, there was a girl.
She was young, and beautiful, and alive.
;;
Once upon a time, there was a girl.
She was beautiful, yes, but not that bright.
She was the demise.
;;
Once upon a time, there was girl who had everything handed to her on a silver plate.
Including death.
;;
Once upon a time, her fairy tale ended by a man in a red coat who slit her throat and placed a curse on her.
;;
She was never that bright, was she?
Accepting for the I love you's but never giving them away.
;;
That night the old boat rowed into shore again.
As his companion stayed with the boat so it wouldn't wash away, he marched into the ghost town.
Among the dead bodies left unburied (no one left to bury them, he thought) sat a girl.
Her red mouth smiling, her eyes deadeadead.
Come with me, the man whispered, we are done here.
She nodded and followed the man back to the shore.
;;
His coat glinted red in the moonlight.
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I literally came up with the story as I wrote it, so sorry if it's crap.