Photo Prompt | the dead

This was supposed to be a 100 word story. The plan was to write something short using the image as a prompt. But then I got a little carried away and did a little over 300 words. Not that I mind LOL.

The challenge was actually on Instagram. I saw it late yesterday. Link is down if you wish to check it out.

Enjoy!

She stood and stared unseeing at the tombstones. They were just as she remembered - sitting side by side, quiet, peaceful, old, without really losing their originality. As a child, they reminded her of the room –she never referred to it as hers–  in the boarding school. How the mattresses were layed next to each other. It always made her chuckle. Now, she could see lights beyond the stones. People were becoming fearless. They had learned to live close to the dead.

The sting of her tears brought her out of her reverie. Cursing tersely, she wiped her face. She was eight the last time she came here. The child in her always wondered why so much was done for the dead. They never came back anyway. Her Aunt Amaka once told her that people stopped existing when they died. Perhaps that was why she laughed every time, why she watched with eyes so huge as her father was thrown in and sealed like the others. Even then, she felt she needed to do something. Her mother wouldn't stop hugging her and the relatives never left her alone. She just didn't know what it was.

Her tears weren't for her dead father. That pain she had made peace with a long time ago. This grief was for waiting too long and letting them deprive her and her mother of their rights. For years, there were only three tombstones. No one questioned it. Today, there's a fourth one. She made sure the ground was dug right next to the rest. One would say the new body didn't deserve it but she didn't mind. It gave her a kind of satisfaction. She had watched the culprit took his last breath, same was she had watched her father. Difference was, she caused his end, and she didn't regret any of it.

Now she knew.