Part 1 | Part 2

I could tell the Keeper was growing frustrated, bristling at his own rules. Every time he opened the box’s lid and found me alive, he grimaced, but of course he couldn’t admit how badly he wanted me dead.

Instead, his frustrations boiled over to the world above. Almost daily, he would come down the stairs covered in blood, often wounded. Once, he even had me sew up a bullet wound on his left arm. Of course, he dismissed the close calls as par for the course, narrating the history of his other scars:

“See that one there? That was twenty years ago now. She stabbed me from behind with a fire poker. Two inches to the left, and it might have pierced my heart.”

He turned and looked at the scissors in his hand.

“Do you know what it takes for me stop myself from stabbing you? Every sinew of me calls for it. How beautiful the arterial spray would appear as you gasped your last breaths. But I know that my patience will be rewarded. The box will claim you. And finally, I will add the sweet red of you to my work.” He gestured to the red and white stained glass on the nearby wall.

I was wise enough not to comment. Even my slightest misstep those days meant hours, sometimes days in the box.

But of course, he always found a reason. Dutifully, I would lie inside, and he would close me in.

By then, however, I saw the box as an escape from his cage. The dark half-death inside the sarcophagus had become my real life, while my time with him was death, my season in the underworld.

In the deathscape within the sarcophagus, the other girls had nearly completed their pyramid. They could reach up from the top now and brush the door to my world with their ethereal fingers. When they did, I felt them entering my mind for a few seconds at a time, their thoughts mixing with my own.

It’s so cold in here. I forgot what cold felt like.

Our heart is so loud.

Our body is so frail. Mine used to be so much stronger.

I knew that I had made a bargain with the ghosts. That we would escape together or not at all. Still, I wondered if I would come to regret my decision. I had always been an introvert. Now, I was constantly entertaining guests, never alone, never able to stop and think without a dozen or more voices all speaking at once.

The way out is in all four directions at once.

North, south, east, and west.

The four buttons lay all around me, but I had yet to discover how to press all four at once. I could reach south with the tip of my toes, east with my hand and north with my other hand, but that left west to deal with.

Each day, I crossed my right leg up and across my body, trying to angle the toe toward the button, but the task proved nearly impossible in the small space. The box was so tight that the leg would get wedged perpendicular to my body as I tried to pull it into place with both arms. Sometimes, it felt like it would break. And still, I pushed harder.

Once, the Keeper opened the lid to find me in that contorted position, my leg stuck against the box’s side, my foot almost at my hip. He looked at me curiously.

“Cramp,” I rasped out, my lips cracked and bleeding.

“That was 36 hours,” he said. “No one has survived that long.”

And for the first time since he’d captured me, I could see his fear. For weeks he had looked at me like a steak ready to be eaten. Now he could barely look at me, the way prey avoids the eyes of a predator.

And something snapped in me that moment. I saw myself as a ghost, a revenant returned from the other side. And I spoke words I never would have dared voice even a few days earlier.

“You told me you were a god,” I whispered. “That we girls come and go, but you’re always here. I’m here to tell you, I’m the deathless one. No length in the box will end me. I will bury you.”

“Prove it then!” he shouted, kneeling over me. I could tell it took everything in him not to wring the life from my body. But I suppose he had his rules.

He slid the lid of the box back on top of me.

I found the girls standing atop the pyramid, waiting for me. The structure was complete now, offering easy access to the door of light.

“We heard you,” said Brianna. “You were right. He’s only a man.”

“Not that it matters if I die in that box,” I said bitterly.

“Together,” said Naomi. “We escape together.”

Then, one by one, they pulled themselves up through the door.

My head felt like it would burst as they entered. Each of them felt like a marble crammed into my skull swelling my brain. Before, they’d only been visitors. Now, they were moving in complete with all their luggage: memories, and fears, and dreams.

For a moment, I thought I might be erased, or mixed together with the ghosts. That the colors of each of us would be mixed into a muddy brown.

But it was not the case. Somehow, I made room for my visitors, and we all stayed distinct. Eighteen souls in one body.

I’m alive.

But this body is so weak. When was the last time he gave us water?

This body can’t take much more. It’s practically done.

So we get out now. No more time to waste.

All directions at once.

I reached out for the buttons, but it wasn’t just me this time. Eighteen invisible hands moved together as I shoved my leg in place. The pain was beyond anything I’d ever felt before or since, like the leg bone would be crushed to powder.

But together, we pulled, and finally my toe reached the East button.

I pressed all four buttons at once, and I heard the gears turning. I had assumed the lid would open, but something else happened instead: a compartment opened just above my chest, and something fell onto me. I reached for it with my hand and nearly cut myself.

A dagger.

Still sharp after 6,000 years.

The Keeper was in terrible shape when he opened the box. He had been stabbed at least three times in the arm and shoulder. I lay weakly in the box, barely able to lift my arms. I lay with them crossed over my chest, the blade concealed beneath them.

“Get out,” he said. “You’re welcome, by the way. I cut your time in there short.”

“Because you need us to stitch you up,” I said.

He bristled climbed on top of the box on all fours. He leaned over me, his rancid breath filling my nostrils.

“Never forget,” he whispered. “However important you think you are. Whatever lie you tell yourself. You. Are. Replaceable.”

I stabbed forward into his chest, just where he’d once told me his heart would be. And it wasn’t just me doing the stabbing. Together, I felt eighteen sets of other hands pushing along with me, driving the dagger home.

The blade slid through the flesh like a diver through water. Blood instantly poured from the wound, and the Keeper fell on top of me.

Our faces pressed close together, he looked into my face, fear filling his eyes.

“You…” he said weakly. “All of you…”

And then he died, just like any man.

I would have thought it difficult to wriggle out from under him, but I had the help of the other girls. Together, we worked ourselves free and exited the box, leaving him inside. Then, slowly, we walked over to the door of the room, opened it, and trudged up the stairs to the world above.

At first, when I made the deal with my eighteen sisters, I was afraid. But I realize now it was never necessary. We work well together, sharing the body.

Naomi takes over during my piano lessons, and Brianna takes the wheel during most of our dates. Others like to go on runs or study history. We’ve all taken an interest in ancient cultures.

As for me, I like it in the dark. Because indeed, we brought the dark with us when we left the box.

I like to sit by the base of the pyramid, watching the river of mists pass. I am no longer afraid of it. In it, I see the stuff of myth, the raw material of story. And when I have possession of the body for a few minutes here and there, I write them down, bringing bits of nightmares to the real world.

Sometimes, when I look into the river, I see the Keeper there, drowning eternally in his own blood, screaming for me to help.

And I almost want to thank him. Almost.