Resurrection from the Dust

The darkness was absolute, a suffocating blanket that pressed in on me from all sides. For a time, there was nothing, not even the memory of light or air. Then, a slow, creeping warmth, like embers stirring beneath ash. It was the thrum of my own blood, a faint pulse in the vast stillness. I was aware, impossibly so, of the coarse weave of the burial shroud against my skin, of the dry, gritty earth that seemed to be seeping into my very bones. My lungs, which I’d thought were forever stilled, drew a ragged, desperate breath, a sound that seemed impossibly loud in the tomb-like silence.

Panic, cold and sharp, tried to claw its way up my throat, but it was a hollow echo of the terror I’d felt on the gallows. That terror had been for Melissa, for her bright light extinguished, for the impossible weight of my own hands pulling her down. Now, the fear was for myself, for the crushing realization that I was alive, truly alive, and buried. CID’s swill. The farewell swill. It had worked. Too well.

I pushed against the packed earth above me, a frantic, unthinking act of survival. My fingers scrabbled, finding only resistance. The weight of Mars, of the colony, of the very world, seemed to press down, determined to keep me interred. But something was different. The gnawing grief, the crushing despair that had consumed me moments before my own hanging, was still there, a raw wound, but it was no longer the only thing. A new sensation, sharp and clear, began to cut through the haze of my resurrection: a burning, righteous anger.