The Girl They Buried

Violet’s POV :/ I never thought I would see this day. I always believed life was made of sparkles and rainbows, something soft enough to hold onto. But that belief didn’t last. It faded slowly, until it finally dawned on me that life is not gentle at all. It is dark. Bottomless. It swallows you little by little until you can no longer see the light. A gamble between good and evil—either way, suffering is unavoidable. I used to think I understood death. A place beyond life. Something final. Something certain. Everyone said my grandmother was somewhere peaceful now, beyond the light. But I always wondered… what if it isn’t peaceful? What if it is the opposite—endless fear, endless suffering? And now, that question hurts more than ever. Because my sister might be there too. I sat in a chair, staring at the coffin in front of me. Inside it was the one person who mattered most to me. My sister. Nothing about this felt real. I could hear my heartbeat. I could hear the quiet crying around me—people sniffing, whispering, mourning her as if they truly knew her. Some of them I had never even seen before. Everyone was crying. Everyone looked devastated. Except one person. A man standing far away from the crowd. Watching. He wasn’t crying. He wasn’t speaking. He simply watched. When I looked again, he was gone. My father sat beside me. He looked devastated, lost, broken by the loss of his first child. His bodyguards standing behind us. Head bowed. Hands behind their backs. Trying to show respect. But I didn’t move. I didn’t cry. I felt empty—completely drained of color. And strangely enough, that emptiness made me stand out more than anyone else in the room. The police recovered her belongings. Her bag. Her clothes. Her luggage. But not her phone. They said it was never found. I didn’t understand how a person could disappear and leave everything behind except the one thing they carried everywhere. People spoke. People cried. People prayed. Yet somehow, I barely heard any of it. Everything sounded distant. Muffled. As if I were underwater. Then a soft melody drifted through the speakers. I frowned. My head immediately lifted. The song echoed throughout the chapel. Slow. Gentle. Beautiful. And completely wrong. Evelyn hated that song. She had always skipped it whenever it appeared on her playlist. I remembered the countless times Evelyn had rolled her eyes and complained about how overrated it was. Yet now it played at her funeral. I looked around. Nobody seemed to notice. Or maybe they simply didn’t know. A painful realization settled in my chest. For all the speeches. For all the flowers. For all the tears. Most of these people didn’t really know Evelyn at all. Not the real Evelyn. The one who sang terribly in the shower. The one who stole food from my plate. The one who laughed until she cried. The one who promised she would come home. A lump formed in my throat. Suddenly, I couldn’t bear listening to the song anymore. Because it didn’t belong here. It wasn’t Evelyn. Not even a little. I rose slowly and walked toward the altar. The coffin was open. I stopped in front of it. The body inside was supposed to be Evelyn. But all I saw was destruction. Her face was ruined—barely recognizable. Her skin carried deep scars, some stitched carelessly by an embalmer trying to repair what could not be fixed. I stared at her for a long moment. Then I reached out. My fingers touched her hand. Cold. Still. Wrong. Something inside me shifted. I couldn’t explain it. Maybe it was grief. Maybe shock. Maybe denial. Yet standing there, staring at the ruined face inside the coffin, one thought kept pushing its way to the surface. There was no familiarity. No recognition. Nothing that told me this was her. My chest tightened. A strange thought surfaced, sharp and unwanted. No… That can’t be right. My breathing broke. It started as a whisper in my mind. Then it grew louder. “No… no… no…” My voice cracked. And then it snapped completely. “NO!” My scream filled the church. I stepped back from the coffin, shaking. “This is not my sister. Evelyn is not dead. This is not her body!” Gasps filled the room. My aunt rushed toward me and pulled me into her arms. She held me tightly, as if I might disappear. The room felt heavier now. The crying louder. The air harder to breathe. I pushed away from her. “No,” I said again, clearer this time. “That’s not Evelyn. I know it. I can feel it.” My aunt looked at me with deep sadness. Tears fell down her face as she spoke gently. “Violet… it’s okay. You don’t have to be strong right now.” I stared at her. She didn’t understand. Or maybe she didn’t want to. “Did you hear what I said?” I whispered. She broke down again, unable to answer. My gaze moved across the room. My father, head bowed, as if nothing else existed. And then it hit me. They didn’t believe me. They thought I was grieving. They thought I was breaking. But I wasn’t wrong. I turned back to my father and rushed to him. “Dad,” I said, grabbing his arm. “You know Evelyn. You know her. That is not her.” He finally looked at me. His eyes were red. “I know this is hard,” he said sharply, “but you have to accept it. That is Evelyn.” My breath stopped. No. That wasn’t possible. He couldn’t be serious. I stepped back. “You’re lying,” I said. My voice rose again, sharp with panic. “You’re all lying!” My chest tightened violently. The air around me disappeared. I couldn’t breathe. “Get water!” someone shouted. My father’s voice broke through the noise, panicked. But I couldn’t hear properly anymore. My vision blurred. The coffin stood at the center of everything, like it was waiting for me. This wasn’t the end. It felt ridiculous. Impossible. As if somewhere beneath the grief, beneath the pain, beneath the questions I wasn’t ready to ask— I looked at it one last time. Nobody else could feel it. Nobody else could see it. But I knew. I knew. That’s wasn’t my sister… Everything went dark.