When Death Isn't the End

THE THIRD GIRL

CHAPTER 42

I didn’t sleep that night.

Even after I scrubbed the dirt off my hands and shoved the stained clothes deep into my laundry bucket, I just lay there, staring at the ceiling. Listening to the wheezing ceiling fan stutter every few seconds like it couldn’t quite catch its breath.

At one point, my roommate Peace mumbled something in her sleep and turned over. I turned the other way.

The pipe I used to dig? I hid it behind the wardrobe. I don’t even know why I brought it back. Proof? A weapon? Something to remind me that it wasn’t all in my head?

I closed my eyes and all I could see was that scrap of yellow cloth peeking through the earth.

The same yellow I'd worn in the blurry memory I’d buried so far down I wasn’t sure it had ever happened.

But it had.

And I knew it, becaus