Talking Stick

The funeral pall was suffocating.

Anna awoke to the feeling of heavy velvet draped over her face. Her eyelids fluttered in the darkness as the image of the teetering piano filled her mind, tilting slowly, suspended by uncertainty. Then it was crashing towards her at an impossible speed. She tried to recoil, escape somehow. All she could do was press her back against the cold, hard stone beneath her.

The piano collided with silent, painless finality.

Anna yelped for a pain that did not register, her cry muffled by the velvet.

She lay still, stunned for a moment, holding her breath. She was alive? Was it just a nightmare from being smothered by her own bed covers?

She tore the fabric away from her face and sat up abruptly.

Whack!

Anna’s brow slammed against a damp, hard stone surface, sending a bright flash of painful white across her vision. She yelped again and fell back flat, managing to catch herself with her elbows before the back of her head struck the stone she was laying atop.

Clearly not her bed.

Anna laid still briefly, breathing shallowly, self assessing in the absolute darkness. She tried not to panic. Rarely was there any time in her life that she was plunged into pitch black. Usually there was always some tiny source of incidental light. Her fingers slowly pressed against the rough, hewn stone underneath them.

Wait… had she been buried alive?!

Panic surged through her with an uncontrollable rush. She wanted to scream, then cry, but her brainy side said to conservative oxygen. She panted as her heart fluttered.

‘Calm.’ ‘Calm.’ ‘Calm,’ Anna chanted in her head. Though all she really wanted to do was sob and let the horror out. But that would squander precious time and air. Instead, count to ten and think it through.

‘I’m… not… buried alive. I’m… trapped in the storage room,’ she thought. There. Manageable. She could solve a storage room problem. She got stuck in the storage room at the café once, by accident. Though that was solved by simply calling out for help.

This was different.

Rather than panic she focused on assessing the situation. The familiar sensation of the fit of her clothes indicated that she was still dressed in her café uniform. Short sleeved white button up blouse with pale blue piping on the sleeves and collar. Periwinkle fitted vest with white buttons and piping and a matching Japanese school-uniform-style pleated skirt over similarly toned tights. For accessories, an oversized neck bow in the same pale shade of blue along with all white block heel mary janes. She even had dyed her chin length bob in periwinkle to complete the kawaii café look, though that was a while ago and her dark roots were beginning to show.

As she thought about her uniform, it dawned on her. Was her phone still in her café apron’s front ‘joey’ pocket?! Anna’s left hand reached with a repetition honed by checking way too many notifications while on shift.

Her fingers soon gripped the comfort of feeling her phone’s protective case. She pulled the phone up to her eyes and squeezed the side button, triggering the screen alive. Anna squinted in the bright electronic light. September 28. 12:17 am. 44% battery.

No service.

So much for phone-a-friend.

Then of course the bigger problem. The date. Piano-kun was July 19. Anna was certain of that. And it was in the afternoon. Before the high school across the street let out for the day and the café filled with hunger, homework, and teenaged angst. No, she couldn’t have been buried alive and survived that long.

So…

Vampire? Lich? Wight? Anna considered her undead alternatives. Hmm. She really did read too many fantasy light novels. Admittedly sometimes even while at work. This thought was quickly dispelled by the abrupt realization that phone meant flashlight. She tapped in her PIN and turned on the flashlight function.

Above her was light gray stone darkened by moisture. At her feet, the same, along with the black funeral pall. On her left, the same, stone and pall. But, on her right, three feet away…

Was the skeletonized remains of someone.

Anna screamed with all her soul. As she did, the phone slipped from her hand and tumbled over the edge of her carved out burial niche. It struck the stone below, its flashlight disappearing underneath the case, plunging the space back to darkness eased only by the screen’s soft glow.

Anna twisted and tried to recoil away from the skeleton as much as her alcove would allow, but the tiny space afforded little retreat. Her hands grabbed the pall behind her and pulled it up to her face as she screamed uncontrollably into it.

“You would think for a necromancer, you’d be accustomed to dead things,” toned an uninterested middle aged tenor voice.

Anna immediately froze, going dead silent.

“Thank you.”

The voice was close. Just behind her right shoulder. How?! All that was behind her was stone.

“I’m not going to hurt you. But if you would at least stop laying on top of me, that’d make this less humiliating.”

Anna was dumbfounded. The physical impossibility of the situation made the fear of being trapped in the alcove with a male stranger less overwhelming. Eventually she found some words.

“How can I be laying on you when there’s nothing behind me?”

“Can assure you, I am right behind you.”

“There’s nothing-” Anna started, shifting and reaching behind her back with her left hand, digging into the funeral pall. Velvet. Velvet. Velvet. Something hard.

“Wait.” She clasped the object and brought it around into the pale light cast from below.

The slender object looked like an all black glass pencil, doubly thick – a half inch, and about eight inches long, with swirls of dark purple energy slowly dancing within. The eraser end was instead capped by a dark metal crown with a small centerpiece made of amethyst. In the meager light it was difficult to make much else about the object. “A pencil?” How was she talking to a pencil?!

“Please. Don’t belittle me.” The voice paused for dramatic performance. “Stylus.”

“How can I be talking to a stick?”

“Stylus.” The object replied. “Repeat after me. STY-lus. Or STYLE-lus. Emphasis on the style.”

She ignored the annoying voice while still considering the object. It felt cold to the touch. Not painful, but definitely uncomfortable.

“If you feel cold, does that mean I’m not undead?”

“Correct. You’re not dead. I am. More or less. Though we can certainly make you undead. It would help your case.”