Oh, Delicate Oleander—Dori Lumpkin

Echo had always belonged to the earth, which is why Corisande fought tooth and nail for a coffinless burial. She lost, which she knew would be of great disappointment to her dead baby sister, but no one else seemed to care. They lowered her down in an ugly white cage, forever separating her from everything that was comfortable and home. Corisande tried to tell herself that it was all fine, that their parents were just doing their best. But that was kind of horse shit, she thought. They had never cared about Echo, actually. She was just the youngest of thirteen children and she happened to be the first to die. One of them was bound to. 

Her funeral was a spectacle, a display of everything they wanted her to be, but nothing she was. Her name wasn’t actually Echo, but sure enough that’s what was read aloud and put on the tombstone. They all just called her that because of the way she trailed behind Corisande, copying her every move. Whatever her real name was had been lost to time. 

Being there when they lowered that horrible container into the ground was an affront to everything Corisande had made herself known for. She never wore black, until that day. She had never bothered to wear anything to cover her feet, preferring to be as close to the earth as possible—but that day, her parents had begged her, please, to at least put on a small sandal. She had, and she regretted it. She never thought she’d be saying goodbye to Echo, her echo, the youngest and most like her out of all of them. Corisande supposed that made her the youngest now, by process of elimination. 

If anything, at least the funeral was beautiful. Corisande had taken control of the flowers, as she was the obvious choice to do so, which meant that they were one of the only things that Echo would have liked about the whole affair. Their parents had requested lilies, and Corisande had gone with wisteria and moonlight lycoris. They cradled the body in the casket, caressing her face in a way that no one could anymore. Long stalks of light purple salvia arched over the grave itself, interspersed with star-shaped nightshade and wild indigo. She was actually quite proud of her baby sister’s final resting place, wreathed in shades of comforting lilac and periwinkle. It was almost all she could look at as they lowered Echo without any sort of remorse. 

They were lined up alongside the coffin, all the LaFranire children, in a perfect display of delightful familial solidarity. The remaining eleven stood to Corisande’s left, in their exact birth order, with Corisande now bringing up the rear. Except, she wasn’t. The space that was next to her, a space that had been so painfully empty the entire time, and should have remained as much out of respect for the dead, was filled. Corisande turned to the intruder, considering giving them more than a firm suggestion to get the fuck out of her dead sister’s place in the line, but she froze. Her gaze moved quickly over perfect, deep copper waves gently braided through with small pieces of oleander. They fell in sheets around a face that was hollow, so hollow, and eyes that were devoid of any sort of feeling. Corisande’s chest tightened. 

The casket wasn’t empty, but Echo was there. 

“Echo?” Corisande hissed, unable to stop herself. 

The thing next to her, maybe Echo, maybe something else, turned in the most unnatural and painful-looking way, directing its piercing and empty gaze right through Corisande’s heart. And then it smiled. It took all that Corisande had in her not to scream as the echo of her Echo split its lips in a horrific grin, blood and black decomposition spilling out over its fake Echo-chin. The jaw creaked and cracked open, splitting like a snake. And it screamed. Oh, it screamed. An ugly, inhuman noise that shattered ears and broke hearts. No one else could hear it but Corisande—and she was frozen in place, unable to react as the remains of her sister released that tortured yell. 

Everything went silent. The ghoul, if that’s what it was, remained there, jaw hanging loosely, just staring at her. The coffin kept lowering, click by click, into the ground where it didn’t belong. The thing turned quickly, looking not at all how it had originally looked at Corisande, and made another pained sound, mournfully watching its own casket delve down into the earth. The mourning period only lasted a moment though, before it leapt forward and downward, landing on the lid and tearing at it with fingernails perfectly frozen in time. Corisande watched in silent horror as no one did anything, no one said anything, and the gruesome display continued until not-Echo’s nails tore off with the effort, leaving streaks of far-too coagulated blood on the lily-white casket. 

“Cor, are you alright?” The brother on her left, Endymion, gently touched her shoulder. She tensed, trying not to jump, and was wrenched back to reality. 

Not-Echo was gone. There were no bloody streaks or fingernails on the lid of her coffin. And the coffin itself was exactly where it had been before the Echo Thing had appeared next to her, the low clicks carefully indicating the slow descent, as they had been the entire time. 

“I’m fine.” She responded, not much more than a choked whisper. She hadn’t yet cried over the death of her sister, and she knew it was coming. She told herself in that moment that she had seen nothing. That she was delusional, from lack of sleep, from grief, from anything that would point to a loss of sense of reality. Echo was gone, and once they covered that casket with dirt, she wouldn’t be returning. Everything was fine. 

Corisande told no one about the funeral. Days passed with no strange occurrence, so she wrote her experience off as the manifestation of grief and moved on. But her Echo-less life was without depth. She moved through the next two days post-burial not unlike a ghost herself, going easily through the motions of waking up, working, spending time in the greenhouse, and going to sleep without much feeling. It was easy to get lost in the mundanity of what life had become without her sister, but every time she turned, she half expected her little Echo to be behind her, just as quiet and ready to listen as she always had. 

She never was. 

The greenhouse was a place of comfort for Corisande though, despite how many hours she had spent there with her sister. She found peace in the turning of the dirt, the trimming of the leaves, and the gentle scraping of grime from underneath her carefully-cleaned fingernails. Tending to her plants was a ritual that she had kept since the day she was old enough to know what it meant to care for something, and that wasn’t going to stop due to a loss. And if anything, making the journey to the building, opening the door, and stepping into her own private forest of flora was like removing herself from the situation entirely. 

And so she did. Often. She made more of a home for herself out there than she ever had inside, and she knew Echo would agree. She went out in the morning, the first day, and didn’t come back until almost sunrise the next day. And then the day afterward, and so on. Until she could no longer discern when was morning and when was evening, save for the gentle reminder to eat from whichever sibling dared also make the journey to bring her food. She was no stranger to losing time amongst the leaves, but it was almost another thing entirely. It was as if time couldn’t exist without Echo to keep track of it. She tried not to let it pain her too terribly, and was nearly successful. 

It was the oleander that gave her trouble, and that fact frequently returned Corisande to her immense reality. The clippings were a most treasured favorite of hers, and they occupied a special place on a pedestal within the greenhouse, at the head of everything. It was a flower she likened to Echo often, and on occasion to herself. Small, pink, delicate, and perfect. She had woven them into Echo’s curls the day she was buried, hoping that it would tie together the body’s complexion with the rich red that remained in her hair. But now her own were wilted and dry, and it was an affront to her sister’s memory. 

She replaced the soil first, hoping fertilization would help. It didn’t. She tried clipping off dead leaves, and removing all of the careful little pests from that specific plant. Nothing happened. She changed their position, allowing a different amount of light to hit the fragile leaves. When that didn’t work either, she found herself simply digging her fingers directly into the dirt around the flower, ripping it out at the roots and angrily tossing it aside. She would re-pot it later, of course, but it could survive outside of comfort for a few moments. She turned back to the pot that had originally housed the oleander, now convinced that the ceramic itself had been poisoning her baby sister’s flower. Nothing had changed. 

Furious, Corisande picked up the pot and tossed it against the wall, watching it shatter into dozens of pieces, scattered in an uncomfortable array across the floor. She stood amongst the pieces of the broken pot, and felt her face get hot. Maybe it wouldn’t be something that she could recognize until later, but Corisande was crying. Unbeknownst to her, tears rolled down her face while she fell to her knees, carefully collecting the pieces, trying to put them back together. She couldn’t. 

One of the pieces slipped out of the pile that she had collected, sliding under a shelf of spare ceramic pots. She crawled over to it, wiping her face off on her sleeve as she went. It didn’t help her focus, but at least she could see marginally better. Reaching a hand out under the shelf, Corisande groped blindly for the missing shard and was met with a piece of something. Small, rounded, cold. She wrapped her fingers around it and pulled her hand back to examine what she had found. 

An index finger.

A beautifully manicured index finger, cut off at the base, around which rested a gold and amethyst ring. Corisande sucked in a sharp breath. 

Echo’s finger. 

She paused, taking in exactly what she was holding. How did it get here? What was it doing? Is it the reason the oleander was being so finicky? Hard to say. The sound of steps entering the greenhouse pulled her back to the moment. She turned and looked up, expecting to see her mother, or Endymion, or anyone else who dared travel out this far from home. No one. Sighing, she climbed to her feet and caught a glimpse of her reflection in the glass on the way up. But it wasn’t her. 

Glaring at her from the glass, angry as she had been the day she was buried, was Echo. Echo with the same, perfectly curled hair in which rested the delicately tucked oleander, and the same, painfully hollow expression. The body’s eyes were more sunken than they had been. Its cheeks were rotted, betraying rows of perfect, white teeth behind them. Not-Echo pulled its lips taught in horrifying mimicry of a smile, as if between the burial and the present it was slowly forgetting how to look human. The Echo-thing held up a hand in a gruesome half-wave, and Corisande could not stop her eyes from traveling to the place where the finger was supposed to be. She hadn’t noticed it when Echo originally appeared, but her mind was on other things then. Now, she could clearly see the gap where it had been ripped out. Blood so thick it was almost black coated the rest of the hand, and flaps of skin moved with it as the thing waved. Corisande was, again, frozen. 

And then it was gone. Echo’s echo vanished, as if it had never been there. The shards of broken pot had vanished from the floor as well, having reassembled themselves perfectly on their original shelf. And inside the pot, the oleander sat, small and proud, as if nothing had ever been wrong. But the finger hadn’t moved from Corisande’s grip, having instead only grown less perfect. More rotten. 

It was easy for Corisande to immediately assume that all Echo wanted was just to have her finger back. She wasn’t a praying woman, but if she was, she would have prayed that it was as simple as that. So returning the finger became her goal. At the light of the next dawn, she left the greenhouse and walked the entire way to the cemetery. It wasn’t a long walk, but with a finger clutched in her hand and what she was sure was a ghost on her heels, it felt like forever. 

She hadn’t visited the gravesite since the funeral itself, so she was delighted to see how beautiful Echo’s flowers still looked. Of course they were still beautiful, but it was a comfort nonetheless. It felt like the simplest way she could protect Echo, wherever Echo ended up. The flowers were a shield to prevent her from facing the horrors of life ever again. There were a few fallen leaves here and there, but they were easy enough to move. The earth atop the actual location of the coffin was packed hard. Corisande knew because she had stayed all day to watch the gravediggers fill it. She was the only one who had. 

The finger wasn’t even out of place amongst the flowers, which further solidified the fact that it was Echo’s. Corisande sat back, eyes traveling over the grave, the finger, the violets. The seat of her dress began to soak through with the slight dampness of the ground, but she paid it no mind. She was staring at what remained of her sister. 

Echo stood behind the grave, staring right back at Corisande with endless, hungry eyes. Her body looked so much worse than when it had first appeared, or in the greenhouse. The oleander was still perfect, but hung in hair that wasn’t much more than matted clumps. Its face, shallow as it had been every time, was streaked with dirt and a vague green substance—possibly the remains of some of the surrounding plants. For the second time in recent memory, Corisande felt herself begin to cry. 

“I’m so sorry, little Echo,” she whispered, speaking for the first time since telling Endymion that she was fine, “that I could not do more for you.” 

Echo’s echo stepped forward, passing through the white marble of the headstone as if it was no more than air. Echo sat down in front of Corisande, crossing her legs in that childish way she always had, and Corisande felt the tears flow freely. Echo didn’t speak, just sat there and watched her sister. The body tilted its head, reaching out and taking the finger in its rotting hand, placing it carefully where it belonged. 

Corisande watched her do this, wiping the tears from her eyes. 

“You deserved so much better than this.” As if in response to Corisande’s words, Echo smiled. It wasn’t the same smile as before. This one didn’t spark dread in Corisande’s heart, but it lingered with her. A deep sadness filled her chest, but it wasn’t the kind that inspired tears. Just for a moment, Corisande knew how Echo felt. 

“Then do better, sister.” The body didn’t sound exactly how Corisande remembered her sister’s voice to sound, but it was close enough. The words rattled from deep within Echo’s chest, as if it took much more energy than expected to get them out. Reaching out gently, the body took Corisande’s face in its non-bloody hand. It touched her gently, and her vision went black.

When Corisande woke, Echo was gone, and she was the one covered in dirt. She could feel it under her fingernails and in her hair before she even opened her eyes. And somehow she knew Echo wasn’t with her anymore as well, despite not bothering to look. When she did open her eyes, she was delighted to see that the flowers around the grave were fine. The dirt, however, was another matter. It was everywhere, except for where it was supposed to be, which was in the grave itself. And the coffin was outside of where it was supposed to be as well, resting to the left of the headstone, very much not six feet underground. 

Corisande took a breath, doing her best not to panic. It was difficult, but she would manage. Anxiously, she peered into the grave, and saw exactly what she expected. Laid out at the bottom, as peaceful and beautiful as she had been in life, was Echo. Entirely sans coffin. Skin in perfect condition, oleander in her hair only just beginning to wilt. She was finally resting. There was even a faint smile on her lips, as if she had a secret that she could only share with Corisande. And for the first time in a very, very long time, Corisande felt herself smile as well. 

She reached for a handful of dirt, carefully picking it up only to toss it back onto Echo’s body, beginning the process of entombing her all over again. 

But that one handful was all she wanted to contribute to the re-burying of her sister. She had done enough already, and resigned herself to letting the gravediggers figure out what to do with the rest. Echo wouldn’t mind.

photo by Julia Kicova (via unsplash)