With A Whimper
By Tina Anton


Reed-thin fingers grasped at the dry, crumbling earth with a white knuckle grip.

“Is somebody there?” his breath lay thick in the chilled air.

Clumps of grass clung to his face, their stalks entwined in his hair. The man was shoulder deep in the ground, unable to pull himself up.

“Somebody – anybody?” his hoarse voice cracked.

Storm clouds rumbled overhead. Failing joints refused to pull him free from the grave. He felt around until spindly fingers found the marker where his name was inscribed. He latched on tighter than should have been possible and a crack appeared in the chiseled granite beneath his touch.

“H-help me!” he cried.


Alice stepped carefully, making sure to stay within the protective halo of her flashlight’s beam. The girl’s feet lifted high, her chin pointed squarely forward. She was a big girl now and Momma had promised Alice her favorite macaroni dinner if she came straight home from school. Alice licked her lips in anticipation. The storm didn't frighten the seven-year-old, but she hurried a little faster.

“H-help me,” the thready plea came from within the cemetery.

Alice hesitated, her pink sneakers poised to shoot her small body forward, and stared through the dark cemetery gates.

“Anybody?”

It was a man’s voice and he sounded strange.

Alice gulped, her tongue clicking against the roof of her mouth. She was a big girl and the man sounded hurt. A big girl would help, she thought.

Alice started inside and walked under the black archway, the bobbing flashlight illuminating her path.


He heard faint footsteps muffled by grass.

“Hello, mister?” A young child’s voice.

Air rasped past mangled jaws and expanded a pair of damaged lungs. “Hello?” he asked, voice layered with a new hope, “help.”

The soft footfalls drew closer and then stopped abruptly. The man tried to peer out into the impenetrable darkness.

“Are you lost?”


Alice stretched as tall as her small frame would allow and schooled her expression into the grown up one her sister used sometimes. Although feeling bold, Alice refused to raise the flashlight and lose her precious halo of safety. She saw that the man had fallen into a hole and he was struggling.

“Can I help you get up?” she asked with a sympathetic grimace.

The man's shadow veiled form nodded with a disjointed movement.

“Please,” he said.

The girl walked to the edge of the hole and peeked inside. Most of her earlier anxiety had melted into childish curiosity.

“Why are you in a hole?” she asked.

“I'm not sure,” he answered.

He reached out and Alice took hold of his frigid hand, like she was about to shake it. She held her flashlight against her side, its beam shuddering.

“I’m going to pull on the count of three and you try to jump up,” she instructed, “one, two, three!”

A flurry of movement punctuated by grunts of effort resulted in the man lying prone on the grass beside his partially uncovered grave. He wheezed, chest rising and falling quickly. Alice looked down at the man where a tiny portion of her light spilled over his supine form.

“Are you hurt?”

“I think I'll be fine,” he said.

With a groan he pushed his body off the ground and Alice suddenly felt dwarfed by his towering height. She refused to run away. She was a big girl. She offered him her hand and his thin fingers wrapped around hers with a firm grip.

“Thank you.”

Alice started to feel better when she lead him out of the cemetery. She stopped in sudden confusion.

“Where do you live, mister?” she asked.

“I can’t remember.”

The little girl gave him a dubious look, but decided it was rude to say, ‘everyone knows where they live, stupid’, so she stayed quiet.

“Don’t worry. I’ll take you home with me and Momma will know what to do. Maybe you can have some macaroni too.”

“That sounds nice.”


He allowed her to lead him forward, his forehead crinkling as he tried to squint through the inky black. Not so much as a pin prick of light became visible.

“How are you able to see where you are going?” he asked in soft curiosity.

“I have a light, silly. It gets dark early during the winter. Beverly gave it to me.”

“Who is Beverly?”

“She’s my sister. She’s sick today.”

They walked in silence for a few moments. He swallowed hard, his tongue sliding down his throat for a disconcerting moment. He gave a startled gasp and coughed it back into his mouth.

Something was wrong with his body - his eyes.

“Can you tell me, are my eyes covered by something?” he asked.

“You really are silly,” amusement colored her voice and she replied lightly, as if she thought he was joking, “you don’t have any eyes.”

The ground seemed to drop out from beneath his feet with a lurch. Alice tugged on his hand insistently.

“I can see the house. I want to go inside,” she said.

“Wait. My eyes....”

With trembling hands, the man reached up and touched his face to discover the truth for himself. His stomach churned with abject horror when his finger tips slipped past the lids of his eyes and found nothing but a damp hollow.

He screamed.


Alice’s eyebrows crept up under her bangs. The man looked like he was trying to sneeze.

“God bless you?” she asked uncertainly.

His jaw snapped shut with an unhealthy sound and his lungs rattled as he drew in a deep breath. The little girl tried pulling him forward as another round of lightening brightened the street for brief moments at a time. The following thunder rumbled, the vibrations moving through her tiny body. For the first time a real thrill of fear shot through Alice’s body. The storm was getting closer.

“We need to go inside now, mister,” she said.

He needed to go to the hospital and Momma would know what to do, Alice tugged insistently on the man's hand. He let the girl lead him towards her home.


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I live in Ohio state and am a student taking Creative Writing and Linguistics at my local college. I love art, music and movies.