On the day when he first woke up, it was raining. He couldn’t feel the rain of course, on account of not having any skin but the dull thudding across his body told him as much. He didn’t actually have much of anything anymore, mostly just bones and a few scraps of cloth for modesty’s sake.
Everything else had decayed away into a sickening, black sludge that had seeped into the wood beneath him. If he’d still had his nose it would have wrinkled at the smell, but as it was he just continued without it. He also didn’t have a brain, which explained how he didn’t know much. In fact all he knew, or thought he knew, was that the numbers carved into the stone that rested above his hole read ‘1592’. It just felt right somehow, though he couldn’t really feel anything as he was very dead.
He didn’t even know his name. An eyeless glance about him brought his attention to a different stone a little distance away. Most of the lettering was too distant to make out, but he read the name ‘Johnson’ and he seemed to like it. Johnson. It was as good a name as any he supposed. Returning his attention to the hole ahead of him, Johnson decided that he’d spent enough time in there and that he wanted to do something a bit different with his first day of consciousness. The rain did put a bit of a dampener on things, but Johnson made sure to press on despite the poor weather. After all, if he could dig himself up out of the ground all by himself, how hard could anything else be?
As it turned out, quite difficult when you’re a freshly awoken skeleton. Each step Johnson took was heavy and cumbersome, the mud squelching into the gaps between his feet bones. His knees hadn’t really had to move much in just over four hundred years, and unlike his elbows, they were taking a while to warm themselves up. Johnson didn’t have a particular place that he wanted to go, and he would have been happy with anywhere that wasn’t the corner of a graveyard. Taking note of all the possible directions Johnson could go, he chose to go left - because it looked fun.
Squelch. Squelch. Squelch. Matted tufts of grass mixed with the rain-sodden mud as Johnson slowly adjusted his gait with each fresh step. At first he just lifted each leg straight up and then put it down again, but that felt awkward, so he decided to try something new and bend his knee. Once he started doing that walking became much easier. By his twelfth or thirteenth step he figured he’d reached a place that he was comfortable with, until he caught himself on an overgrown root and was sent crashing into a stone much newer than his had been. Nursing the spot where his skull had hit the rock, Johnson recognised the futility of what he was doing and instead decided to just remain on the floor to avoid further injuries. Peaking over the stone, Johnson observed the commotion that was beginning to rise across from him. A curious sensation began to swell inside his ribcage, approximately where his stomach had been. He surmised this was either hunger or fear and given the context it was most likely the latter. It was a disgusting roiling of something that made Johnson feel quite unwell, and he had to check that it wasn’t some small animal wriggling around in his ribcage. Thankfully these people weren’t paying any notice to the skeleton spying on them, instead being occupied with whatever the bald man in the white robes was saying.
They were all huddled together in black suits and dresses underneath black umbrellas and behind them sat a long line of black cars. It was all very drab and uninspired Johnson thought.
“Is this how everyone dresses these days?” he asked himself, eye sockets fixed on the mass of people.
All the rain, the sobbing, the boring speech being given by the bald man, it was just incredibly melodramatic, and if Johnson could have thrown up, he would have. In fact, it was in this moment that Johnson became acutely aware of his situation. He could see without eyes, hear without ears, function without any of his organs, and frankly it would have made his brain hurt. It was just becoming a bit much for the poor skeleton as he sat back in the mud and held his skull in his hands. He just felt so heavy and awful, and so Johnson decided that the best course of action to resolve such sentiments was to go back to bed for a bit. Picking himself up, he dragged his bones away from the miserable congregation and towards his hole, where he promptly laid down again, scraped some dirt over himself and fell asleep.
When he next woke up, it was sunny. Johnson couldn’t feel the heat of course, on account of not having any skin, but the bright rays of light filling his eye sockets told him as such. After a peaceful night’s sleep, Johnson had to admit that he did feel better after the previous day’s revelations, and so he resolved himself to push a little harder today. Sitting up to dust all the grave dirt from his bones, he went to take a deep breath of fresh air and was swiftly reminded that he needed lungs for such a feat. Climbing to his feet, Johnson prepared to hoist himself out of his hole in order to begin his day, but a sudden scream and a blunt force to the back of his head ended that idea quite quickly.
His vision went blurry, as if the world was spinning and tumbling and Johnson believed he was about to be quite sick until it all stopped very suddenly, and he was left facing back towards where he’d just been launched from. He had just enough time to watch the tops of his spine and shoulders tilt backwards into his hole, unable to move or function.
The next thing Johnson noticed was the person sat on top of his stone. It looked like a girl - a young woman more specifically. She was dressed in clothes similar to the people from yesterday, all in black from head to toe, and for a brief moment Johnson was worried that one of them had seen him and wished to punish him now for some unknown transgression. She had dark skin, darker hair tied up in two, spongey balls and green eyes. Her hands were clasped over her mouth, presumably from the shock of kicking Johnson’s head off as opposed to the skeleton that had stood up barely a foot from her. There was a definite pause that hung in the air as she stared at him and he ‘stared’ at her, and after a moment or two Johnson decided that he was bored with this.
“Hello,” he began, a word that surprised even him as up until that moment Johnson hadn’t even been sure he could talk. The girl was similarly shocked, mouth agape as she tried to understand that a skull had just spoken to her.
“You…you can talk?” she replied as she barely composed herself, sliding off of Johnson’s headstone and onto her feet, the thick soles of her shoes crushing the grass flat beneath her.
“Apparently so,” he replied, internally beaming that he wasn’t doomed to a silent existence as he watched the stranger take a few cautious steps closer. “I’ve decided that I’m called Johnson, what about you?”
She blinked once, twice, and on the third one Johnson felt like she was mocking his lack of eyes as she spoke again.
“Decided that you’re called Johnson? What do you mean ‘decided?”
“You see that stone over there?” he remarked to her, to which she gave him a queer look in response.
“Which one?”
“That one.”
“Wha…?”
It was then that Johnson remembered that he was currently just a skull on the floor, and indeed not pointing in the direction he believed himself to be as he wasn’t pointing at all.
“Ah right, well can you see the one that reads ‘Johnson’?”
“Sure, so that’s your name?”
“Well that’s the name I’ve decided to give myself.”
“So it’s not yours.”
“It is now. I think I’ve decided that I am Johnson. What about you?”
That seemed to stop her for the moment, and Johnson felt something he could only attribute as smugness rising in his chest, that was still lying in his hole.
“Right, well I’m Jordan.” The girl finally replied, evidently deciding that this wasn’t an argument worth having right now when there were more pressing questions at hand.
“A pleasure, now would you kindly do me a favour Jordan?” Johnson asked, glad they’d finally come to some kind of middle ground. “My body’s currently still in my hole after you kicked my head off and I’d quite like to have it back. Would you mind reattaching me so to speak? Not having limbs is very disconcerting.”
Jordan looked at the skull before turning back and peering down into the grave, where sure enough a headless skeleton lay completely intact.
“Okay, but you have to promise not to murder me or anything if I do.” She nodded, slowly reaching down to take up Johnson’s head in both hands, her face doing a poor job of hiding her discomfort.
“Now why would I do something like that? Is that what skeletons usually do?” He replied, a theoretical brow furrowed on his theoretical face.
“Well…not really. Skeletons don’t usually do anything.”
“No? How come?”
“They’re usually pretty dead honestly.”
Johnson couldn’t really argue with her logic there.
“How long have you been dead Johnson?” she asked, shuffling closer to the grave.
“Uhm, I’m honestly not too sure. I think Shakespeare had just taken his shows to London. I really can’t remember much at all though.” Jordan’s eyes widened with disbelief. “Holy shit, I’m holding a genuine Tudor skull,” She whispered, preparing herself to fix Johnson while her mind raced ahead of her.
Grimacing as she crouched down, Jordan did her best to reach down and grab at whatever part of Johnson was closest to hand. His entire skeleton, sans head, lay flat on its back like it should be, despite the talkative head that she cradled in her other hand.
“Oh you’ll never reach it like that. You’ll just have to jump in and stick me back on down there.” Johnson explained, the sudden movement of his jaw almost causing Jordan to drop him altogether.
“I’ll never get out again, I can’t climb out from down there.” She remarked, still staring down into the hole as trepidation began to well inside her chest.
“Sure you can, I did, and I don’t have the muscles that you do.”
“Well how did you do it then?” She asked, giving Johnson a queer look.
“Just hop in and stick my head back on, I’ll show you.”
With a groan Jordan sat down and slipped over the lip of the grave, landing on her feet with a solid thud. Johnson’s body bounced a little with the impact, and in a hurry to get out of the grave Jordan slammed his skull onto the top of his spine. Jordan watched as Johnson lay there for a moment, totally unmoving, before sitting up suddenly and staring right at her. Unsurprisingly, Jordan screamed.
It was short and sharp and in a moment she’d regained herself, her cheeks growing a little rosy with embarrassment.
“Sorry,” she mumbled to Johnson as he stood up fully. “Just didn’t expect you to wait.”
“No bother now let’s get out of here. Can’t be spending the whole day down here can we.” The skeleton remarked before digging his fingers into the walls of his hole and beginning to pull himself up and out. As he passed her, he noticed a blush in Jordan’s cheek as she gave him a warm smile. It wasn’t a response he’d expected as a skeleton, but the growing comfort was welcome all the same.
Johnson scaled the side of his hole with expert efficiency, the sharpness of his finger and toe bones digging into the dirt as he climbed. Soon he was looking down at Jordan, hands on hips, as she looked up at him and pouted slightly.
“So what now?”
“What do you mean what now?”
“How are you going to get me out of here?”
If Johnson could have rolled his eyes he would have, but instead he settled for kneeling down and stretching out an arm for Jordan. She looked at the outstretched arm and clasped her hands around his.
“You sure it’ll hold?”
“Nope, but it’s worth a try.”
Not entirely filled with confidence, Jordan leant back and planted her boots at the base of the wall while Johnson began to shuffle back and pull. Strain threatened to pull his arm apart, but Johnson clasped his free hand around the joint and dragged Jordan up the rest of the way. They both spent a moment breathing heavily on the grass, Jordan not questioning Johnson’s apparent exhaustion.
“So what now?” Jordan asked after a minute or so, sat more comfortably now that they were both clear of Johnson’s hole.
“Not too sure young lady, I’ll probably look around for the rest of the day then come back here and just do the same tomorrow.”
He noticed that Jordan was giving him a look that he didn’t quite understand, but it wasn’t a look that Johnson much liked.
“Young lady?”
“Did I say something wrong?”
“Johnson, I’m not a lady.”
It was Johnson’s turn to give Jordan a queer look, his skull cocked to the side as he sat across from her, legs crossed like he’d been shown.
“You’re not? But you have…you know…feminine parts.”
“Go on?”
He was beginning to get flustered now.
“Well, you know, a bosom for example.”
Jordan had to hold back the intense need to laugh at what the skeleton had just said, supressed tears beginning to fill the corners of her eyes.”
“No Johnson look I’m not a girl or a woman or a lady. I’m non-binary.”
“Non-binary?”
“Yeah, so I’m not a man or a woman. I’m just kinda outside all that.”
“Right, but you look like a…”
“Yes, but what’s on the outside doesn’t really matter. It’s what’s in there and up here that does.” Jordan remarked, tapping their chest and then their head for emphasis.
“Like, how would I know you’re a male skeleton just by looking at you?”
“Easy I have a…” Johnson looked down, and Jordan couldn’t help but imagine his skull blushing as he looked back up at them.
“Right, I see your point. You can’t.”
“Exactly! You’re a man because that’s who you feel you are, and that’s totally fine. I don’t choose to be what I am, I just kinda am. I’ll explain it properly later, alright?”
Johnson nodded slowly, the sudden influx of information slowly unravelling inside his skull.
“Okay I think I understand. Is everyone else non-binary now?” He eventually asked.
“Nope, but it’s not a big deal. You really do have a lot to learn though, don’t you?”
“Apparently so.” He replied, a little wearily.
Jordan looked up at the sky, noting that they’d spent the entire morning just in the graveyard, and stood up.
“Why don’t you come back with me? I’ve got a sofa you can sleep on, and we can find you stuff to do that isn’t just sitting in a hole. What do you say?”
For once, since waking up, Johnson didn’t know what to say. It was the second generous thing Jordan had done for him since they’d met, and the skeleton didn’t quite know how to feel.
“Uhm, okay? Sure. I guess they can just give my hole to someone else if I’m not using it, but you can’t let me stay for free. How can I pay you?” He asked, standing up alongside Jordan.
“In knowledge. I’m a history student, you’re historical. You teach me about the past, I teach you about the present. How does that sound?” Jordan asked, offering a hand to Johnson.
He mulled it over in his mind for just a second before taking their hand in his.
“Yeah, that sounds pretty good to me.”
3 notes
·
View notes
Romantic student things
1. Sharing shy smiles and blushes as they pass each other in the crowded hallways, their hearts fluttering with anticipation.
2. Writing secret love letters in the margins of textbooks, passing them discreetly in class.
3. Sneaking glances at each other during a captivating lecture, their eyes meeting briefly before looking away, a silent connection forged.
4. Meeting by chance in the library, discovering a shared love for a particular book or author, and engaging in deep conversations about literature.
5. Leaving small notes hidden in each other's lockers or textbooks, conveying sweet messages or inside jokes.
6. Studying together in a quiet corner of the library, their heads bent over books, occasionally stealing longing glances.
7. Sharing a secret rendezvous in an empty classroom after school, their whispers and stolen kisses echoing in the quiet space.
8. Passing each other handwritten notes during a boring lecture, filled with doodles, song lyrics, and love-struck confessions.
9. Working on a group project together, finding solace in late-night study sessions filled with laughter, teasing, and shared cups of coffee.
10. Taking turns leaving surprise gifts, like a single rose or a favorite snack, in each other's lockers to brighten their day.
11. Sharing a stolen moment under a blooming cherry blossom tree on campus, petals falling around them like confetti as they exchange a tender kiss.
12. Collaborating on a school event or performance, their talents and passions intertwining to create something beautiful together.
13. Passing notes during a particularly boring class, filled with doodles and funny anecdotes, their laughter hidden behind cupped hands.
14. Supporting each other during nerve-wracking presentations or exams, offering encouraging smiles and reassuring touches.
15. Graduating together, their hearts brimming with pride and excitement for the future, knowing they have someone special by their side.
377 notes
·
View notes