The line takes forever, but finally it\u2019s my turn. I stare at my best friend, tucked into a girl-sized mahogany coffin. Bridget is incredibly dead.<\/p>\n\n\n\n
Face painted, hair curled and crunchy, she looks ever so ugly and I wish I could tell her. I lean into the coffin and whisper Ugly, but she doesn\u2019t hear me, so I lean even further\u2013\u2013further and further\u2013\u2013until I\u2019m inside.<\/p>\n\n\n\n
Don\u2019t know why it\u2019s so spacious in here. The coffin closes, and my body falls a good distance, hitting the ground hard. Lights flash and I close my eyes. It smells like dead girls in here. Like meat left out to rot. Like vanilla perfume gone sour.<\/p>\n\n\n\n
I open my eyes, and there\u2019s not a Bridget in sight. Only disco balls and blinking strobes and spinning spotlights. Bridget? I scream, and all the girls on the coffin dance floor turn to me. They point to their ears like, Music\u2019s too loud, can\u2019t hear you.<\/p>\n\n\n\n
The coffin girls swish, swoosh, gyrate into one another. Music thumps into my eardrums and I join them, gyrate with them, moving my hips in circles like popstars in music videos. I think of nothing, not Bridget, not the smell, not life above ground, only my body, moving round and round like a clock.<\/p>\n\n\n\n
After much gyration, sweat dotting my face and neck and armpits, I look for an exit, because there\u2019s still no Bridget, and I must have entered the wrong coffin. I see but one door, tiny, a disco ball swinging above it. I go to it, through it.<\/p>\n\n\n\n
Finally! Bridget says, as I enter the small white room, scrunching my body to fit. My tea party\u2019s starting, she says, pulling out one of the toddler-sized chairs for me.<\/p>\n\n\n\n
We drink several cups of tea, watery and bitter, until Bridget tells me she\u2019s tired and is going to bed. I remind her that she\u2019s dead, so what does that mean?<\/p>\n\n\n\n
Don\u2019t be a beotch, she says.<\/p>\n\n\n\n
You\u2019re dead, I\u2019m alive, I say, making sure she knows how it is.<\/p>\n\n\n\n
You sure about that? Bridget flips her ponytail and squeezes through the tiny door. I follow. Back to the dance floor. The music is softer now, coffin girls swaying lethargically, some lying on the floor, a few snoring. Bridget\u2019s nowhere. I climb onto a cushiony pile of girls and drift to sleep, deadness wafting into my dreams.<\/p>\n\n\n\n
I dream that we\u2019re all in our own coffins. There\u2019s banging to be let out, so much banging. I swell with desperation and start banging too. No one is coming for us, so we bang louder and louder until the banging becomes music, and I wake to girls dancing and spinning and gyrating around me.<\/p>\n\n\n\n
I get up so as not to be stepped on. When I look more closely at the girls, I recognize them\u2013\u2013Bridget\u2019s sisters, doubled, tripled, multiplied like rabbits. Of course they\u2019re here. They never leave her alone.<\/p>\n\n\n\n
There\u2019s a long-haired one I sort of like, pirouetting by the DJ. I grab her and pull her toward a corner.<\/p>\n\n\n\n
Lottie, I scream.<\/p>\n\n\n\n
What? she says, moving her hips in big round circles like hula hooping.<\/p>\n\n\n\n
We should get out of here, I say. Do you know how to get out?<\/p>\n\n\n\n
What\u2019s this about, Bridget? she says, inching back onto the dance floor.<\/p>\n\n\n\n
My forehead crinkles. Do you smell that? I ask. Deadness hovers over my nose, dense, thick, suffocating. I breathe through my mouth.<\/p>\n\n\n\n
I\u2019ve been dancing for days, give me a break, she says, lifting her hair off her back. Do you have a hair tie?<\/p>\n\n\n\n
Am I dead? I ask her.<\/p>\n\n\n\n
How should I know?<\/p>\n\n\n\n
I wander around the coffin, unable to find any more doors. It really is just a nightclub. A nightclub that\u2019s starting to come apart. Wallpaper peeling, floorboards wobbling. The ceiling splintering, opening up. Where there should be sky, only void.<\/p>\n\n\n\n
I think back to life outside the coffin, back to me and Bridget\u2019s science fair project. Collecting data about different hairsprays. Our teacher telling us the experiment was moot, as we only tested on our own hair, which was thin and brittle, and not collective or conclusive.<\/p>\n\n\n\n
I feel for my longish, blondish strands, but they\u2019re not there. I move my hands up and find my hair swaying above my shoulders, like Bridget\u2019s.<\/p>\n\n\n\n
I need a mirror, I tell Lottie, whose hips circle faster, like she has lost control, like she is glitching.<\/p>\n\n\n\n
Use my sunglasses, she says.<\/p>\n\n\n\n
I look at my reflection and see Bridget\u2019s short brown bob. It\u2019s hard to tell with the flashing lights, but it appears I\u2019m starting to acquire her golden eyes and pointy pig nose, as well.<\/p>\n\n\n\n
Do I look like myself? I ask Lottie.<\/p>\n\n\n\n
She shrugs.<\/p>\n\n\n\n
Coffins are heavy. Pallbearers make it seem easy, but there is nothing light about a coffin. About getting inside of one. I know that now. Now I know. There\u2019s no getting out, and all we can do is dance, faster and faster until it all comes apart.<\/p>\n\n\n\n
I swirl my arms like streamers, shake my head, thrust my hips, jiggle my shoulders, tap tap tap my feet, careful not to step through floorboards. When I tire, I sleep on a pile of girls.<\/p>\n\n\n\n
Smells like dead girls in here! I scream.<\/p>\n\n\n\n
Ha-ha-ha! say the dead girls, dancing around me, against me, into me. All of us laugh, all of us dance. The air gets heavy and sometimes we cough, it\u2019s hard to breathe. Ceiling chunks rain down, exposing the void above us. The nightclub is becoming more void than anything else. Music gets louder, lights flash faster. Disco balls swing, back and forth, crashing into each other, bursting like balloons.<\/p>\n\n\n\n
__________<\/p>\n\n\n\n
Skyler Melnick has an MFA in fiction from Columbia University. She writes about sisters playing catch with their grandfather’s skull, headless towns, and mildewing mothers. Her work has appeared in <\/em>The Pinch, <\/em>HAD,<\/em> Terrain and elsewhere, forthcoming in <\/em>Fairy Tale Review, <\/em>Wigleaf, and<\/em> Hunger Mountain. She was awarded 1st place in <\/em>Fractured Literary‘s 2024 Ghosts, Fables, and Fairy Tales contest.<\/em><\/p>\n\n\n\n <\/p>\n","protected":false},"excerpt":{"rendered":"