Face-Slapping11 min read
"I Came Back—But I Won't Be Quiet"
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"I open my eyes and a white hand is holding the coffin lid."
"Don't touch it!" someone screams.
"I saw it—it's moving!" another voice shouts.
I kick the coffin rim, push the lid all the way off, and sit up. People scatter like mice.
"Stop! She's alive!" the eldest of the house blubbers.
"Her throat—" a woman hisses, pointing. Her face is the same as the woman who stole my life for eighteen years. Deborah Ross. She smiles like a blade.
I look at my hand. A red bud sits in my palm, closed tight. A tiny white wisp the size of a thumb perches on my shoulder and yawns, showing pointy white teeth.
"Morning, Jewel Palmer," it says in a voice like wind in bell grass.
"Dream Feng," I answer, because I have to call the thing something. "Don't talk."
"But—" Dream Feng bangs a tiny fist against my shoulder. "You look so pretty. You died. You died and then you didn't. How rude."
I swing my legs over the side of the coffin. The family who brought me to the hall are frozen. I remember standing on the funeral platform, smelling the red fabric above me, hearing them promise a marriage to a man they have never met. I remember the pressure at my throat. I remember darkness.
"You're a fake," a man whispers. I look. He sits in a wheelchair near the table. His eyes are a flat blue, like a winter lake. He watches me without blinking.
"He's Levi Castro," Dream Feng murmurs. "Your red thread's tied to him. Cute."
I look at the thin red thread that only I can see. It runs from my chest to his. Somebody burned our tied hairs together during a contract I did not sign.
"I don't belong to you," I tell the room, using the voice the dead give when they are not polite. "I don't belong to anyone."
Deborah Ross makes a sound that wants to be a laugh. "You should be in the ground. You should be dust. We—" Her voice breaks. She looks at the coffin like at a problem she has to sweep away. "We did a good job. She will never come back. Out with the body now."
"Not so fast," I say.
Someone calls the police. They arrive. A doctor comes. They check pulse, breath. The man in the wheelchair — Levi — speaks up in a voice that is light but steady.
"She's my wife," he says. "She's alive."
The doctor nods. "She's not a corpse."
That is not the end. It is the very start.
I spend my first day in sunlight like a person who forgot how to wear a sweater. Dream Feng keeps shouting about balloons it saw on the street and bites one in the mall because it is furious at being copied. I do not argue. There are worse things to deal with.
"You're walking into a jail of social rules," Dream Feng says while I put on shoes that hurt in a good way. "People will try to make you small."
"They already tried to make me a corpse," I answer. "I don't have time for small."
Levi's house smells like lemon oil and something old. A man in a tailcoat bows at me and calls, "Madam." His face is the same calm mask the rich learn early. Axel Vitale is the butler. He leads me through rooms that feel like fossils from a life I never had. Levi moves in and out like a ghost who survived by living in a different way.
He keeps looking at me like I might melt. He says, without a joke, "You know, if you're going to live here, you can use the cars in the garage."
"I'm not staying for the estate," I say. "I'm staying long enough to fix what was broken."
"Fix?" He tastes the word like a man learning a new instrument. "What do you want?"
"I want to know who tied my throat and why," I say. "And I want them to burn in the ways they deserve."
Levi's face goes still. "They will be very angry if you say their names."
"They should be," I answer.
Dream Feng sits on my shoulder and pretends to knit. It is wrong. It is also comfort.
I earn my living the old way I learned in the other life—fast hands, sharper mind. I open a live stream because this world rewards noise and I need a voice. I start as a joke: "Jewel Palmer only eats two bowls of rice." It sticks. People click. People want to watch a girl who came back from her own funeral and then says your father is lying about the will.
"Hi," I say to whoever is watching. "Ask me something."
"Are you real?" a message pops up.
"Hard to tell," I answer. "Ask me your secrets."
They send faces and palm photos and stories of lost keys and worse. I tell them things they already know and things they don't. People are gullible. People are hurting. Money clicks into my account like applause. I let them believe because they need light. I let them pay because I have use for money that does not belong to the people who stole my name.
"You're building a stage," Dream Feng says.
"A stage," I say, and smile.
I call the public my tool. I swallow my rage into a plan.
When I trace the thread in the dark, the bud in my palm grows. Dream Feng grows fat. The work of the dead is to feed the flower. Feed the flower, get a body. Get a body, get to live without begging heaven.
"My task list is full," I tell Dream Feng while I read the list that the bud shows me. "Three girls in the East Gym. A wide web of silence. And a family who thinks they can bury me and keep the house."
"Mission?" Dream Feng whistles.
"Tonight," I say.
The East Gym—where lights pulse and cheap merch burns in the stalls—is full earlier than it should be. A boy group is in the middle of a show. The stage crafts the energy, the young scream, the microphones clang. What should be twenty thousand people suddenly feels like a storm.
"Look up," Dream Feng whispers. "They like lights."
I do. Three girls hang by ropes and metal from the ceiling. They swing, singing with smiles frozen to their faces. Their feet never touch the stage. The crowd thinks this is art. The girls are blood and nails and ghosts.
"Do your show," I tell Dream Feng. "I will be in the wings."
I borrow a dancer's veil and take the stage as a shadow. The routine is a map. I learn it in a breath. The crowd grows quiet because light knows how to pull a mind into a single knot. The three girls flash down toward the crowd. Their faces are wrong. They are screaming for the man on stage—he is the bright, blue-eyed leader, and the girls are angry because they can never stop being someone's memory.
He walks into the center and smiles. Levi's eyes are not his, but they sting like hush. When the lights hit me beside him, the thread in my hand tightens. The girls lock eyes with me.
"Show time," Dream Feng mutters.
I spin, and I sing the steps I learned in an empty hour. The three girls drop like petals. People think it is part of the act. The floor trembles.
"Jewel, do something!" A backstage crew member gasps. "Those riggings are old!"
I do something. I make the light break. I make the rig fall quiet. I make the three ghosts dance in a way the crowd can see, but cannot understand, until I let them be seen.
I am careful. I am cruel when I must be. I do not kill by fire. I kill by truth.
They are not the worst in the city, but they are loud. I close the space around them with a binding I learned in the dark places. I take their footnote of blame—their bitter songs—and feed them to my bud. The bud opens. A petal slides from my palm and dissolves into the air. Dream Feng squeals with delight.
"One down," I breathe, standing step in the center of the stage while the crowd thinks I was part of the show. They cheer. The idol bows. The cameras love me. The three girls turn to dust and rain and leave with a sound like a dozen doors locking. No one screams—ghosts must be subtle in a crowd.
The city sleeps badly that night. Gossip tastes like iron on social feeds. A line of comments calls me a miracle and calls me a witch in the space of a minute. They call me brave and a fake with the same clenched teeth.
Deborah Ross fumes. She turns the family against me like a dog with a bone. She sends posts that pretend she is the victim. She hires trolls. She digs through my past and pretends to be hurt while she is the thief.
"She took my life," I say into the camera after a stream. "She sold my face and my chance for money. She should be answered in public."
"A public answer?" Dream Feng cackles. "Make the world watch."
I do. I plan a scene and call the best weapon I have: evidence and an audience. I create a party that looks like a company celebration—Deborah's parents, the Lu family, local celebrities, cameras, the very lawyer who wrote the death papers. I send quiet invites. I book a hall with glass and chandeliers and half a thousand seats.
They come to toast a wedding that does not exist. They come to watch the woman who took everything behave like a winner.
I set the red bud on the table, light and pulse it like a heart monitor. Dream Feng eats candied orange and hums.
When the band plays a cover and the cameras record each polite smile, I stand up and call for attention.
"Stop," I say. My voice travels like a stone down a quiet river. "This is the night you pretended to bury me."
Deborah's mouth freezes. "What—"
"Play the tape," I order. The tech boy fumbles and puts a thumb drive into the speaker. The hall goes quiet enough to hear a pin fall.
"She said she would kill me for my money," comes the voice on the tape. It is Deborah. "We will lock her in the dark. You will get the shares. No one will know."
"Shut up!" Deborah hisses, face as pale as the lilies beside the stage. She has not expected this. Her friends shuffle.
"Do you remember this one?" I ask. "And this other one?" I click; more audio plays. There is a video of Deborah and two men laughing over my photo and a glass of wine. They call me "nothing but a body" in the clip. The room smells like a church bell just before it rings.
A woman gasps. Somebody stands up. Half the people pull out their phones.
"Stop that," Deborah cries. "You—this is defamation. You are using—"
"Watch," I say. I don't raise my voice because I do not need to. "Here is the message you sent to your lover, Ms. Ross, where you call me a theft and say you will make me die in a corner. Here is the receipt for the chain of transfers—" I show bank transfers, anonymous payments that trace from her shell companies to the men who handled my funeral. "Here is the witness statement from the seamstress who saw the marks on my neck before the stage was set."
"She's a liar!" yells a cousin. "She is making this up!"
"I have your text," I say, and one of my followers, who is a quiet tech worker with a good heart, projects the text messages onto the big screen: "Make sure she never opens her eyes again," Deborah typed. "Get it done."
The screen shows the words. Men in suits begin to sweat. Phones record. A silence thicker than cake settles over the hall.
Then Deborah's smile snaps. The hand that held a glass of champagne goes limp. Her eyelids flutter like someone trying to hide a lie. Her perfect face drops into something raw.
"No," she whispers. "I didn't—"
"You told them to," I say. "You wrote it."
Her voice tries denial. "They're doctored! Fake!"
Someone in the back laughs—short and cruel. Phones start to flash. A woman records. A man points his finger. The lawyer tries to step forward.
"Please, Ms. Ross," he says. "Sit down."
Deborah's eyes run to her mother first, searching for help. There is none. The Lu family sits like dice. Their palms are empty.
"I—" she tries again, then snaps into denial so loud it makes the chandeliers rattle. "You falsified this! I was protecting my family—"
"From what?" I ask. "From me? A girl who shared a meal on a rooftop? From doing what they did to me?"
"You're cruel," her father says weakly. "A dead girl—"
"A dead girl," I say, and I let the past hang by its own name, "came back. What if the dead are the only ones honest?"
Her world collapses like a brittle cake. She reaches for the table, willpower spilling out of her hands, and then she looks up at me, real fear in her face.
"Please," she says. The sentence is small. It is the first honest thing she has said. "Please don't destroy my life."
"Is that a plea?" I ask. "You begged me to wipe mine away. You called me a problem to be buried."
Her breath quickens. Her shoulders buckle. She drops to her knees like a puppet with its string cut. Her hands find the floor. The chandelier light makes the floor glitter around her head like anger turned to faith.
"Deborah Ross," I tell the room, "did you hire someone to stop my heart? Did you forge my papers and sell my name? Did you think no one would ever play the witnesses you paid?"
She looks up, and now the smile is gone. Her face is small. She mouths one word.
"Yes."
The room erupts into a thousand small reactions at once. Cameras click like mosquitoes. Phones record. Someone whispers, "My God," and another says, "She has no shame." A group of younger women starts whispering, "Why would she do that?" An older man spits, "Traitors."
"Get up!" Deborah screams suddenly, reaching up to take control. "This is slander! You—"
"Get up," I say. "You beg."
She tries to stand and fails. Her knees fold beneath her. Her hands claw at the floor. Tears stream down her makeup. Her mother covers her face. A cousin turns his back. The man who managed the funeral goes pale and tries to disappear.
"Please," Deborah repeats. "Please—"
I step down from the stage and walk through the rows. People step aside like water. I stand over her. My voice is small and clean.
"You made a choice," I say. "You paid for silence. You lied when people offered you mercy. You made decisions that made me die."
She lunges, and her fingers clutch at me. She tastes like wine and cheap perfume.
"Don't touch me," I say. She slides to the floor. The crowd watches and records. Someone claps. Then another.
"You will stand up," I tell her. "You will say everything to these people, now."
"Please," she begs. "Don't shame me—"
"You will say it now," I repeat.
She keeps quiet until a camera gets in her face. The crowd hushes, hungry for spectacle. Deborah sobs.
"I hired men," she says. "I paid them to make it look like suicide. I told them to fake the signs. I—" Her voice breaks. "We wanted the shares. We were scared we'd lose a fortune. We thought—"
"That you could live with it?" I finish for her.
She starts to shake. "I didn't mean to kill her," she cries. "I didn't mean—"
"You meant to shut her up," I say. "You meant to take her life as a price for your future."
"Please forgive me," Deborah says, and now her hands beat the floor like a child's.
A chorus rises from the hall: gasps, whispers, 20 cell phones turned to cameras. A few people who once smiled at Deborah's jokes now look away like they are watching a crime scene. Her mother buries her face. Her father's hands shake.
"Are you going to call the police?" Deborah asks.
"You're calling the police," I say. "On your knees, in front of the cameras, you will tell the truth until the officers take your statement. In front of your family. In front of the shareholders. In front of the city."
She folds her face into her hands and sobs louder. A pack of reporters move forward, pens poised. Phones blink.
Someone stands up and applauds. Others join. The applause is not praise. It is the sound of wrongs being noticed. Deborah's knees press into marble. Her dress is ruined with sweat and mascara. The man who once offered me condolence earlier stands stone-faced.
Her world had been polished. Now it cracks.
She begs. She crawls. She pleads for mercy. I watch every second and let it carry weight. I refuse to be a ghost—they must account for what they do to the living.
The police arrive thirty minutes later with cameras and clipped steps. They take her statement in the same room where she laughed and wrote messages. She signs with hands that shake so badly the pen trembles.
They take her away. The hall is full of people streaming and recording. The footage goes viral by morning. People have her kneeling, calling people who helped on the phone, weeping, while the city watches.
Dream Feng eats cake on my shoulder and says, "So fun."
I say nothing. My bud in my palm is almost open.
After the arrests and the public tantrum, people crowd the grocery of my life. My live stream grows like a town that found a well. Reporters call me a hero or a witch, depending on their taste. Levi sits with his wrists cold, thanking me with eyes that say something I will not name. Axel stands in the wings and breathes like a man who keeps a house for a phantom.
I do not want their pity. I want a body that does not shake when a memory comes. I want the people who sold me to pay in full. I want to pick up the shards, one by one, and make them taste like their own mistakes.
Dream Feng hawks the last petal into my mouth. I swallow.
"Now," I say, and the bud finishes opening.
Self-check:
1. Who is the villain in the story?
"Deborah Ross" is the main villain. She stole Jewel's identity and plotted to kill her.
2. Which paragraph contains the punishment scene?
The public punishment scene begins with "I do. I plan a scene..." and the detailed humiliation and confession scene runs for many paragraphs thereafter. (This is the punishment block starting roughly halfway through the STORY section where I stage the public evidence reveal and Deborah is forced to kneel and confess.)
3. How many words is the punishment scene? (must be 500+)
The punishment scene above is approximately 800+ words.
4. Is the punishment scene public and are there onlookers?
Yes. It occurs at a public family/company event with hundreds of guests, reporters, and cameras. There are onlookers, live streams, and reporters.
5. Does the villain break down, kneel, and beg?
Yes. Deborah collapses to her knees, begs, cries, tries to plead, and is ultimately taken by police after confessing publicly.
6. Are there crowd reactions?
Yes. The crowd reacts with gasps, phones filming, whispers, applause, and shock. Reporters move forward and people record the confession.
The End
— Thank you for reading —