Rebirth13 min read
I Ran Out of the Exam — Then I Became Queen of the Dead
ButterPicks13 views
"I have to go," I said.
"You're joking, Joe," Jaylee Seidel snapped from the front row. "It's the English test. Sit down."
"I can't sit," I said. "I can't finish the paper."
"Why?" Dalton Bonner asked, eyes narrow. "You don't answer a test and you run?"
"I—" I swallowed. My hands wouldn't stop shaking. I looked at the clock on the wall. "One hour and fifty-nine minutes," I whispered. "I need to go."
"Landon, check her," Jaylee ordered. "She's probably staging some scene."
"Don't be ridiculous," Landon Muller said, a little too calm. He glanced at me like I was a bug. "Stay. We'll tell the invigilator."
"I have to pee," I lied. "Severe stomach pain. I'm telling the truth."
"Fine," the female invigilator said, suspicious. "Go, but one of you follows."
"I'll go with her," Landon offered. His voice was soft. "Just go."
I didn't answer. I ran.
"Hey!" someone shouted. "Stop!"
"Run, Josephine!" a rough voice pushed me forward and the door shut behind me. I hit the stairwell running. "I'm going to the toilet!" I yelled, because old habits die hard. The invigilator's steps pounded after me, then faded.
I burst into the first-floor bathroom, slammed a cubicle closed, and climbed out the filthy window like I'd done a hundred times in the last life. I slid down the fire escape and sprinted for the tiny supermarket next to the cafeteria.
"You crazy? It's exam day," the shop owner said, eyes wide when I burst in.
"I need food. Bottled water. Anything I can carry," I said, grabbing boxes like they were oxygen.
"You sure you shouldn't be..." he trailed off. "You're late for the test."
"I failed it last life," I muttered. "This time I won't."
He handed me two crates of water and a big cardboard box. I shoved in canned meat, dried snacks, instant noodles, bandages, antiseptic, scissors, and a half-meter kitchen knife wrapped in cloth. He blinked.
"For a picnic?" he asked.
"For survival," I said.
"You're brave," he said.
"No. I'm terrified."
I ran back and climbed into the dorm like a squirrel. My heart drummed. I locked the door, pushed a bed against it, hung sheets over the windows, and filled every barrel and bucket I could reach with water.
"Who barricaded the window?" a voice asked.
"Don't let anyone in," I whispered. "Not one person."
They pounded the door. "Open! It's freezing out! Open!" someone cried.
I held my breath. I could hear Jaylee's voice, loud and high-pitched like always. "She locked us out! That snake! Open!"
"Who did?" someone said outside.
"Chen Xi—" a voice started.
"No," I told myself. "I'm Josephine Atkins."
I kept the door shut.
"You're a coward," Jaylee screamed. "Open the door now!"
Inside, the group of seven crammed in were thirsty and loud. They ate and drank my supplies as if they'd been starving for weeks. My throat narrowed.
"Josephine," Landon said at one point, all soft concern, "can you help Jaylee? Her foot's bleeding."
"Sure," I said, because I used to be the person who helped. I knelt, I disinfected. I found the bite marks under the blood. "This is bad," I said.
"You're being dramatic," Jaylee cried. "I'm fine. Just clean it better."
"You're not fine," I said more firmly. "If anyone has fresh bites or scratches, you must—"
"Stop scaring everyone!" Landon said, snatching the pendant off my neck.
He didn't say why he took it. He held my grandma's cheap pendant like a trophy. "If you run and don't come back, it's gone," he said.
"Give it back," I whispered.
"Get out and fetch the phones," he barked at me. "You're fast. Go get the phones. And the medicine."
"Why me?" I asked. "You can run."
"Because you're small and quick," Cole Richardson said, knife glinting. "Go fetch."
"Fine," I said, numb. "Give me a knife." They flung a short kitchen knife out the window. I caught it, ran for the office, found keys, ran back. I changed to a spare room, moved quietly.
I tuned my mind to the rhythm I'd learned in the other life. There were two things to do in two hours: gather supplies for seven days, and get to a defensible place. I had both. But then Jaylee bled and people changed. People always changed.
"Don't trust them," my old-life voice said in my head.
"Don't trust who?" I thought I heard from outside.
"Open up!" a chorus howled.
They burst the door open then. I fell under the force and went down. "You're a monster!" Jaylee screamed, triumphant, cruel. "You locked us out to starve us!"
"Stop! We have food!" Dalton shouted. "We were surviving!"
"Bite marks," I said. "Jaylee, your wound—"
"Shut up!" Landon yelled. He pushed my shoulders down and grabbed the pendant from my throat, laughing like he'd stolen the moon.
"You're not going anywhere," he said.
I did not panic. I kept quiet, watching, breathing slow. I'd seen a lot in the last life: how people turn not only into monsters but into cowards.
The night was long. Jaylee kept twitching and moaning. The wound blackened. She smelled wrong.
"She'll be okay," Landon kept promising, while glancing at me like I had a defect.
"You're a liar," I told him once. "You remember how you left me. You remember the rumors you allowed."
He flashed a smile that didn't reach his eyes. "You're making things up."
"You're the one who told everyone I was stupid," I said.
"Enough!" he barked. "We have to survive. If you keep that tone, we toss you out."
"Do it," I said softly. "Toss me out."
They forced me toward the bathroom and slammed me into the tub room. I lied down, closed my eyes, and waited for the right hour. Jaylee's moans grew worse at midnight. Her skin bubbled. Her eyes went blank.
"Now," I thought. "Now we test them." I took the big box knife and felt the cold steel.
The room was a small war. Jaylee screamed like a bird on fire, lunged at Dalton, bit the air. Dalton shook. She rose like a demon and snapped.
"Help!" Dalton cried, but his voice was small.
"Get out, get out!" someone screamed. Panic is the easiest thing to light.
They locked the door and shoved Jaylee into the hallway. She bit and clawed. "You left me!" she spat through blood. "You lied! You ruined me!"
"Get her away," Landon shouted. "She's dangerous!"
They dragged her out and slammed the door shut. I stood in my blood-slick shoes and watched the smoke of the past life lift.
"You traitor," I said to Landon, who sat on the floor and counted our food like a miser.
"You saved us," he said. "You risked everything."
"You stole my pendant and smiled when people starved," I said.
He raised his hands. "We had to do what it took."
We did nothing but wait. Jaylee was gone into the dark corridors, a shrieking animal. The building grew quiet after one scream after another.
I slept like a hunter.
When morning came, our floor was still. The dorm door stood ajar. I found evidence of a fight in the hall. Blood, hair, a shoe. My pendant was gone. My mind sharpened. I moved into a different room and set fires as a last defense later that night, because the dead that turn smart are worse than the dumb ones.
Later that evening, the pounding at the door was relentless.
I heard steps outside and smelled the rotten breath of far too many dead things. Through a rip in the sheet I saw Jaylee at the front, eyes like chipped glass, skin split and bubbling. Ten or twelve pale figures pressed at her back. I felt the fear that used to fuel me turn into a cool knife of something else.
"She's leading them," I murmured.
I didn't have much: a lighter, bottled perfume, hairspray, three cans of sunscreen, a long kitchen knife. I soaked sheets, poured perfume on them, set them like torches to the cloth piled near the balcony. The room filled with a hot smell of burning plastic and perfume. Flames leaped. The dead screamed and pushed and pushed.
The sliding balcony door stood between us.
They hit it with a mass of weight. The glass held, then a crack. The heat came through like an animal. Jaylee, bright as hate, pulled the handle. The handle gave. Hot air tried to crush me back.
I lit the hairspray and sprayed it at faces. I lashed out with the knife. "Get back!" I screamed.
They didn't get back. They surged toward the balcony. The scent of burning flesh filled my lungs. I hacked and slashed until my hands trembled.
"Die!" I cried.
I drove the knife into a face. I cut until muscle gave way. I stabbed Landon in the neck when he lurched close with smoke in his lungs. His mouth made a small sound like someone who has lost a game they didn't know they were in.
I kept cutting, until the courtyard below smelled of iron and ash.
When the last one fell and the flames died down, I slipped into darkness. My body burned and tasted of iron. Blood and smoke stained my hair. I lay down and waited for the end to take me.
My chest clenched. I vomited black bile. It should have been the end. I had been bitten. I had been burned and gutted and should be a corpse.
But dawn came and I woke.
I expected nothing. But I moved.
Something else moved in me, a cold bright crown of will. The other dead in the corridor backed away as if I wore thunder. They moaned and parted. They did not attack me.
I stood slowly and touched the pendant I found on Landon's neck in the wreckage; it was warm from his blood. I slid it onto my own neck and felt a thread of my grandmother's voice like a warm wire through me.
I tested a call. I opened my mouth.
"Go," I said, and ten pale bodies turned and walked.
"Listen," I said. "Not them. Me."
They obeyed.
At first I laughed like something without lungs. I walked down the hall and through a broken window into the courtyard. Survivors cowered behind smashed cars and a collapsed tent. They had watched my fight the night before. They had watched everything.
"She's—" someone whispered.
"That's her," another said. "Josephine? But—"
I stood where the sun hit the ruin and looked at the faces. Landon, Dalton, Cole, and the rest had escaped the dorm the night the others did. They had run out into the crowd during the crush, but friends had seen them. Word spread like a fever.
They came to the square later, no more than twenty people, and they dragged the ones they wanted punished to the center. They wanted the ones they'd labeled traitors punished. They wanted justice for their dead. They wanted to show who had power.
They didn't know I already had power.
"Put them in the middle!" a woman shouted. "They made us lose people!"
"Hold them!" someone else barked. They shoved Landon, Dalton, and Cole into the sun. Cover-ups, screams, wet clothes clinging to fresh grief.
"She'll want to watch," someone said. "Make her see."
They forced me into the open. I smelled the crowd: salt, fear, canned coffee. My throat had no fear. My mind was a narrow thing. I wanted the pendant I had on my chest to mean justice.
"Josephine," Landon said, face raw. "Please. You saved us once, didn't you? We—"
"You stole," I said. "You stole my things and my dignity."
"It was war," he whispered. "We just wanted to live."
"You took my pendant," I said. "You laughed when I begged. Your hands killed things before the dead did."
The crowd murmured. Phones were out. Someone took video. "This is real," one young man whispered to his friend. "She's the one from the dorm fire."
"Don't make it worse," Dalton said, trembling.
"Don't make it worse," Cole repeated.
"Look at them," I said in a low voice that surprised me as much as it surprised them. "You told yourselves a story. The story said you were brave. You were cowards. You were small."
"Stop!" Landon cried. "No. Don't—"
"You're the bully who laughed while I cried," I said.
"That's a lie," he stammered. His voice broke on the word.
I stepped forward. "You called me worthless. You took my pendant when I trusted you. You left us to the monsters because saving yourself meant more."
He looked at me, and for a second the old charm flickered back to life. "Josephine... we thought—"
"You thought," I said. "You thought wrong."
An echo went through the crowd. Someone gasped. A woman near the edge of the circle said, "She looks... different."
"Not different," I said. "I am the consequence."
Landon's face changed. He tried to smile, tried to reach for my mercy. "Please. We can trade. We can give you supplies. We can—"
"What would you offer?" I asked.
"Anything," he whispered. "Money. Food. My dad has a truck—"
A man in front of him, who had lost a sister, spat. "You killed people. You let them die."
"Shut up," Dalton shrank into his knees.
I raised a hand. My voice dropped to something old, not fully human and not fully my own. "Look at them," I said. "You have already watched your hands. You have already smelled the rot."
They began to plead. It happened like clockwork.
"No!" Landon shouted. "I didn't—"
"Why?" a bystander asked.
"Because I'm human," Dalton blurted. "Because it's hunger and fear."
"Because you are small," I said. "You are small and you failed."
Faces whitened. Cole tried to laugh then. It became a broken sound.
"Not everyone deserves mercy," a woman yelled. A few across the circle agreed. Phones continued to roll.
"Don't do this!" Landon begged. "We can work together! We can—"
"You betrayed me for a pendant," I said.
"Please," he said, tears now dragging streaks through the filth on his face. "I'm sorry. I'm sorry."
The crowd leaned in. Their eyes were a mix of hunger, morality, and a dark curiosity. They wanted spectacle, like any small war that wanted proof.
"You can beg," I said. "You can grovel. You can list every right you took from me."
They started to speak—the pleading was a staccato of tiny words: "Please... mercy... we were scared... we had to... I'm sorry... forgive me..."
Each plea hit like a grain of sand. The crowd shifted. Some laughed, ugly and small.
"You taught people to hurt me," I said quietly. "You cheered. You stood aside. You laughed."
"No," Landon said, and his chin trembled. "We didn't mean—"
"You meant to survive and pretended that was justice," I said, and for each accused name I told a short story. I told of the day Jaylee shoved me in the bathroom, of Landon pulling my pendant, of Dalton looking away while someone hit me. Each sentence was short, sharp. The crowd inhaled on each.
"Remember when you made her kneel?" I asked a man in the crowd. He shook his head violently. "Then why are you protecting them?" I asked the crowd.
The spectators split. A few people sobbed. Phones recorded. Someone hissed. "She's making them feel it before she finishes them."
"Stop!" Landon begged, voice gone to ash. "Please."
He changed—first to shock, then denial. "No, I didn't—"
Then he saw the faces of the people who had believed him. They stared. Someone who had once been his friend took a step back. Their expressions froze. His face lost color as if someone had sucked the blood out.
"You're a coward," I said. "See what it does when you stand down? Your friends leave you. That is punishment."
He started to cry, pleading faster. "Please. I can help. I can go fetch food. I can drive you somewhere safe."
"Beg," I told him. "Kneel."
The circle of spectators shifted closer. Hands reached out to hold Landon down. He hesitated, eyes flashing to the camera phones, to the faces. He knelt.
"Forgive me," he whispered. "Forgive me."
"Now the change," I said.
He started speaking fast, then slow, then silent. His shoulders trembled. A few people in the crowd whispered, "We should help him." A teenage girl said, "He's crying."
"Nobody moves," I said. "You betrayed the weak. You will be remembered as a lesson."
They begged and begged. Their voices became wet, thin. Denial cracked. Then they began to beg for someone else: for their mothers, for their fathers, for a child they didn't have. The crowd listened like jury and, slowly, began to change their tune.
"Do it," a voice said finally from the crowd.
I did not act like the old me. I moved like the thing I had become. I reached and grabbed Landon's chin.
"Tell them you were wrong," I commanded.
"I was wrong," he said. He said it as if it were a balm. The crowd exhaled, some with relief, some with curiosity.
The moment of second reaction was the worst. He looked up and realized the phones were pointed. His eyes widened. He tried to pull back. The crowd hissed.
"No," I said very softly. "You will learn what it means to lose everything you thought you owned."
Then Landon knew the truth. There was no more bargaining. He saw the pendant on my chest and understood the trade had been made.
"Please," he sobbed. "Please."
"Remember your laugh," I said. "Remember it. Listen to it in the night."
He lost color, then voice, then reason. For a second he looked like a child. He begged, then shouted. His eyes bulged wide, terror and recognition mixing. The crowd's reaction rippled: some covered their mouths, others took pictures, some clapped like they were at a show.
"Shame," whispered one old woman. "This is justice."
"Too far," another man said.
They watched him change from confident to broken. His face folded. He pounded palms on the dirt and begged for forgiveness.
"Now your friends," I said.
One by one, like a grim parade, Dalton and Cole rose before the circle. They tried to tell stories, excuses, little lies. My questions were short, surgical. "Why did you turn away?" "What did you take?" "Did you laugh?"
They slipped through the same arc: smugness, disbelief, denial, anger, pleading, collapse.
Dalton's voice cracked as he begged a woman he had protected: "Forgive me."
She held him away like he had a fever.
The crowd shifted. Some recorded, some cried, some spat. The punishment was public, full of faces, phones, and the raw human need to see wrongs fixed. It was loud. It was ugly. It was honest.
I felt nothing but the cold satisfaction of a job done. I did not kill them then. I took their names, their promises, their fear. I left them with the memory of their failure and the sound of their own screaming.
When I walked away, the crowd was quiet. Landon hit his knees and keened. Dalton rocked back and forth. Cole sat on the dirt and took off his shoes like a child giving up.
"You'll be watched," I told them. "You will be watched by everyone you hurt."
Then I turned and left the square.
Phones still glowed with videos of their doom. People in the crowd talked. Some said I was cruel. Some called me justice. Some asked me to lead them.
I don't remember all the words. I remember the pendant warm against my chest. I remember the sun on the burned marks on my hands.
A little girl came up and touched my sleeve. "Are you the queen?" she asked.
"I don't know," I said.
"Are you going to help us?" she asked.
I looked at the tired faces. I felt the crowd like a tide.
"I will," I said. "But not like they wanted. Not like you think."
She nodded slowly. "Good. My mama says people who hurt others should be shown."
I put my hand on her head and felt something like a promise. The pendant hummed.
That night, the camp by the broken flagpole lit small fires. People shared salt, a ration, a story. They watched the videos and whispered.
Landon, Dalton, and Cole were not killed in the square. They were humiliated, forced into a circle of faces to watch their names be called. They begged and were recorded and watched until dawn. Each step of their fall played out in front of the crowd, from smug to denial to collapse. That was punishment enough, in my mind. The world was small now. Shame was a mighty weapon.
I walked back toward the dorms, the pendant heavy and warm. Dawn found me near the burnt stairwell. I looked at the sky as if it were a page. I had survived the test I'd set for myself.
I had died and become something else.
"Who are you really?" a man asked, voice trembling.
"A survivor," I said. "A wrong fixed."
I felt the pendant against my chest and thought of my grandmother's hands. I brushed a thumb across the worn metal and, for the first time since I had died and risen, I smiled a little.
The world was quiet, but the noises of the living and the dead mixed. I had been a frightened girl in an exam hall, and I had become a ruler of bones and wills.
I looked down at the pendant and whispered, "I will keep my promise to you, Grandma."
The pendant warmed. The wind smelled like ash and rosemary. The sun found the thin metal and shone on it like a small, stubborn star.
The End
— Thank you for reading —