To Bury a Witness

I am Asita.

My eyes were completely red, and heavy tears rolled down my face, dropping heavily to the cold earth below. There was a wooden shovel in my trembling hands, and I was throwing dirt onto the raw wooden box in the grave beneath me the very coffin I’d built with my own hands.

This wasn’t summer heat. This wasn’t fire heat. I was standing in front of my best friend Sunitha’s fresh grave. Yesterday she was right here, laughing, talking, alive. Now she wasn't. With the exact same hands I had used to gently apply makeup to her face yesterday, I was now burying her, shoveling dirt over her in the dark earth.

The phone in my heavy coat pocket suddenly vibrated.

The vibration hit my thigh like a frantic heartbeat. A wrong heartbeat. Fast. Panicked. Not mine.

I tried to ignore it. I truly did.

Next to me, Arun was muttering something low and ragged under his breath. I couldn’t make out the words. Prayer or curse, it didn’t matter; his hands were tightly clasped in front of him, his thumbs twitching against each other like he was desperately trying to rub away his own fingerprints.

Beside me stood my boyfriend. Vikranth. For three years, I had known the weight of his fingers running through my hair, pulling me close, whispering fiercely that I was safe. That exact same hand was resting on my shoulder now. Holding it. Still.

It didn’t feel like comfort. It didn’t feel like love.

It felt like a cold shackle. Like he’d just locked a heavy manacle around my wrist and was simply waiting for the prison warden to come take me away.

Across the gaping hole of the grave stood my brother, Aravind. His eyes were blood-red not from crying, but from something darker, something toxic. His jaw was clenched so hard I honestly thought his teeth would crack and shower down into the dirt at his feet. The vein in his temple throbbed wildly with every furious beat of his heart.

He was the one who had supposedly found Sunitha’s broken body. He was also the one who’d been “cooperatively helping the police.” He’d been silently collecting every shred of evidence they’d ever need to lock me in a cage. He had it all saved, stored, and ready.

An invisible play was happening all around me. A sick, rehearsed performance. And everyone on this stage had their lines memorized except me.

They were all looking at me. Not with pity. Not like a grieving friend.

They were looking at me the way an apex predator looks at cornered prey.

The vibration came again. Harder this time. Much angrier.

I couldn’t ignore it any longer. Not with Vikranth’s heavy hand pressing down on my shoulder, Aravind’s burning eyes drilling holes straight through my face, and Arun’s feverish muttering growing louder in my ringing ears.

I pulled the phone out from my pocket. I was wearing Vikranth’s coat. It was far too big for my frame, smelling faintly of his familiar cologne, but laced with something else underneath it. Something sharp and metallic. Like old, dried blood.

I looked down at the illuminated screen.

New Notification

Message

I opened it. My hand was shaking violently, but this time, it wasn't from grief.

And I completely froze.

Sender: Sunitha

Sunitha was dead. I knew it. I’d seen her. I’d touched her icy, lifeless hand down at the morgue. I’d watched the quiet attendant zip the heavy black body bag right over her face. I’d signed the final identification papers with a pen that shook so badly the signature didn’t even look like mine.

Sunitha’s personal phone was sitting locked inside an evidence bag at the central precinct. Vikranth had told me so himself; he was the lead detective heading her murder investigation. He’d explicitly stated he logged it into official evidence at 9:17 AM this very morning.

Dead girls don’t send text messages.

Sunitha 4:11 PM

Don’t be there. Run. Everyone is trying to frame you for my death. Get out of there now.

The ground violently tilted beneath my feet. The heavy shovel slipped from my numb fingers, hitting the mounting pile of dark dirt with a dull, hollow thud.

Suddenly, everything looked deeply wrong. The afternoon shadows were too sharp, too deliberate. The surrounding faces were too still, too statuesque. The summer air felt suffocatingly thick.

I slowly lifted my chin and looked straight at Vikranth. He was watching me. He had been watching me the entire time. His eyes didn’t give a single thing away—no shock, no confusion, no genuine question.

They were flat, measuring, calculating cop eyes. He wasn't looking at my terrified face; he was intensely watching my hands.

“Asita, you okay?” he asked smoothly.

His voice was terrifyingly warm. The way you talk to a frightened child who just woke up from a terrible nightmare. The way you talk to someone when you’ve already silently decided they aren’t going to survive the night.

It sounded completely rehearsed. Like he had practiced it in front of a mirror this morning. Like he knew precisely when I’d receive a message and exactly what he was supposed to say when I did.

My mouth was bone-dry. My tongue felt heavy and swollen. I forced my eyes down to look at my hands again.

Dirt. Caked thick under every nail, pressed deep into every line of my palm. My knuckles were split raw from the brutal digging. Blood mixed seamlessly with the dark earth.

If the police miraculously swarmed the cemetery right now, this is all they would see. A frantic woman standing over a fresh grave, her hands caked in soil, with a murder weapon at her feet and a dead best friend buried right below.

They wouldn’t need six hours to destroy me. They’d need six minutes.

And they were engineering every second of it. I could feel the realization crawling up my spine like a poisonous spider. This funeral was never meant for Sunitha. It was designed for me.

They were going to bury me right next to her.

I whispered it silently to myself, deep inside my own head where Vikranth could never hear: They’re going to bury me with her.

“Nothing, Vikranth,” I said.

My voice didn’t crack; it came out terrifyingly cold, flat, and dead. Not the fractured voice of a shattered woman who had just lost her dearest friend. It was the voice of someone who had just woken up to the horrifying reality that she was next.

I didn’t look at him. I couldn't bear to. If I locked eyes with Vikranth right now, I’d see the grand lie laid bare. I’d see three years of my life turning to absolute ash inside his pupils.

“I need five minutes alone,” I said, turning away.

I pivoted and walked away from the open grave before any of them could stop me. I didn’t look back at Arun, whose frantic muttering had suddenly ceased entirely, his pale thumbs frozen. I didn’t look at Aravind, whose bloodshot eyes were locked onto my retreating back like laser-guided sights.

I just walked. Away from the deep hole. Away from the wooden box. Away from the twenty pairs of heavy eyes watching me like I was either a wounded, bleeding animal or the monster who had drawn the blood.

The oppressive afternoon heat hit me harder once I stepped out from the cool shade of the black funeral tent. It wasn’t normal summer heat; it wasn't the heat of a fire. It felt like the dead air of a closed room where all the oxygen had been breathed, exhaled, and breathed right back in. Stale, heavy, and toxic. It pressed against my sweating skin, forcing my lungs to fight for every agonizing breath.

The heavy black coat stuck stubbornly to my damp back. Sweat ran in icy rivulets down my spine, pooling at the waistband of my pants. Vikranth had draped it over my bare shoulders this morning with a sickeningly sweet smile, murmuring, “You’ll catch a chill.”

There was no chill within a hundred miles of this cursed place. The coat wasn’t meant to keep me warm.

It was meant to trap something. To hide something away.

I kept walking blindly forward until I finally hit the dense tree line. The cemetery was ancient, and the towering trees above were older still, their twisted branches tangling heavily overhead, completely strangling the dying sunlight. It was noticeably darker here, cooler. The scent changed instantly, too—less turned earth, and more heavy decay. Wet rotting leaves and something sickly sweet underneath, like fruit left out in the dark until it went soft and began to turn.

My phone vibrated again against my thigh.

It was still clutched tightly in my hand; I had never put it back. The furious vibration buzzed straight up my arm and rattled right into my teeth.

I didn’t want to look. If I refused to look, none of this was real. If I kept my eyes forward, Sunitha was still peacefully dead in the earth, and this was just grief playing cruel tricks on my mind.

But my thumb betrayed me anyway. My traitorous thumb unlocked the screen.

New Message

Sender: Sunitha

Sunitha 4:18 PM

Get in the black sedan at the front gate. Don’t look at the camera.

That was all. No warm greeting. No miraculous explanation of how she was alive. No details. Just a cold, precise order.

The official burial service was scheduled to end at 4:30 PM. It was 4:18 PM right now. Twelve minutes left.

Twelve minutes until they expected me to throw that final ritual handful of dirt. Twelve minutes until they expected my emotional collapse. Twelve minutes until they expected me to be docile, compliant, easy to manage, easy to arrest, and easy to blame.

I forcefully lifted my head. Through the gaps in the dark tree line, I could clearly see them all standing by the gravesite.

Vikranth was still standing rigidly where I’d left him. His hand was raised mid-air, frozen awkwardly like he had been mid-motion to grab me when I walked away. He wasn't moving an inch. He was just tracking me.

Aravind hadn’t moved either. He was staring straight into the dim shadows of the tree line. At me. Even from this distance, I could see the blazing red rimming his eyes. It wasn't tears. I knew what my brother looked like when he actually wept, and this wasn’t it. This was pure, volatile fury. Or raw fear. Or a terrifying mix of both.

Arun was frozen there too. He wasn't muttering anymore; absolute silence. His hands were stuffed deep into his pockets, his gaze locked permanently on the dirt beneath his boots. He refused to look up. Refused to meet my eyes.

They were all staring directly into my patch of the woods. Not looking at the grave anymore. Not looking at each other. Just waiting for me.

It didn't feel like a mourning party. It felt like a pack surrounding a trapped deer.

I looked back down at the glowing phone screen. The message hadn't vanished. It wasn't a trick of my sleep-deprived mind.

Get in the black sedan at the front gate. Don’t look at the camera.

What camera?

I turned my head slowly, casually. As if I were just admiring the old trees. As if I wasn't a hunted woman being actively watched by three men and a ghost.

There it was. Mounted high on the rusted iron archway guarding the cemetery entrance. A small, sleek black dome. A modern security camera. Brand new, gleaming under the gray sky. It certainly hadn’t been hanging there last month when Sunitha and I came to quietly visit her grandmother’s headstone.

She had always hated this place. She used to say it smelled like buried secrets, that the very ground here greedily kept things that should have stayed locked away in the dark.

My throat slammed shut, cutting off my breath.

If Sunitha was actually dead in that box, who the hell was sending these messages?

And if Sunitha wasn't dead at all... whose body was buried beneath my shovel?

A soft crunch of gravel broke the silence behind me. Footsteps. Light, measured, and agonizingly slow. Not hurrying at all. The unmistakable walk of a confident man who had nowhere left to run.

“Assi,” Vikranth’s voice purred close behind me. Too close. I hadn't even heard him cross the thick patch of grass. “Your five minutes are officially up.”

His heavy hand landed flat on my bare shoulder. The exact same hand that had spent three years softly tangling in my hair. The same hand that used to represent absolute safety in a chaotic world.

Now it felt like a heavy iron shackle. Cold metal locking violently around my wrist.

His thumb pressed hard into the fabric of the oversized coat, digging painfully into my skin. It wasn't meant to comfort. It was a pin holding a specimen to a board.

“You’re shaking,” he murmured smoothly. His voice remained deceptively warm. The exact tone you use for a child having a bad dream. The tone you use when you've already decided that person isn't going to see tomorrow's sunrise.

I wasn't shaking on the outside anymore. I was stone-cold. But deep on the inside, my marrow was vibrating, and my blood was screaming for a way out.

I didn't answer his trap. I looked past his broad shoulder, fixing my eyes straight on the distant front gate.

There it was. A vehicle parked just beyond the archway, completely invisible from the main service tent. A heavy black sedan. Darkly tinted windows, engine entirely silent. Or idling so quietly the low hum couldn't cross the distance.

It wore no parking sticker. It didn't belong to a single mourner at this funeral.

Vikranth’s long fingers tightened their cruel grip on my shoulder. “Come back to the grave with me, Assi. You need to say a proper goodbye. For your own closure.”

Closure. Like a murder investigation is something you can just neatly shut the door on and expect the ghost to stay gone.

“For who?” I whispered, the words scraping painfully against my raw throat. “For me or for you?”

His head tilted just a fraction to the side. A subtle, rehearsed micro-movement I had witnessed him pull off countless times inside cold interrogation rooms whenever a cornered suspect suddenly spat out an unexpected truth and threw his timeline off-script.

“What on earth do you mean?” he asked, maintaining the terrifying facade of warmth and patience. But his eyes gave him away completely. They were utterly dead. Flat cop eyes. Assessing, measuring, calculating the angles.

Suddenly, Aravind’s voice sliced through the heavy trees like a razor. Loud, sharp, and panicked. “Asita! Get back over here right now!”

He never called me Asita. Not once since we were kids sharing a bunk bed. To him, I was always just Asi. Or a dumbass. Never my full, formal name. Not unless he was performing for an audience. Not unless he was reading lines written by someone else.

I looked deep into Vikranth’s eyes. Really looked.

His pupils were blown down to tiny, unnatural pinpricks, even beneath the deep shadows of the canopy. His breathing was frighteningly even—too controlled, too mechanical. His other hand was buried deep inside his coat pocket, not resting casually, but tightly fisted around something hard and heavy.

My phone buzzed again in my palm. I didn't look down. I couldn't afford to let him see the light shift on my face.

But I felt it. One sharp buzz. Then a second. Then a third. Three messages in rapid succession. Urgent, screaming warnings.

Vikranth’s hawk-like eyes flicked instantly down to my hand, tracking the motion. For a single, fleeting second, the pristine mask finally slipped. Something ugly and frantic flickered across his face. Pure impatience.

“You really should put that away,” he said, his tone dipping into faux-concern. “It’s not healthy for you right now. Far too many random people calling. Media vultures. They'll just twist your words and bleed you dry.”

Media. No one had called me. My phone had been completely powered off all morning; I distinctly remembered holding down the button before we even left the house.

So how was it turned on? How was it actively receiving incoming transmissions?

Unless someone else had turned it on. Someone who knew my secure 6-digit passcode by heart. Someone who had watched my thumbs type it into the glass a thousand times while I lay sound asleep right beside him in our bed.

“Ash,” Aravind’s voice was much closer now, the sharp crunch of gravel grinding under his rushing shoes. “Don’t be stupid. Don’t make this any harder than it has to be.”

Make what harder?

Burying my best friend? Or burying me in the plot right next to her?

I took a slow step backward, physically sliding out from under Vikranth’s heavy grip. His hand dropped off my shoulder, falling limply to his side. He let it happen. He didn't lunge to grab me back. And that terrifying detail told me everything—he was so utterly confident that I was cornered with nowhere left on earth to run.

I threw a glance back toward the black sedan parked at the gate. The driver’s side window was cracked open by a mere two fingers' width. Nothing else. No visible face, no welcoming movement.

Just an empty void waiting for me.

My phone buzzed yet again. Not a text this time a direct, blaring phone call. The bright screen illuminated my thumb.

Incoming Call: Sunitha

Vikranth saw the flashing name. His entire body snapped rigid. The exact posture of a hunter whose trap has finally sprung shut on the wolf.

“Assi,” he said softly. And for the first exact moment in three years of loving him, his voice shed all warmth, leaving behind an empty, metallic void. “Hand me the phone. Now.”

It wasn't a request among lovers.

It was the first completely honest thing he had spoken to me all day.

I took one more deliberate step backward. My heel suddenly hit a protruding root, sending a jolt up my spine. I nearly tripped, catching my balance at the last second.

Aravind burst through the final line of trees into the clearing. His face was flushed deep crimson not from the grief of losing a sister figure, but from the brutal physical effort of holding a massive secret in check. His jaw was locked tight, his teeth grinding against one another with a sound I could hear from here.

Arun trailed closely behind him, head bowed, completely silent now, his twitching hands jammed deep inside his coat pockets, eyes glued to the dirt.

The hidden camera mounted on the iron archway. The idling black sedan. The impossible messages from a dead woman. The manufactured evidence Aravind had compiled. The heavy coat Vikranth had forced onto my shoulders. The suspicious five minutes of isolation he never would have granted unless he was certain I couldn't escape the perimeter.

It all snapped together inside my head in one horrific, crystal-clear picture.

They hadn't brought me here to bury Sunitha.

They had brought me here to bury me.

And I had precisely six hours of breathing room before the local cops would come digging up my bones to close the book.

I looked up at Vikranth. And I smiled. It wasn't a kind smile, nor a sweet one. It was the sharp, dangerous smile Sunitha had forced me to practice at dive bars when aggressive men refused to take no for an answer. The kind of smile that warned a man he had just made a catastrophic mistake.

“Okay, Vikranth,” I whispered. My voice was eerily steady, completely calm. The sudden internal cold had spread outward from my vocal cords straight into my blood and marrow. “Let’s go back.”

Vikranth blinked, caught entirely off-guard. His calculated playbook didn't contain a single line for compliance.

I didn't turn and run away from him. I stepped directly toward him.

His hand twitched upward out of pure, automatic muscle memory a cop's trained reflex to restrain, cuff, and control.

I smoothly walked right past it. Past his reach.

I didn't turn back toward the open grave.

I walked straight down the gravel path, heading directly toward the front gate. Toward the idling black sedan. Toward the security camera I was explicitly warned not to look at.

“Assi!” Vikranth’s voice finally cracked, the polished rehearsal shattering into a million jagged pieces. “Where the hell do you think you're going?!”

I didn't answer his frantic shouts. I didn't sprint. Running was an admission of guilt; running was precisely what they needed to justify a bullet in my back.