She lived on the edge, the edge of the cemetery, that is. Their trailer was silver and ostentatious, an eyesore for the dead. Her mother put pink flamingos in the square of fake yard that they could call their own, along with other kitschy things reserved for parks designed to house such living quarters. They even had a fake white picket fence that just stuck in the ground, giving their mobile home a comical mimicry of traditional establishments. She was no less strange than the locale of her portable prison. Watery grey eyes rimmed with heavy liner, fried black hair from her mother having curled the locks at temperatures too high and leaving them to sizzle, and thin anemic translucent skin caked in powder. Sadly, Mona  fit in perfectly with her surroundings: a trailer park on the verge of death, graveyard trash. Her mother was a shrill woman who dressed in low-cut blouses and gave ‘it’ away to anyone who would lower her bills, buy her a meal, give her a ride, lend her $10 or to simply fix the crapper of their tin palace. She was a cliche before she even opened her mouth. Lipstick on the teeth, bleached hair with the roots spiking through, chain smoking Virginia Slims and wearing tight polyester leggings that rode up into a grotesque cameltoe. Mona never had a chance.

They encouraged her to make friends when she was little, socialize with the other kids, but even children can smell second-hand smoke and burning garbage. She was left alone as a child, wearing oddly fitting thrift store clothes and severely disturbing the teachers with pictures of funerals and open caskets. It was no surprise that she started working at the mortuary next to the cemetery when she turned fourteen. Mr. Grieves, the owner, was possibly her only friend. Kids would hiss obscene things at Mona during class and at lunch: “Did Grievesey touch your cunt and make you moan MOAN-A? Did you give him a handy in the back with all the dead bodies? Do you give your pussy to old Grieves like your mom throws her snatch at every dick in town? Is that how you got the job MOAN-A? Did you show him your little titties and let him cum in ratty hair? Is that why it’s so frizzy, all of Grieves’ cum sticking it together?” She never said anything, to any of them. She just ate cheap white bread sandwiches with peanut butter on them. She couldn’t even afford the jelly.

One day Mona didn’t walk to school, she didn’t ride the bus. Instead she pulled up in a sinisterly sleek 1959 hearse Cadillac. When she stepped out of the car Mona’s hair was full and straight, richly black and beautiful. Her translucent skin seemed to have turned from sickly to a more fine porcelain, and her typically wet eyes were bright and sharp. She was wearing a stylish red pencil dress, which hugged the curves no one had ever seen under the ill-fitted hand-me-downs she usually sported, and her legs stretched long and lean in a smart pair of shiny stilettos. Her carnivorously crimson mouth looked as though she had perfectly applied a coat of fresh blood to her sensuous lips. Mona was a bombshell.

“I wanna make you moan Mona!” several boys shouted at her as she stepped confidently across the high school quad. The teachers did double takes when Mona’s clear voice rang out in class with a sultry “here” at roll call. The girls who usually tortured her during her lunch hour couldn’t even see her through the throng of suitors crowded around the cafeteria table. Lacey Sullivan, grade A twat and life long terrorizer, finally approached her with haughty disdain in the hallway, blocking her path.
“What happened to you MOAN-A, finally start sucking dick like your mom to earn some extra cash? Or did you make a deal with the devil?”
Mona smiled sweetly.”I’m sure you’ll find out soon enough, bitch.” She let the last word roll off her tongue in an evil foreboding way that actually left Lacey speechless

That night there was a party in the graveyard. A Mona party. A party that no one at Westwoods High School would ever consider missing. Their favorite object of torment had turned into Betty Paige over night and was rocking the headstones with three kegs and a live band — what fucktard was going to scratch that off the social event list?

The mouth breathers started spilling in when dark settled over the cemetery, yowling and yelling their battle cries for beer and booze. Tromping through the soft burial ground littering plastic red cups in their wake, while willing breasts were groped by horny hands. The band played on. They danced and fucked and drank, a sinner’s ball of hedonistic overkill. Topless girls played hide and seek behind grave markers, and football studs did keg stands only to spew their foamy guts on Randall Newman’s final resting place. No one saw Mona. Some said they’d talked to her at the beginning of the evening, she’d given them a red cup and pointed them at the keg. A few boys claimed they’d fucked her behind her trailer while she touched her toes. Several girls insisted that Mona was now, and always had been, one of their closest friends and that she was planning something spectacular for the end of the evening. Everyone lost their minds, and passed out on the cemetery carpet of well tended grass.

A pair of slick black high heels entered the graveyard gate and tiptoed over a multitude of unconscious teenage bodies.
“Do you think this enough?” Mona asked with laughter in her voice. “It’s most of the senior class and a couple of randoms.” The deep sharp laugh of a much older man came from the shadows behind her.
“Yes, my dear, I think this is probably enough.” Mr. Grieves emerged at her side with a wide grin and a handsome face. “Well,” he said. “Now the fun part.”

Mona and Mr. Grieves dragged the limp bodies of her classmates into rows. Grieves smiled as Mona went around to each of them and cut open their shirts, painting a large pentagram on all of their chests. While she made the initial preparations, Grieves began uncovering a series of open graves. The party had taken place no more than a fifty yards away from roughly a hundred gaping holes.                                                                                                                                                               “I have everything set up just the way you showed me,” Mona beamed up at him, licking blood off her fingers.
“You did so good, my love, my pet, my apprentice . . . they look so lovely all lined up like lambs for the slaughter. Are you ready for the finale?” Grieves seemed to be getting younger by the moment; wrinkles were smoothing themselves, and his face appeared to have passed from its forties into its thirties in the time it had taken the couple to complete their mutual tasks.
“Now remember, my darling, you must perform the ritual on each of them the same way you did on our first victim the other night.”
“Fucking cunt deserved what she got.” Mona heaved under her breath and spat in anger at the sacred ground.
“There, there, pet, is that any way to speak about your dear departed mother?” Mona grimaced and removed a scathing blade from a sheath around her inner thigh.
“Time to play kiddies,” she oozed, walking towards her first victim.

“Lacey, oh Lacey!” she cooed at her blonde childhood tormentor. “Time to wake up!” She drew her hand back and slapped her hard across the face. Lacey’s eyes fluttered open as she attempted to focus on the images before her.
“Wha-what? M-m-mona?”
“I told you you’d learn my secret soon enough bitch!” With swift downward strokes Mona sliced the pentagram through Lacey’s supple belly. She barely had time to squeal before Mona slit her throat and began collecting sweet human nectar from the welling red flower. With a full vial of fresh young blood, she performed the last step of the ritual: cutting up under the ribs and removing her full heart muscle. She dug her nails through Lacey’s tender fleshy entrance and felt her life force still fluttering and warm on her fingertips. Once the heart was secure in Mona’s hands she took the first ripe bite before passing it on to Grieves. Mona moved on to get to work on the rest of her graduating class, their bodies lined up ready for ritual sacrifice. Bellies full with aortic juices, the pair rolled the bodies of their massacre into the dug up graves and patted the dirt on the final hole just as the sun began to peek over the horizon, leaking oranges and pinks into the skyline.

“Congratulations to all our seniors,” Mona giggled, her mouth stained with dried blood that had run down her pointed chin. Mr. Grieves, looking like a young Hollywood actor with fresh youthful skin, circled his arms around her waist and clamped his teeth lovingly on her throat, gnawing at her savory skin.
“My dear,” he whispered. “It is time for us to make our getaway.” Mona grabbed a large molotov cocktail she’d fixed earlier from a nearby headstone and walked to the border of her cemetery. She watched the flame twist and lick hungrily as she placed it next to the gasoline soaked rag.  Then she smashed the thing through the open door of her trailer hell.
“Burn, my lovely.”

By Emily Smith-Miller