Clementine is a breatharian. 

She does not consume physical food. Clementine lives wholly off the energy of the world, sunlight, and water. She wasn't always like this, though. She only reached this level of spirituality in her 20s. Before then, when she was nothing but a sapling, she consumed the same foods like everybody else. The girl was, quite simply, normal.

Once she began meditating—running her energy—she started feeling cleaner and more balanced. Breathing became an ecstatic experience. Every breath flowed through the chi channels in her body, healing the broken parts and rejuvenating them. Every breath was liquid ambrosia, every breath was orgasmic.

This gradual change wasn't hard to endure, but soon enough, Clementine found herself struggling to maintain social interactions with those that did not share her same beliefs. One day, a strange, vigorous force permanently distanced her from the Social Tree, leading her instead to the soft green meadows were a divine power promised her a physical rebirth. A chance for her body, a burden for her heightened mind, to disintegrate into the energy other life forms required to survive. A chance for Clementine to become a part of something bigger and more important—the cosmos.

Clementine thought herself to be invincible. Nothing could stop her from achieving her goal, and as she would spend her days with Mother Nature, her body soon became impervious to weather and temperature changes. Nevertheless, her calm and confident demanour did not hide her biggest fear, taphephobia. 

Unfortunately, the last step before being successfully achieving rebirth is getting buried alive. 

No matter how hard she tried to fight that fear, that negative energy that invaded and clogged every pore of her skin, it was impossible to win, to achieve reincarnation in any other way. Clementine was fighting a losing battle.

Which is why as she now laid in a dark hole, its mouth six feet away, Clementine could do nothing but stare at the baby-blue sky, at the wispy clouds which looked so close, yet so far away, at the metal blade of a shovel as it peeked in and out of sight, dumping mounds of dirt on her body. Clementine couldn't move, even spilling tears was gruelling; she was malnourished, frail like the petal of a flower. 

She thought she was screaming, but really, she couldn't make a sound.

As the dirt continued to rain down, blanketing the girl with layer upon layer of dark, rich earth, she kept her mind on one thing: rebirth.

Rebirth, she thought to herself as she took her last, earthy breath. 

Reborn she did. 

As a citrus tree.

-:-

Word count: 431 (excluding author's note) 

Hello!

Last Fright challenge I didn't do too shabbily, so this is my entry for the #phobia challenge!

We were given a list of phobias to pick from—and I found out too late that I could choose my own phobia—so I decided to do taphephobia, which is the fear of getting buried alive. It immediately sparked an idea in my mind, but I only JUST got around to writing it out because I didn't know how to approach it. Good thing I didn't forget.

Anyway, I hope y'all enjoyed it, and if you have any suggestions for improvement, please let me know! (The deadline is June 21st, so I can make changes until then.)

Cheers x