Bury Me Standing: The Gypsies And Their Journey

On the day I receive my Distinguished Service Medal, I also receive word that my grandma has passed away. My superior grants me special leave to return to my hometown to mourn her death, so I rush to my ancestral home at once. But when I reach the ancestral graveyard behind the hill, I witness something that makes my blood boil. The graves of my deceased family members have been razed to the ground. Even my parents' graves have been brutally dug up. Their urns are now placed under flower pots filled with blooming red roses. Grandma's coffin has been pried open as well.Her body now lies strewn on the ground and has started to rot. I also see Lucy Stewart, my autistic younger sister. Melissa Abbott, my wife's assistant, orders Lucy around like a maid, forcing her to move heavy construction materials around. Enraged, I grab Melissa by the throat and throw her to the ground. "How dare you destroy my family's ancestral cemetery and make my sister do hard labor! Do you want to end up buried here too?" Melissa coughs up blood before crawling back onto her feet, her expression vicious and scornful. "I'm simply carrying out Ms. Fuller's instructions. She says that your ancestral cemetery is located in a good spot. It's also the perfect size to be turned into a private horse ranch and a garden for her future husband. "Ms. Fuller calls the shots here in Joverton City. Who the hell do you think you are, huh?" Resisting the urge to put an end to her life, I call up Eva Fuller, my wife. "I heard you call the shots here in Joverton City. Well, I shall put that to the test today!"

The day I was awarded the highest service medal, I got a call that my grandfather had died. My superiors approved emergency leave, and I rushed straight back to the family estate without stopping. The moment I reached the hillside cemetery behind the house, what I saw snapped something inside me. Our family burial ground had been completely leveled. My parents' graves had been dug open. Their urns had been turned into flower pot bases, with dark-red roses planted right on top of them. My grandfather's coffin had been split apart. His body was left exposed in the dirt, already starting to rot. And my younger brother, Jerry Horton, who was on the autism spectrum, was being ordered around like a laborer by my husband's assistant, Digby Wolfe, hauling construction materials back and forth. I lost it. I grabbed Digby and slammed him into the ground with a hard shoulder throw. "You touched my family's graves and made my brother do manual labor. Are you trying to get buried here with them?" Digby coughed up blood as he struggled to his feet, sneering at me. "This was Mr. Gray's decision. He said your family plot is in a good location, with plenty of space. It's perfect for building a golf course for the future Mrs. Gray. In Joule, Mr. Gray is the law." His tone was icy. "And who do you think you are?" I swallowed my rage and called Marshall Gray. "I hear you run Joule," I said. "Well, I'm about to change that."

My brother, Theo Sorento, died in a plane crash on his way back home just to celebrate my birthday. They never found his body—only wreckage. Ever since, my parents forced me to kneel in front of his grave every year on my birthday, demanding that I repent for surviving when he didn’t. Then came my eighteenth birthday. I realized someone was following me. Panicked, I sent a few messages asking for help. Just then, Mom called, not to check on me but to lash out. “I know exactly what you're doing. You’re just making up excuses so you don’t have to kneel in front of your brother’s grave! You’re a liar. Why wasn’t it you who died instead of him? You’re a walking curse!” Before my phone was smashed under a boot, the last thing I heard was the cold click of her hanging up. Then, I was cut up into pieces, and what was left of me was tossed across the city. My father, the lead forensic pathologist on my case, didn’t even recognize me. Later, Theo returned alive with his wife, whom he had eloped with eight years ago. When they found out the pile of rotting flesh was me, they all went insane.

Mia D’Lorne thought heartbreak would kill her but getting hit by a car did the job faster. One second she’s running from the sound of her boyfriend and sister fornicating, the next she’s standing in front of an abandoned bus station in what looks like purgatory. The bus that picks her up looks like a prop in a horror movie and she’s introduced to the world of the Soul Recycle Program. To exist, she has to compete in a twisted afterlife show where the dead fight their way through nightmare worlds for the amusement of unknown and unseen spectators. The rules are simple. Survive or disappear for good. Mia is joined by two strangers who are just as broken as she is. Axel Rivers, who has been dead for almost a century, and Bree DeBois, a control freak paramedic with more guilt than she can carry. Together they try to survive the challenges of the game. As the trio do their best to keep from being erased, they begin to realize the Game is more personal than they imagined.

"Get the fuck out of my wedding, Rainer." One sentence. Every lie Jose built his life on, suddenly visible. Camille gave him everything his past never could. Stability. A future. The kind of love that doesn't ask questions. But on the night he finally chose her, his foster brother stood up in the back of the church and called her a murderer. And the grave they buried their youngest brother in three years ago? Empty. Elias isn't dead. He's been hiding. And he came back angrier than any of them are ready for. Now Jose is caught between the wife who built him a life and the brother who reminds him who he was before he let her. Between the story he chose and the truth he buried. Some loves don't save you. They just make sure you can never find your way back to what you were before them.

Six years after my younger brother and my fiancée passed away, I picked out a grave for myself. Before my final visit to their graves, my mother suddenly said, “Miles, you don’t have to go this year. The truth is that they never died.” I was startled for a moment before the two of them walked right out of my brother’s room. My brother, Sean, put on a teasing smile as he draped an arm around the woman beside him. “I won the bet! I told you my brother would never figure it out. “Who’s going to be on top tonight, huh, Vera?” My so-called late fiancée, who used to cry whenever she saw me suffer even the slightest grievance, looked at me with open disdain. “He’s just too stupid. We’ve been living next door this entire time, yet he never noticed.” It was only then that I realized my mother forbad me from entering Sean's room, not because it would make her grieve her son again, but because it was directly connected to the house next door. I was truly too foolish. Right up until a month before my death, I was still thinking about visiting their graves.