Novel & Cerita The Life We Bury

Clutching the ring tightly, Greg let out a hoarse, agonizing cry. Three days later, I was buried in the national cemetery, right alongside my parents. Every one of our friends from school came to my funeral, except for Chloe. After barely escaping Greg’s knife with her life, Chloe began to lose her mind, claiming that she could see ghosts. As a result, she was sent away to a mental asylum to be treated. As for the friends who had attended the birthday party that night, they all tacitly agreed never to speak of what happened again. Greg had told them to take it as a bad dream and forget it as quickly as possible, lest they go crazy themselves.

Then she hit the gas and sped off. Claire stood frozen, staring at the bill fluttering in the wind. Every shred of her dignity had been crushed. She broke down sobbing. Elias died on a snowy winter morning. When he passed, only Claire was there, her face haggard and worn. His eyes remained wide open. There was no peace in them, only endless regret and resentment. His final days had been consumed by physical agony and bitter remorse. That was how his life ended. The funeral was painfully sparse. Not a single relative showed up besides Claire.

All of a sudden, he burst out laughing. "Retribution! It's retribution!" he screamed manically. As the fire crept closer and slowly engulfed everything in its path, Jerome suddenly reached out in my direction. I was shocked. Did he see me? "Monica, did you come to take me with you?" I turned and walked away without a word. Take him with me? There was no way I would. Jerome and Caroline took a life together. Their destination was clear—hell.

Nothing in this world will ever take me from you. I stared at it, and then I remembered. What are you burning? Just some old things. Things I don’t need anymore. Not old things. Us. The letters I wrote her. The cards. The things she had kept from the beginning. “She burned them,” I said. Marco stepped closer. “Burned what?” “Our things.” My throat tightened. “She wasn’t burning trash. She was burning us.” I got to my feet and started going through everything. Drawers. Cabinets. Shelves. Luggage storage. The dressing table. The desk.

I unlocked the hidden door beneath the study, the mechanism clicked, then the door opened. The room came alive around me the moment my feet touched the floor. Screens illuminated one after another, encrypted voices filled the room, everything I had deliberately buried beneath the life I had chosen. For years, I had stayed away from this side of myself for one reason….a peace and normal life. Something that didn't involve underground networks and people waiting for the slightest weakness.

Since then it's like I've been on autopilot. Feed the baby. Call Sarah's employer. Burp the baby. Meet with the funeral home. Change the baby. Bury my sister. I stare at the casket in front of me. Sarah lies inside of it. I can't believe I'm burying my baby sister. Genevieve, my best friend and coworker, sits next to me, holding the baby. She keeps trying to quiet his cries while the preacher drones on about the sanctity of life and the need to treat every day as if it's your last.

His gaze landed on the urn in my arms, and he knew—I was taking my mom to be laid to rest. He scrambled toward me, clutching at my pant leg. "Jess, please—let me come with you. I just want to see Mom one last time." I pried his fingers off and walked out the door without looking back. The burial site was just as the agent had promised—rolling green hills, fresh mountain air, a quiet peace that stretched for miles. My mom had always said the city was too loud, too busy. She used to tell me that when she was gone, she wanted to rest in the mountains, surrounded by beauty.

I was finally alone in this world. They wouldn't let me attend Mom's funeral. They wouldn't even let me visit her grave, so all I could do was kneel on the path we used to walk together, silently pleading for her forgiveness. I didn't dare to cry. I didn't deserve to. Because the hard truth was, I hadn't been able to save her. After the funeral, Carly came to visit me. She pulled me into a hug, her eyes glistening with tears, and whispered, "Thank you, Lina. Thank you for not ruining my life. The fire is over now, so never bring it up around Dad and Jacob again.

I added when the graveyard’s boundary came into clear sight. Alistair and I exited the vehicle and sprinted inside. “I’m not sure how to proceed. Where should we bury it?” I asked him nervously. The eerie atmosphere of the nighttime graveyard gave me the chills. “There,” said Alistair, pointing at the oldest and most scary-looking tree in the graveyard. “We should bury it in the shadow of that tree.” “Alright,” I said. At that point, I was ready to do anything. We walked up to the tree, and Alistair dug a small hole in the soil with a small shovel that I didn’t know he was carrying. Who carries one in the inner pocket of their overcoat?

“Well, what she described actually makes sense now. Although this was when you were maybe 6? so back then I was lost when she told me this but, what she wanted was for us to dig a hole for her, bury her. And then in the top of her hole, she wanted a tree to grow. A small tree, who would create it’s life from her body beneath it and build it’s strong roots.” “Why does that make it sound like she’s fertilizer?” I scrunched my nose at the image. My mom let out a deep belly laugh and said, “Well baby, technically we all are! Buried or cremated, we all go back into the earth and into the cycle of life and growth.” “Hmm, well ok technically you are correct she just described it so… vividly.”