The Life We Bury Novels & Stories

The sight of a manic Timothy only filled the doctor with scorn. "You can't raise the dead. You didn't treasure her when she was still alive. No amount of acting matters now that she's dead. Melanie didn't deserve this. She should've seen you for who you are, but she stubbornly ignored every sign, and that cost her her own life. "If you have an ounce of conscience left, leave this place. Don't disturb her peace." Timothy knew my attending physician was a friend of mine, but he couldn't find any proof that the physician was lying. I could've left, or I could've been dead. Either way, he would never see me again.

The folks watching nearby started whispering and pointing. "She didn't even research properly. She's pretending to be a dead woman whose body's probably dust by now!" "Exactly. Trying to pass herself off as the richest man's wife. She should take a look in the mirror!" I said nothing. I walked toward my parents' urns, the ones being used as flower pot bases, planning to dig them out and rebury them properly. Digby stepped in first and kicked one of the ceramic urns hard. It shattered instantly. My parents' ashes spilled across the ground, mixing with dirt and fertilizer.

Tired of guilt. He wanted peace. Instead, he found a bullet. Just cold wind, hard earth, and the silence that follows when a part of you is buried six feet under. They buried Perion on a cliffside, the sea roaring below like it was angry at God. I wanted that. No media. No people in black suits pretending to care. Just the truth of death—brutal and bare. I picked the suit. I pressed the lily to his chest. I kissed his forehead before the casket closed. He looked like he was sleeping. Peaceful. Wrong.

“Losing the people, I care about, wasn’t something I thought would happen. Want to end this journey of mine, but the pup in me won’t let me.” “The will to live, I fight for. With my lover, the beast by my side.” - Ava Knight … “This, is something strange to us all.” “Gathering for a befitting but sad burial for one of us. We were once coerced into eliminating ourselves for points to live.” I chose my words carefully as I spoke the girls and audience, that showed up for Emily’s burial.

She wiped it away mechanically, her words growing faint. "The doctors say it's karma - stage four lung cancer. Three months left." She placed the pendant carefully in my mailbox, then clasped her hands in a wordless plea, looking up at me with desperate hope. "Can I ask you one thing... just one? After I die... could you bury me near you? That's all I want." The scars she'd carved into my soul refused to heal. I couldn't offer the comfort she sought. Understanding flashed in her reddened eyes, now swimming with tears of remorse. She said nothing more.

"Someone like your mom, living on the edge of society, what value does she even have? She just takes up space. Linda is young, with a bright future ahead of her. Are you really going to drag her whole life into hell over a dead person?" Shirley jumped in right away, frowning like she was disgusted. "Exactly. Your mom being alive was already a waste of resources. What Linda did was basically a public service.” "And instead of thanking her, you're trying to squeeze money out of this?" I looked at them and calmly dropped the truth. "I think you two are the ones confused. The person lying there is your actual mother. This agreement? No one else signing it will mean anything except you." The mome

"We saw her dead when we buried her. We thought she was gone." Clara’s eyes softened, just for a second, before she spoke again. "Clearly not," she said flatly. Then, speaking from a place of experience, she added with an unsettling calm, "Speaking from experience, being buried alive and having to dig your way out sucks toll balls."

“They dug a giant pit at the base of a mountain… that’s where they’re dumping them. That’s their final resting place—don’t you understand?!” No one buried the dead—not because they didn’t want to. But because there were too many. ***

"Can't you see how it looks? Please let's just bury it and go away." They agreed, got machetes from the booth of the car, dug a hole, and buried the book. Then they drove away. THE END

The sun hangs low and heavy in the sky. It is October 31st. It should be a day to celebrate my twenty-fourth birthday, but instead, the air smells like cloying lilies and damp, freshly dug earth. Today is the day we bury the monster. The cemetery looks like a movie set for the elite. Everything is prim, cold, and perfect. Long, black cars with glass-like polish line the stone paths. The grass is a deep, unnatural green, and the tall gravestones stand like silent, frozen soldiers watching us.