Firefly

01: with one foot in the grave

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Chapter 01: Voice in the graveyard.

Justin

I've barely talked to perfectly living people, let alone graves. It's been four years and I still haven't got a word out of my mouth to the headstones in front of me.

Graveyards are getting crowded these days. My erratic appearances aren't working out anymore. The cemetery is forcing me to hunt down a particular visiting time and stick to it. Nobody prefers a crowded graveyard. In this world of socializing and waking, everyone craves privacy.

Social media is the biggest crime invented. People are forced to live a life of facade because their feed depicts it. No one posts about the nightmares. I don't see an influencer with 60K followers posting a picture of their breakdown or the perfectly molded children of prominent parents showing the drugs and weed that they sneak inside their rooms.

I cannot live a life like that. Even if I try, I can't show myself as a perfect boy because I'm far from it. I bet my negative points need another book for counting because I've exhausted the first one leaving no blank spaces. I don't want to be better. There's no point in being good in this world of cruelty. People are always going to stab your back and you're always going to end up getting hurt. Better the hurter than the hurting.

The nightfalls darken the cemetery and I feel my phone buzzing in my pocket. I ignore it. I've left a fucking party to get this isolation, I don't want anyone ruining it.

I lean against the trunk of the oak tree right beside me. There's nothing I have to say except to share a few moments of silence. I close my eyes and let my head fall on the bark, god this loneliness sucks.

A twig snaps and my eyes open in haste, aware of another's presence. You've got to be kidding me. Even 7 pm at a cemetery can't give me one moment of peace.

I peek from the thick trunk to see the invader. Six rows ahead and three columns front I see luscious chestnut hair. She has white daisies in her hand. Pathetic. Here I thought giving flowers to breathing people was pointless, she's brought a bouquet for a dead one. I'm about to get the fuck out of this place but her actions intrigue me.

She walks around a headstone with white helium balloons in her hand. She tapes the strings to the back of the stone, making that stone stand out more than it has to. Lovely, now this cemetery looks like a fucking birthday party where crowding dead people have gathered to celebrate one dead person's d-day.

She walks back to face the stone. I see her kneeling down and sitting on her heels. I peek a little more, just to get one glimpse of that face who thinks balloons are okay to bring to a cemetery. As if the distance wasn't enough, that fucking hair keeps getting in the way.

What am I even doing here? Waiting for a glance of a petty stranger how pathetic must I be right now? I take a step back--

"Hi mom," her shaky voice fills the whole garden. She's nervous. "I've never said that out loud. We've always addressed you in third person pov, so it's weird to talk to you like this."

Is it wrong to eavesdrop on people in graveyards?

My chest sinks when I hear her confession. I lean ahead and see her fingers fidgeting with each other on her lap. Her shoulder is tensing and I think she's cold.