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Cemetery Fiction
Originally I created this page to share the short short fiction I've been working on. Then I decided it would be pretty cool to open it up to receive other people's cemetery-related fiction, especially since Epitaphs Magazine doesn't accept this type of writing.
Cemetery fiction may be sent in for posting consideration. Submissions must be your own original work and must not violate any copyrights. If your short story is accepted, you retain all rights to it and will be given full credit for your work on this site. Send your submissions to:
[email protected]
The Stories
No Regrets
by Minda Powers-Douglas
No Regrets
by Minda Powers-Douglas
It was four and a half minutes past dusk when Thomas Ryan stepped out of the mausoleum. He was not ready to face the darkness, but he knew he must. You could only delay the inevitable so long, and four and a half minutes (according to the watch he always wore) was a record. Perhaps one day he’d get to five.
What do you regret? asked the silent voice once he was outside.
There was no delay to his answer: “Everything.”
Thomas Ryan stepped forward in the cool night air he did not feel and sat down on the steps of his family’s tomb, placing his head in his hands.
Mrs. Swanson stood beside her grave, straightening her skirt. A soft smile was on her face as if placed there. If you looked deep in her eyes, you’d see the pain, but Mrs. Swanson had never let anyone get that close.
What do you regret? asked a voice only she could hear.
She slid her fingertips around the spot where her wedding band used to be. Her husband, Harry, had ripped it from her lifeless hand before the lid was closed on her casket. His last words to her had been, “I never loved you anyway. Good-bye.”
“Nothing,” she lied, and stood like a sentry next to the headstone she shared with her still living husband.
Jane Goodwin played ring-around-the-rosy with her imaginary friends. If you were one of those illegally minded people who stayed in the cemetery after hours, you might see her dancing in a circle, laughing. In fact, little Janey Goodwin was a well-known specter that had become part of local legend.
“If you go to Oak Wood Cemetery at midnight and place a toy at her grave, the ghost of Janey Goodwin will materialize,” many would-be amateur ghost hunters said.
Jane was only five when she died and hadn’t yet learned how to regret. She never heard the voice ask her the question. If she had, she wouldn’t know what to say.
Voices of the dead—long gone or recently so—whispered across the rolling hills of the moonlit cemetery.
What do you regret?
“I never told her I loved her.”
“I was a bad mother.”
“I didn’t mean to do it.”
“I broke my promise.”
“I shouldn’t have hurt her.”
“I never let myself by happy.”
“I didn’t know how to be sorry.”
“I died before I saw my baby’s face.”
“My life was a lie.”
“I wanted more than I had, and I had everything.”
“I was selfish.”
“I didn’t get a chance to say good-bye.”
In the most shadowy part of the cemetery, cloaked by a small grove of trees, stood a young woman who had aged well beyond her age of thirty-four. For the past twenty-two years she had stood in that same spot once dusk had fallen. Each evening, she’d had a different regret. There were too many things she had left undone, too many mistakes made. After more than eight thousand nights of standing next to her grave feeling the unrest of her regrets, this night she felt something she hadn’t felt since she was a child: peace.
What do you regret?
“Nothing,” Allison Anderson said and smiled. “I have no more regrets.”
Above her, the moonlight brightened and reached toward her. Taking her first step in years, Allison stepped into the light, leaving the immovable souls behind her.
Copyright 2007 Minda Powers-Douglas (9-1-07)
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