Janette watched her parents place lilies over the rectangular gravestone. Her feet swayed back and forth while she hummed a tune to herself. Her parents brought her here once a year to put flowers on graves of those she'd never met. They always seemed sad. But Janette was far too young to comprehend their grief.
Instead, she hopped off of the stone bench and began to walk along the winding cement path, careful not to step on the cracks.
"Don't step on the cracks or you'll break your mother's back," the school kids chanted in her head. Janette hated seeing others get hurt. Even after her mom insisted it was a silly game, nothing more, she refused to step on cracks in the sidewalk. Well, when she remembered.
She made her own game of it, twirling around in child-like dance moves. Her black, curly hair covered her eyes half the time, and her bright, blue dress twirled around her body. She giggled then stopped.
An old, curved stone cross jutted sideways from the uneven dirt behind an old oak tree. It stood almost as tall as her. With another laugh, she ran over to it, away from the other gravestones. The yellow-brown leaves crunched beneath her black Mary Janes. She tried to brush the dirt off. But most of the discoloration was stained in from decades of wear.
There was no name, only a line of text at the bottom.
"Do No Disturb the System Admin"
YOU ARE READING
Refined Sugars
Short StoryRefined Sugars is not a part of a balanced reading diet. This is an eclectic grouping of short stories written by me during periods of writing droughts on my main works in progress. Some of these are spin offs of those where I explore a character, a...
