Author Games Compilation [Cycle 2]

Task 1 [SEPT]

AUTHOR GAMES: FROM THE GRAVE - TASK ONE

When September died in April, it became the burden of her spouse and family to put together funeral arrangements. The weight of picking out a casket for a daughter, the stress of buying a tombstone for a sister, the load of picking out flowers for a wife - it was all on others, and September herself worried heavily over this matter for quite a while during the integration into the Afterlife. It wasn't that they couldn't afford it, as her family had been awfully set in terms of finances and Everett was given her life insurance to help cover the cost. She just wasn't sure how they were faring. She couldn't see them. Couldn't feel them. And she knew, if the burden was on her to pick out sympathy flowers for her own husband or mother or brother, she'd be a wreck. A goddamn blubbering wreck.

Should've just requested to be cremated.

In all her years of visiting for one minute once a year, though, only twice had she chosen to visit her own grave. Every single year, she was transported to the same cemetery - that containing her decomposing corpse and many others - but almost every single year, she avoided the sight of her own moistened tombstone and the epitaph engraved there. It was always too melancholic for her taste.

But today had been a rather melancholic day. And, lost in the glow of flashing lights and the swirl of every ethereal body drifting through one another, September found it all too easy to wander aimlessly. Her apparitional feet demanded that she feel the brush of dewy grass on her ankles, and her useless lungs desired a breath of fresh air that could only be granted by moving away from the crowd. So she did. She walked and breathed even though she didn't have to and it was very therapeutic for a ghost of her caliber: a ghost reminiscing.

At some point, she came to the very back end of the cemetery, where it was starting to get all cramped and you could tell they'd had to take some of the fence out just to make way for the freshly dead. She remembered it, to some extent. The tilted cross belongs to Caroline Mott. Yup, right there.

It still took September a moment to realize where she stood when she finally came to a stop. Her stone looked just like any other stone in the area: gray and stained with rain. The grass had long grown over the dirt that'd been uplifted eight years ago. It was too dark to read the name with ease. But then a stray strobe light spread white across the bumpy surface, and she saw "September Greffon" in lights with a brief smear of yellow just a little ways beneath an engraving of "1984-2009." And she knew.

The yellow was an eyebrow-raiser - it clashed with the neutrality of the place. Gray and black and white, neutral for the sake of nullifying the idea of death. Pah. I'd like it much better if our stones were pink or green. But yellow, oh, yellow had always been one of September's favorite colors! The color encouraged her; she crouched. Fingers skimmed over slimy stone. The thing was, she didn't very much appreciate the sight of her own name emblazoned in mourning, and so she looked down as quickly as she could.

It was easier to stomach being there after she'd grabbed up the yellow flowers sitting at the base of her monument. The softness of them caused a shiver September hadn't even known she'd been capable of, still. She missed softness. Feeling in general, actually. But because they were soft, that meant they weren't crusty and withered - these flowers were fresh. Who had visited so recently, she wondered?

Cursed question. That got her thinking.

Tuning out the gusts of music behind her, cycles of all she knew from Before set themselves up in her mind. A mother, maybe, or a father - were they still spry enough to walk from the front gate all the way back here so frequently? Or perhaps a brother, as he would definitely have the energy, but he'd be a grown man by now, a man with his own life, a man moved on. Possibly Everett. Everett would have her grown pup by his side every time coming, paws prancing and shoes imprinting in the mud all the way up. And he, of all people, would've been so caught up on something as trivial as her favorite color; yes, he still missed her after all these years, she was sure of it. You never forgot your first love.