Be warned, people. Our dear Kimmie has written a REALLY depressing one. This one nearly had me crying, and I've said it before and I'll say it again - it's *hard* to make me cry. It rocks, though, so onto the story!
Alone by Kim
They were cold slabs of marble, each cracked and faded, a few letters on the epitaphs blurred beyond recognition. He didn't care. He had memorized each one. Names and dates were all that were there to preserve the memory of his friends, his friends since birth and his friends until death. Death. That word had never been so final to him before, so destroying and dark and empty. It was as if he had known the definition for the first time. The first grave..nobody had cared. He was scorned until death, a prejudiced idiot, and overweight to boot. Truely a momma's boy, he had never known responsibility, or grief, and his only unhappiness was that his social life that never seemed to lie in favor of him. The mourner couldn't help but pity him. Sharing the grave was the one person who *had* cared for him. What she had seen in him nobody ever knew. Maybe she could get to what was underneath, find something within him that was much more pleasant. Now the reason she loved him would always remain a mystery. The next grave, too, was shared by a couple. He seemed to be the leader, the jock, the reasonable one. She was the smart one, the open-minded one, the girl everyone should have fallen in love with. Only he had. After a long, happy marriage, they had met with death of old age, like the first couple. The third grave was owned by a man who had always stayed a bachelor, though hardly a virgin. He had always been a bit more the nervous sort, paranoid, even. After long disagreements with his parents as a teenager, he had left their town to start a new life with his new dreams. When he met with his end, his will had said he wanted to be buried here, with the others. Here. This place, just as faded as the gravestones. The sign needed to be replaced. After so many years, the bus stop still needed a bench. The only places to sit were the tops of the gravestones, the four of them sitting in a neat row. Four. For there was the last grave. The grave that held no corpse. The grave would never hold a corpse. For it was his grave. The mourner turned sharply, feeling a hand on his shoulder. "Are you ok?" He sighed. It was just her. "Do I *look* ok?" "It's hard. It was hard for me. It still is," she said, as if that would help. "Even after all these years.." "We grew up with them. We lived with them. And though our bodies are living, our hearts died with them." They silently read the epitaphs once more.
ERIC AND SHEILA CARTMAN STAN AND WENDY MARSH KYLE BROFLOFSKI
"We'll never join them, you know. Never," he whispered. "That pact we made with them, to have all of us buried here, it was useless." "I know. At least we have each other." She put her arm around him, a comforting gesture. "If we didn't, I don't know what I'd do." He kissed her, softly. "We should be there. With them. We should be dead, we *should* have been, years ago." "But we can't be." "Right." He swallowed the lump forming in his throat, and stared at the last grave. It wasn't just his grave, it was *their* grave. The grave that held no corpse, and would never hold a corpse.
KENNY AND LENNI MCCORMICK
As the couple stood there, at the bus stop where the boys had waited for the same bus, with the same driver, for years and years, they knew that there was only one hope, and that was each other. For without each other, they would be truely alone.
Remember, KIM wrote this. Compliment KIM. KIM. Not me.
Alyssa