Issue 10 (Summer 2024)
The Words Beneath
By Michael Harris Cohen
“This is it,” Lily said.
It was just a smear of green on a lonely hill, an old cemetery in the middle of nowhere Bulgaria. Gravestones leaned like bad teeth, the names and dates long eroded.
It was our ninth graveyard in three months and I knew it wouldn’t be the last. Because the last one was supposed to be the last, and the one before that.
What had been a sort of gothic goof had turned weird obsession for Lily, or maybe it always had been weird? What did I really know about her? Either way, it had grown old for me.
All of it. Us.
Lily dropped her backpack to the ground. She didn’t bother with the pretense of taking photos, not anymore. Maybe that had been a lie—her whole Death Calendar thing. Who knows? She’d given up with the photos after the fifth graveyard.
(Read the full story)
