From the Dark

Count seven tombstones to the left, and then, five tombstones up. A pair of dark eyes observed him from behind a paperback book. Her attire, entirely black, matched fingernails, eye shadow and hair.

Sunglasses propped at the end of his nose, Michael averted his eyes from the woman's morbid curiosity. In his hands, he held an iPod. The screen played The Fallen's next video, Pieces of Rapture. The final cut looked awesome. He switched it off, tugged the earbuds from his ears, and tucked the slim white player into his back pocket.

"What do you think?" he said as he squatted before a granite tombstone that glittered with chunks of mica. "Not bad for a small-town Minnesota boy, eh?"

The graveyard was quiet this evening, the humidity of summer pushing away spring with a burst of warm wind through Michael's hair. Three hundred twenty-seven tombstones were arrayed around him. Two rusted shovels leaned against the chain-link fence to the north. One brick shed must store grounds-keeping supplies.

The goth chick still studied him from behind cover. Michael waved, acknowledging her. She sneered, and flipped him off.

"Whatever happened to Minnesota nice?" he muttered.

Probably went the same way his nice had gone. The real world offered so much in way of temptation and addictions. How desperately he held on to any remnants of humanity still within him.

He rested the heel of his hand upon the curved top of the tombstone and, with his other hand, traced a forefinger through the words carved into the stone. Shards of wilted grass blades sifted to the freshly mown lawn. Noting the brass vase stabbed into the ground at the base of the tombstone, Michael winced. He should have brought flowers. She deserved flowers by the armload.