Issue Three

KATIE JONES
In 1989 two lovers were said to have
been buried together, after they both
suffered from a drug overdose. It was
either a tragic accident or a
synchronized suicide. It happened on a
hot summer night, when the teenage
lovers decided to shoot a potent mixture
of heroin into the veins of their arms. No
one really understood why they would
have used drugs to begin with, she was
a Catholic girl, and her mother and
father would always ensure she was
going to be brought up in the way of the
Lord. He was the son of a lawyer,
intelligent and though he had no
religious upbringing, he was said to be
straight edge. He never drank or
smoked and it was said they were both
still virgins when they died.
But when they were found, lying
intertwined on the girl’s bed; they had
single injection sites on their skin, and
one syringe that was the culprit in this
case. For years people fantasised
about how they would have ended it,
would he inject her, or would she have
injected him? Did he use his lips to
clean away the bead of blood growing at
the site where the needle perforated
skin? No one would ever know. Some
thought it romantic, like those famous
lovers Romeo and Juliet; others saw it
as simply a stupid mistake, and a total
waste of life. Whatever they thought,
the parents of the deceased combined
the funerals, so that the two could rest
together, and they were placed in the
same plot. Rumour had it that they
were placed in the same coffin, but no
one really knew because the funeral
service was private, only friends and
close family friends were allowed to
attend and say goodbye.
It was for this reason alone that a
young man found himself pulling up to
the old, abandoned cemetery, the
headlights of his beaten up Commodore
blasted rays of artificial light onto the
mass of trees surrounding the path that
led to where the rows of tombstones sat
in silence. He opened the door and
closed it with a slight thud, moving
through the warm night slowly and
quietly. The soles of his boots hit the
gravel road and sent crunching noises
into the still night. He wore jeans and a
black t-shirt. There was no need to rug
up. This warm night greeted him and he
enjoyed the breeze that trickled through
the fabric of his shirt. In his hand he
clutched a single, compact spade that
folded neatly away into the crook of his
arm.
The path led him deeper into the rolling
hills peppered with stones, some tombs
held up ancient looking angels and their
lifeless eyes glistened in the moonlight,
sad expressions slowly eroding away
after years of rain and summer
heat. The silence of the night was
unnerving and the man found himself
glancing around his shoulder every once
in a while, scanning the night. He
moved off the gravel and onto the soil,
he found himself sinking into soft, dry
earth with every step he took, as though
the ground beneath was attempting to
suck him into its very core. He found
himself bumping into old vases, sending
the brittle glass shattering to the ground
and slicing the silence with its sound.
Finally he came to a specific grave, a
simple headstone marked the spot and
the words engraved into the stone were
faded and hard to decipher, he reached