Hi I love you here's a short story I wrote...~

I just wanted to share an old short story of mine. I recorded this on my channel ages ago, but I think it reads better than it sounds~

The Dash by Selude

There is a bit of folklore that says the first person buried in a cemetery serves as a guide for the souls resting there, leading them to the afterlife but unable to cross themselves. For this reason, many cemeteries bury a dog first.

But accidents happen, and Jane was buried before the dog.

Her grave marker was a small white stone cross, covered in cracking white paint. A kind soul had come with a paintbrush and touched up her dates a few years ago.

"Don't worry," the painter had said, as he rounded out the ‘0’ in 1930. "It's not the dates that matter, it's the dash." She didn't understand, but someone living had spoken to her, and her chest flooded with warmth.

Today she saw a new grave being dug, then trucks pulled up, and the sight made her remember the sensation of a heart beating faster.

Two dozen people filed out of the trucks with their heads down. A man whose face was crumpled and wet carried a large velvet bag in his hand.

They spoke. One of them, with a voice quieter than the rest, said something about Winnie-the-Pooh and Jane floated closer to listen to them, her interest piqued. "How lucky I am to have had something that makes saying goodbye so hard," they said, and the others murmured in agreement.

The people hugged, and the man with the wet face lowered the velvet bag into the grave by its strings. Dirt was piled on top of the bag and a small plastic marker was staked in it. Then a flask was passed around before they got into their trucks again.

Jane could hardly wait.

There was the sound of swearing by the fresh grave, and she raced over.

Standing by the grave was an old woman with milky eyes. Her grey hair was closely cropped and she wore layers of gold necklaces over a hand knit sweater.

"It's okay," Jane spoke quickly because this was her favourite part. "I'm going to lead you across."

The old woman glared at her.

"Your family was just here, they said wonderful things about you," Jane said.

Then the old woman’s face softened, and she nodded to Jane, gesturing for her to lead on.

Fido bounded up to them, his shaggy black fur bouncing with each step. “That’s Fido,” Jane said. “He can cross over anytime but he stays to help me.” Fido fell into step with them, his tail wagging.

A mist crept into the edges of the cemetery as they walked, and the old woman clutched one necklace with her hand. “This is a pretty shit job,” she said, looking over her shoulder. “Why’d you get stuck with it?”

Jane stopped her tracks. She looked up at the old woman, and Fido let out a soft whine.

Then Jane’s jaw trembled.“I wasn’t causing trouble, I promise...”

The words rushed out of Jane before she could stop them. “He put the fireflies in the jar and they couldn’t breathe. They were beating themselves against the glass, and I started crying and trying to get the jar because sometimes I couldn’t breathe either.”

The old woman put a hand on her shoulder, and Jane knew then that she was a grandmother. She took a deep shuddering breath and tried to continue.

“But then it happened to me, and my chest got tight and my eyes went black and I stopped chasing him but I fell into the grave for the dog…”

The grandmother handed her a tissue, and Jane wiped at her eyes. She looked around, and the mist crowding them had grown thick. “You have to go now, Grandma.” Jane pointed at the break in the mist, where a small open doorway was forming not an inch from where they stood.

“It wasn’t your fault, you weren’t causing trouble.” The Grandma pulled Jane in for a tight hug. “I lived seventy-two long years,” she spoke over Jane’s shoulder, eyeing the doorway. “And you look like you didn’t get more than ten.”

Then she shoved Jane through the doorway.

The door closed, the mist rolled away, and the old woman and Fido walked back to her grave. She looked at the temporary marker staked in her grave dirt, and her eyes were drawn to the dash between the dates. The part of the grave that represented not her birth or death, but her life.