Hands full of bees, Alice screamed at the sky. Sitting in the grass, blades tickled her thighs. Bee by bee, Alice lined them up. “I’m sorry,” said the speaker at a funeral attended only by the dead.

Alice lay down, tears falling into her hair. She didn’t want the bees to see her cry.

From Guest Contributor Michaela Papa

The story I’m told, is my cousin ran a red light, hit an oncoming car and died on impact. This happened the day before Thanksgiving. Thanksgiving Day, my aunt and uncle are preparing for his funeral.

Secretly, I’m thankful it isn’t my wife or one of my kids.

From Guest Contributor Lisa M. Scuderi-Burkimsher

Lindsey searched the attic for old family photos. Her dad had just passed away from Alzheimer’s and she wanted to make a collage for the funeral. Through dust and cobwebs she came across the box. She found the photo of her and her dad when she was five-years-old. The Ferris wheel was scary to her young eyes.

She pressed the picture close to her chest. Then she placed the picture in the pile of memories she’d cherish from happier times before his disease took him.

From Guest Contributor Lisa M. Scuderi-Burkimsher

My stepfather had Parkinson’s disease. Before he died, he was one percent of the person he had been. It’s cruel to say that at fifty percent he was a kinder person.

Four years on, at his funeral my lie became true.

From Guest Contributor Alice Kibbe

She was my first kiss at seven, she had a crush on me. She moved away a year later and was forgotten until high school when she found me on social media. I was busy, having parties and ignored her texts. In university, she found me again, through a friend, but I had no time, as I needed to study. Years later, by fortune, we bumped on the street. We talked for a few minutes, but that was all. Once more we met, this time at a funeral. Here I realized my folly, as I said goodbye to my soulmate.

From Guest Contributor Jordan Altman

She kept the Nevers in a shoebox. Most came from her mother, from childhood, but even now, she could sense her mother preparing more for Christmas. Her step-father gave her a few in the early years, but they faded to nothing as their relationship thickened to indifference.

She often wondered why he’d left her only one.

From Guest Contributor EM Eastick

The funeral didn’t make her cry.

Curious, she thought, the measures taken.

From Guest Contributor Emily Fox

Emily has an MA in English and Creative Writing from SNHU. She currently lives in North Carolina. You can find her at emfoxwrites.com, or follow her on Twitter @emfoxwrites.

The plum blossoms dance in the spring breeze like pink snowflakes across the yard.

After her funeral, floodlights illuminate wreckage of the fallen tree. A brittle heart splinters. Sobs erupt anew.

From Guest Contributor Eric Schweitz

The second time that John came out of prison, he decided that enough was enough. It took a while but John’s parole officer found him a factory job at the docks hauling animal carcasses from trucks to meat lockers.

John worked fifty-hour weeks at the factory for twenty years before he died of the lung cancer that had gradually crept into his body. John’s obese daughter was his lone blood relative at what could only be described as a modest funeral. She left tired yellow flowers on John’s grave before going back to a factory job of her own.

From Guest Contributor, Horrorshow

Daphne had always maintained a strict policy of never doing anything that she was ordered to do. When her mother told her she must always look both ways before crossing the street, she would immediately run headlong into traffic.

Very few people attended Daphne’s funeral.