The Black Book of Regrets

Every corpse had a different stench when it burned. Like a mixture of awful feelings and bottomless sentiments, they all burned to release the terrible stench of regret. Dense. Like the kind of dense that suffocates you and puts you out of your senses. And yet at the same time, the air felt as light as a bright summer morning, flowery and dreadfully pleasant.

This was the paradox of my special place, a place where the mundane ends and the supernatural begins. I’ve been making these awful mounds and burning them back to the soil, day after day, night after night. It always seemed the same to me, a bunch of people coming dressed in black, holding their sticks and hats and umbrellas, filling the air with grief and sometimes joy over the ashes of the burned.

I thought I’d be doing the same every day, removing the bones and making room for my next visitor. Or so I thought until the day I received the black book from the ashes of Ms. Mary Hill. Burned, missing pages, and less written inside. But still, a black book all in all. The pages smelled like perfume and charcoal, the cover made of black leather. Soft to the touch and warm to the eyes, like burning woods on a cold winter’s day.

“Dear Bill,

I’m truly sorry for whatever I am about to commit. As painful as it is, I find it much harder to keep moving forward. It’s time I have some rest. Again, I’m truly sorry. I hope you understand.”

It was short but understandable. Like all the other visitors, she too had a story to tell. Painful as it was, the black book had conveyed her regrets, wholly and well.

My next visitor was a meek-looking man. His belly was the same as his cheeks, puffed up and pale. As I burned his corpse, smoke arose from his belly button, covering the entire field with miasma. Arising from his ashes was a second, much thicker black book.

For a whole year, I burned and covered, my sensations growing numb with my sentiments. The smoke formed the stench, the stench the miasma, the miasma their regrets, and their regrets the black books. Every visitor had their own. Filled, empty, crooked, pleasant, neat, and dirty. Their regrets formed the messages, sending their regards to their Bills’.

Day after day, new visitors came to my special place. And day after day, I hoped for their safe passing. And day after day as I burned and filled, I too had started to await my turn to be the next visitor.