A Cautionary New Year’s Tale Involving Cemeteries

On the last night of the year, the town gathered where it always did: not in the square, not by the river, but at the old cemetery on the hill.

This was tradition, though no one could quite remember how it began. Lanterns were hung from iron hooks, their light trembling over dates and names. People brought thermoses of cider, paper hats, and a confidence that the year ahead could be bargained with if approached respectfully—preferably where time had already lost.

“Midnight sounds clearer up here,” someone always said.

What they meant was that silence sounded clearer.

Among the crowd was Jonah Pike, who had decided—after a year of broken promises, missed chances, and a calendar that felt more accusatory than helpful—that this New Year’s Eve would be different. He would confront the year properly. He would be honest. At five minutes to midnight, Jonah wandered away from the lanterns and found himself before a modest stone, its lettering softened by decades of weather. He did not know the name carved there, but the dates caught his attention. The life between them was shorter than Jonah expected.

“Sorry,” Jonah murmured, for reasons he couldn’t explain.

The wind moved through the trees, and with it came a peculiar sound—not a voice, exactly, but the sense of being corrected. You’re not sorry, the silence seemed to say. You’re impatient. Jonah laughed nervously. Cemeteries had a way of doing that to people: making thoughts sound like answers.

As the final seconds of the year were counted—ten, nine, eight—the ground felt unusually solid beneath his feet, as if it were listening too. At midnight, the bells rang from town below. Cheers erupted. Corks popped. Someone tripped over a headstone and swore, then laughed.

Jonah, however, felt something shift—not beneath him, but behind his eyes. The year ahead unspooled in quick, unasked-for images: postponed apologies, health ignored, hours squandered, love treated as renewable instead of fragile. Nothing dramatic. Nothing supernatural. Just ordinary regret, arriving early.

The cemetery, it seemed, did not traffic in ghosts. It dealt in inventory. Jonah understood then the unspoken rule of the hill: you didn’t come here to celebrate the future. You came to measure it—against what was already finished. He walked back to the lanterns quieter than before. When friends asked what he wished for, he surprised himself by answering honestly. “Less later,” he said. “More now.” They laughed, assuming it was a joke.

By morning, the cemetery was empty again, holding its names and dates with patient neutrality. It would be there next year, and the year after that, ready to remind anyone who came seeking fresh beginnings of an inconvenient truth: Time does not reset. It only continues—and it keeps excellent records.

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Hey, that was almost interesting, right? I typed the title into ChatGPT and this is the AI slop it spat out. The photos are actually mine. Please stay tuned for my original New Year's piece tomorrow! Same title, this time my original writing. No more jokes!