The sun hangs low and heavy in the sky. It is October 31st. It should be a day to celebrate my twenty-fourth birthday, but instead, the air smells like cloying lilies and damp, freshly dug earth. Today is the day we bury the monster.

The cemetery looks like a movie set for the elite. Everything is prim, cold, and perfect. Long, black cars with glass-like polish line the stone paths. The grass is a deep, unnatural green, and the tall gravestones stand like silent, frozen soldiers watching ...