Page 1 of Seven Graves

My name is Seven Grey…and I hang out with dead people.

Yes, Seven like the number. And yes…literal dead people.

You know those fun childhood moments when the teacher goes around and asks those precious little kids with the pigtails and the pink ribbons what they wanna be when they grow up, and they say things like: “I wanna be a ballerina! I wanna be a doctor!”

An astronaut. A fucking lunch lady?

Yeah, my childhood wasn’t like that. When it came around to speak my turn, it was quite literally a full-circle moment.

A circle on a colorful mat in the kindergarten classroom with a wide-eyed teacher that had coke bottle glasses and a handful of other little kids trying to figure out what the hell just came out of my mouth when I said…

“I wanna be a mortician!”

It’s the family business. And this is a small town.

How death, and my aversion to the emotional part of it became the complete opposite of what it’s like for everyone else…

that probably started in the second grade when that same teacher came through our basement door in a body bag and I realized at too young an age that—it didn’t bother me as much as it should.

Instead of crying on the floor like the child I was, I found myself wanting to take care of her for that last close-up.

I guess that’s what happens when you’re raised in a funeral parlor. Sounds sweet, right?

So, how did that sweet little girl end up stuck in the middle of a mob war, facing accessory to murder charges at the ripe old age of twenty-four?

…now, that’s a story with just enough drama for a small town.