Emmett Lincoln had hated funerals for as long as he could remember.

 It wasn't as though he'd had a bad experience that had traumatised him for life and stained him with a deep-seeded fear. 

No, he'd just never liked funerals.

He tugged at his tie, pulling it to sit flush against his collar, before turning to face Auntie Jean as she looped yarn furiously over a pair of needles, glancing up for a second to give him a straight-faced nod of approval.

Auntie Jean wasn't really his auntie. In fact, they weren't even related, but she'd insisted he address her as such, since it made her feel younger, and as she had put it, 'more bohemian wanderer', a term Emmett was sure she had coined simply to romanticise her endless thirst for adventure, and irritating need to drift from town to town, with no thought of the consequences.

Emmett sighed, twisting a pink carnation between pale fingers, and tucking the flower into his button hole.

There would be another funeral today, at nine o'clock. He knew, because Auntie Jean had been visibly growing more distressed, knitting needles clacking frantically together, until the lumpy scarf she had constructed grew to almost double his height.

That, and his neighbour, Clarence had told him so, hoping to convince Emmett to drop in a good word or two to Auntie Jean. Personally, Emmett had never understood the appeal. Although, that may have had something to do with the rather undesirable age difference, with her being almost thirty years older. 

While he couldn't imagine a world where graying Auntie Jean, with her stretched sweaters, and penchant for sticking knitting needles in her hair, could be attractive, he assumed that in a couple of years, his tastes would change, and he'd be at the very back of her long line of potential suitors.

Clarence leaned against the mirror now, sneaking love-struck peeks at Auntie Jean from beneath a mop of what Emmett has always assumed was once blonde hair. It had been going on for around an hour or so, and had long since progressed from being adorable in an endearingly awkward sort of way, to excruciatingly creepy, and dare he say it, border-line stalkerish.

Determined to save the man, while he still had some dignity, Emmett coughed pointedly, shaking his head, and when Clarence turned to face him, he beckoned for him to come and help  with the angels-breath flowers, as Emmett attempted to arrange them in some semblance of a pattern.

Despite his shortcomings, there was no doubt that Clarence McVae had a gift with flowers, one that he aimed to display at every possible moment, especially, when a certain Jean Brown was in the near vicinity. And so, with an eager expression, Clarence quickly strode over to Emmett, checking twice to make sure the woman in question was watching, before skillfully twisting the flowers, a little tug here, and a little tug there, until the small bunch sat proudly against the boy's chest, looking as though it had been picked fresh from a meadow, rather than stolen from one of the small vases left on top of a crumbling coffin.

"Golly," Auntie Jean exclaimed, looking up from her knitting, "You sure are handy with those flowers, Casper."

Emmett winced.

Clarence blushed. He opened his mouth to reply, only to be cut off by the church bells as they clashed against one another, crying out mournfully.

"Nine o'clock," they wailed, "It's nine o'clock."

Glancing back at the mirror one last time, Emmett pushed back the few stray hairs that had landed on his face, wondering when exactly he had reached that point that he considered himself able to understand the chiming of bells. 

Auntie Jean set down her knitting, pushing the two needles deep into her bun and drawing the sides of her cardigan close, before waving an outstretched palm in his general direction.

"Come now, Emmy, we mustn't be late."

He gladly accepted her procured hand, and the pair of them walked towards the newly dug grave at the opposite end of the cemetery, Clarence trailing behind them.

When they arrived, Emmett let go, moving to lean against a marble headstone that had been erected almost two hundred years ago, fingers tracing the letters that formed the name of a long forgotten memory.

The funeral procession was late, he noted with mild annoyance. Twenty minutes late, to be precise.

Although, he added, that was to be expected, with the exuberant display of tears, which often seemed to be obligatory when attending a funeral. 

Pushing a hand into his pocket, he withdrew a pack of cigarettes, taking out one, and placing it on his tongue, allowing it to roll in his mouth for a moment. Then, striking the match he pulled from his pocket against the headstone, he touched the flame to the end, lighting the cigarette, and kicking a foot against the stone, ignoring the disapproving look Auntie Jane fixed him with.

The procession arrived exactly thirteen minutes, and two cigarettes later, marked by the first pair of red-eyed relatives, who clutched each other desperately, as they stumbled along the worn path towards the grave, in a haze of tears, and heart-ache.

They were followed by a long chain, around two hundred people long, and Emmett couldn't help but purse his lips in distaste.

This was the very reason he hated funerals.

Emmett doubted the deceased man had a profound, and meaningful connection with every person present. Out of the hundreds that had arrived, he estimated that only ten actually cared about the man's death. The others circled his final resting place hungrily, greedily, as vultures hoping to peck away any remains.

Quite common really, he mused, breathing in a lungful of smoke. Almost sad, if he was being completely honest.

He'd named it the mourning effect, likening the process to a complicated dance of mannerisms and shameless flattery, mixed with a helpful dose of sobbing, and convincing 'I remember when', stories.

After all, a person nearly always became more popular after death. 

A corpse was, surprisingly much less argumentative and had drastically fewer opinions in general, let alone conflicting thoughts that could challenge one's basis of living. It also, was far less likely to bodily rise from beyond the veil, to say that no, it had not been best friends with its thrice cousin two times removed during life, and no, it had definitely not left its entire estate to aforementioned cousin.

The pitiful crux of the matter was that humans were and probably always would be devastatingly and unequivocally selfish.

It had been the case when Emmett Lincoln had died, in the early nineteenth century, and he had the feeling it was one quality that would never be lost. 

He sighed, nostalgically rubbing a thumb over his headstone, feeling the deeply etched letters of his name beneath his fingers. 

Then, he turned away from the gathered crowd, as they stood ominously around the freshly dug grave like a murder of opportunistic crows, nodding once at Clarence and Auntie Jean, who had found themselves tangled together, welcoming the newest spirit to enter the cemetery, and lifting the lid off the coffin who's headrest he had leaned on mere seconds ago. 

Emmett slid into the familiar darkness, crossing his arms over his chest and sighing heavily.

He'd never liked funerals.

And he doubted he ever would.