Chapter Text
February 12, 1997. The sky was dim with evening clouds, lit by the sun's fading rays; the atmosphere carried the scent of freshly upturned dirt with the wind. Within the tree-shaded confines of Okunoin Cemetery, Japan, a finely-dressed man stood on the dirt path and paid his respects for one George Joestar IV, and next to this headstone, one Amelia Joestar. He knelt.
“Eternal rest grant unto him, O Lord,” he prayed, “and let perpetual light shine upon him. May he rest in peace, and may almighty God bless us with His peace and strength, the Father, the Son, and the Holy Spirit. Amen.”
He stood up and turned to leave, but something grabbed his attention, and he stopped moving. He was not done here. He turned to view the headstone again, and read it with utmost care.
In loving memory of George Joestar the Fourth: born 1961, died 1997. Beloved son, father, husband, brother, and friend.
Okay, the man thought. That’s all.
He turned again, and the hand of paranoia held him back once more. A voice echoed in his head.
Aren’t you forgetting somebody?
The man, feeling compelled, spun back towards the headstone and pointed.
“You are not deserving of my, or of anybody’s prayer!” he yelled. “You are worthless! Your name is a stain on the honourable Joestar family tree!”
He stood in shock of his own words, his accusatory finger shaking. The man looked around and bowed his head as others glared at him. Why would he disturb the peace like this? Who was this man to be yelling at a headstone?
The man grasped his shuddering hand, and he began to cry. He left the graveyard without a word.
The next day, after the man was long gone, both headstones were destroyed. The man never visited this cemetery again.
‘Love Once Buried’. This is the story of a ‘burial’ — a new life born from old remains.
The date on the centre console read March 2nd, 2023, 2:12 PM, and pink-haired 17-year-old Josephine Joestar was bored out of her skull as she sat in the passenger seat of her mother’s sonic gray Honda Accord. Another long drive down the I-215 meant that every moment watching the drab, beige-walled highway speed along was spent holding her breath in anxiety and hoping Mom wouldn’t ask–
“So how was therapy, JoJo?”
Shit.
“It was fine,” Josephine mumbled. “She just asked me a lot of questions.”
Josephine’s mother— Erika Joestar— looked at her in no particular way.
“Well, it was! I don’t know what you want me to say,” she huffed.
Erika stared down the road as she drove, only moving her green eyes to check the car’s mirrors.
“What did you and her talk about?”
“We… well, we just talked a lot about how things are going.”
“And?”
Josephine frowned, dreading the answer she would have to give. The drive continued in silence temporarily as she flipped down the car’s sun shade, which she used to fix the black rose adorned to her dark red cap.
“Why don’t you talk to me?” sighed Erika. “It’s okay to talk, you know.”
“Well…”
Josephine then reached for the dial on the console.
“Can we listen to some music?”
“Go ahead, honey,” Erika murmured. “As long as it’s not anything too sad.”
“What?! I don’t listen to anything ‘sad’! Here, look!”
She took out her phone and connected it to the dashboard, and turned the volume dial up before pressing play. Erika tensed up and stomped the gas pedal briefly as she and Josephine were hit with a loud sting of rock guitars, the deep bass tones causing the car to reverberate with Deep Purple’s Speed King.
“Good golly, said-a little Miss Molly,” sang Josephine poorly, “when she was rockin’ in the House of Blue Light…!”
Her mother said something to her, but surely it wasn’t too important. She was too busy wiggling to the beat.
“Tutti Frutti was ohhhh~ so rooty, rockin’ to the east and west! Lucille was oh so real, when she didn’t do her daddy’s will! Come on baby, driii~ve me crazy!! Do it, do it, ‘cause I’m a—”
“Josephine Joestar!!” Erika shouted, causing Josephine to flinch as she dialed the radio to zero. “I am driving down a highway at 80 miles an hour, God damn it! Don’t you have any respect?!”
“Sorry,” she sighed. “At least it wasn’t sad music, right?”
Erika had nothing to say about this; she only blew a strand of her long, yellow-streaked hair out of her face. The following silence— save for the quiet hum of the Honda’s engine— proved deafening.
“We’ll talk about it when we get home. Put the news on, at a normal volume…”
Josephine paused to close her eyes and cringe behind her rose-red glasses. My God, how embarrassing.
“Okay,” she grumbled. “News coming up.”
She then reached to spin the right dial, tuning it to the correct station, and then she cautiously adjusted the left dial— for volume— click by click until the audio was acceptably, appropriately audible.
“Good afternoon, Las Vegas,” began the reporter. “I’m currently standing just outside the border of Area 51, where a large sinkhole has opened and sucked parts of the military base underground. There’s also been reports of other sinkholes opening up in various cities across the Valley. Of course, this is, uh, a very unusual problem for Nevada— and, actually, some folks have reported entire neighbourhoods going underground, so of course, this is a very dangerous phenomenon. We've brought with us a witness of one of these sinkholes, who thankfully escaped with only minor injuries.”
Josephine narrowed her eyes as she listened intently, tuning out Erika’s comment about how okay she wished the people were.
“I-It was terrible,” the witness stuttered, “I-I mean, I watched it fall. The thing was huge. Half of the Red Rock Casino came straight down. I fell in ‘cause I was there at the time, and I guess there was this whole underground facility we had to climb out of… I-I’m just thankful I made it out.”
Huge sinkholes. Underground facilities. Under a casino! Josephine reached for her pocket and toyed with drawing these thoughts in her journal… but not with Mom in the car.
“Well, thanks for being here with us, and we’re very glad you’re safe,” the reporter said. “Watch out for large cracks in buildings, homes and roads, and…”
The reporter continued on.
“Sinkholes…” Erika echoed over his voice as she slowed down and turned the steering wheel to exit the 215. “Oh, my God, that’s horrible… I haven’t noticed anything like that.”
“Under Area 51…” mumbled Josephine thoughtfully.
She grinned. “Dad’ll have a field trip with that one, huh?”
“Your father is… a paranoid man. Don’t take his nonsense for reality,” sighed Erika. “I have enough to talk about with you when we get home…”
Josephine continued to think about this as Erika drove the rest of the way home.
Josephine crashed onto her bed and covered up, hoping that the warm embrace of her favourite dinosaur plush would help her feel differently. She took a minute to move again— minus the shuffling and fiddling she did so that her wet, matted post-shower hair avoided the back of her neck.
She sat up and tossed her hat towards the coat rack, and it caught, pulling the whole rack with it and barricading the door briefly before it clattered to the ground.
Josephine groaned viscerally at this minor annoyance and returned to coddling herself with her little dinosaur. At least, she would rather do that than go for any unnecessary traversal across the mess of clothes and papers strewn all across the floor.
Fuck. This blows.
Briefly, Josephine contemplated the events of her therapy session. She was back at the Grand Canyon, feeling the deep reverberations of the world around her. Then, with all her might, she screamed, and charged forth to take a leap.
She fell short again.
Josephine kept her eyes closed and hid under the covers in humiliation. She couldn't even imagine it right… how ridiculous was that?
Therapy isn't even worth it… it must have cost thousands already, and I don't feel any fucking better.
Josephine waited in hopes that her feelings would go away, which clearly wasn't happening. Thus, she reached for her phone, and only a few minutes later...
“Fuck you!” declared Josephine, timing her words to her character stabbing the opponent. “Hahah! See that, Lui?!”
“Nice one, JoJo,” Lui’s feminine voice giggled over the phone.
Of course, this was in a video game. From the comfort of her very pink bed in her dimly-lit, very pink room, Josephine was streaming the action to her friends, who watched as the dragon-like character on screen heaved a gigantic sword against his enemies.
“Say, Josephine—” this was another friend of hers in the call, Andrés— “is everything okay at home?”
“What?”
Josephine paused her game and listened intently to the other end.
Andrés stumbled. “Well, I just mean…”
“Are you still worried about what Marlon was saying?” said Lui.
“Nah,” said Andrés, “forget it.”
Josephine furrowed her brow. “What was Marlon saying?”
“It’s nothing, JoJo,” whispered Lui. “We’re just worried about you, that’s all.”
“Oh. Well, things are fine. Hey, did you guys hear about those sinkholes on the news?”
Andrés’ confusion could be perceived through the line. “Sinkholes?” he asked.
“Yeah…”
Josephine opened a web browser on her console and used the controller to slowly, painstakingly type out “sinkholes nv”. Or, she would have, but this took multiple attempts. S J— no. S I M K— no. S I N K H O L R—
Josephine threw her controller. “God damn it!” she yelled.
“Take your time, JoJo,” said Lui. Josephine picked it back up.
S I N K H O L E S, space, N V.
Finally.
She scrolled over various news articles that were returned on the subject, her cursor glossing over a map of where sinkholes were reported to have appeared.
“They’re everywhere,” gasped Lui as she watched Josephine’s stream.
“And it’s not just Vegas…” Andrés added.
Indeed, all of Nevada was plagued with pinned spots representing sinkholes, the symbols peppered about like a seasoning. The westernmost side, Carson City and Death Valley— the northern counties with smaller villages, like Battle Mountain and Elko— a few eastern towns, Ely and Pioche— down south, all around the Las Vegas Valley— all were covered in sinkhole markers, so much so that the maps under the counties could hardly be seen.
Josephine’s controller shook in her hands as she felt the lure of adventure, exponentially increasing with the endless sinkhole reports as they continued to file in.
“Wow… there’s really so many… I-I wonder if there’s been any other incidents like the Red Rock one…”
“Hey, Lui, ‘n JoJo,” Andrés muttered. “What if we… ‘investigated’ one?”
A small noise came from Lui’s mic as she flinched. “No way, Andrés!” she cried. “It could be dangerous!”
Andrés laughed at the response he had garnered, but Josephine stopped and pondered this seriously. She used her controller to zoom in on Las Vegas, and clicked through the various markers until she had come upon one just a few miles from her location. Once clicked, the marker opened up with a slew of drone and helicopter shots displaying half of a building that had fallen deep into a sinkhole.
“It looks like one opened up near Summerlin,” she said. “At this place… Palo Verde High School.”
“Palo Verde? I watched a volleyball game there just last week…!” Lui gasped. “I hope they’re okay…”
Josephine continued to sift through the pictures. As she clicked through every different angle of the incident— ambulances and safety tape covering the scene— she felt strangely drawn to it.
“Let’s go check it out,” Josephine chuckled. “It sounds like fun.”
Andrés fussed from the other line: “Huuuuhh?! I was only joking, man! We could get hurt!”
“Don’t act like this is our first little ‘investigation’. Nothing would happen to us…”
“But we haven’t gone ‘n done that since middle school! Elementary, even! Times change, JoJo!”
“Well, I’m going,” Josephine shrugged. “Fine by me if you guys don’t want to go.”
“JoJo…!” scoffed Lui.
“I’m gonna start making plans. Hope I see you guys tomorrow.”
“Wait, wait, JoJo—!” Andrés cried feebly, only to be silenced as Josephine ended her stream and left the call.
Josephine sat up in her heart-shaped bed and took a paper out of her drawer. She began to write something.
The next morning, before Josephine left for school, she went to her mother’s room and woke her up.
“Eh…? What’s going on?” mumbled Erika.
Josephine beamed. “So there’s this field trip we can go on since it’s near the end of the year,” she said— “it’ll only be a few extra hours after school. But it’ll be fun! Just need a parent signature.”
Josephine turned a paper over to Erika, who squinted through drowsy eyes as she read some short, handwritten letter about a field trip to Palo Verde.
“Sure…”
She took the pen that Josephine handed her and scrawled out her signature.
“Thanks, Mom!”
Josephine left the room, squealing in excitement, then gathered her things in her book bag and left the house for school. By all means, she would be gone for a few hours.
To Be Continued →