This is 15-Minutes: Leap Year

Well, here's the start of a series of 15-minute small stories dedicated to my former high-school friends.

It's a bit hard writing a short story (or even sudden fiction) within 15-minutes so this is really more of an excerpt. Kind of like This is Your Life but with me adding lots of weird stuff in the mix.

Anyway, here we go...

Dino P____ was celebrating his birthday today.

Dino was 25 years old but technically, he was older. That was because he had been born on February 29 and only celebrated his birthday every four years.

As time went by, he had fleshed out to become a solid-looking young man. This despite being gangly for most of his existence. Likewise, his baby-face had eyes that looked old-man tired and bookended by crow's-feet.

Dino stood on a hill that was part of the Loyola Heights Memorial Park in Metro Marikina.

Around him, squarish crypts and mausoleums rose in irregular stands throughout the estate, scattered in a haphazard pattern like grotesque cement dice. He remembered a time when the memorial park had only been a green field interspersed with marble patches memorializing the dead.

Now the dead were everywhere and the lapidas, their headstones, had grown up to become houses.

Dino looked down at the marble marker at his feet and thought of the lives he had led and met.

"Shit, pare. This is getting tiresome. Four years and I'm back again. You'd think they would clean up this place."

With that, he sat down, lit a cigarette (one vice he had never really kicked despite the years), and proceeded to tell the marker—the only thing left that reminded him of his best friend—of the past four years.

One day every four years. One year for every four years.

For Dino P___, time passed very, very slowly...

...And time's up. Not an auspicious start but it's a start.

Don't worry, I'm sure I'll be able to include zombies somewhere.