Managing Editor Lisa Ampleman: Grief is tough subject matter for fiction, but Will Musgrove gets it right by approaching the topic obliquely, through a narrator who doesn’t go to a friend’s memorial service. A fact about laugh tracks mentioned toward the end of the story resonates deeply within the context of mourning.

Listen to Will read the story:

Laugh Track

Your mom let me know there’d be televisions looping your favorite sitcoms, so I skipped the memorial. “A series finale,” she called it. Imagine your relatives grieving in that church basement, hearing voices that remind them of you but aren’t you. We watched a lot of TV, didn’t we? I’d come over to your house after school because you had that comfortable sofa, and during the commercials, we’d switch off who was holding the rabbit ears. I know you want to know what I’ve been watching, but I don’t turn on the TV anymore. I can’t, not since I read online that most laugh tracks were recorded in the 1950s, that they edit in the sound after the fact, that most of those laughers are probably long dead. Maybe it’s not true. Maybe studios can still find people willing to laugh, but I only hear you giggling. You’re not there. You’re stuck here, but I only hear you.

Will Musgrove is a writer and journalist from Northwest Iowa. He received an MFA from Minnesota State University, Mankato. His work has appeared or is forthcoming in Florida Review, the Pinch, The Forge, Passages North, Tampa Review, and elsewhere. Connect on Twitter at @Will_Musgrove or at williammusgrove.com.