Last Respects (short story)
“Last Respects”
Cynthia was not one of my good friends. And I’d always thought her mother was a bit of a rabid bitch. However, the last time we ate lunch together (nearly seven months ago,) Cynthia had picked up the tab. So I thought- hell, I owe her, right? Besides, there was sure to be cookies and maybe hot cocoa. And it would be reassuring to Cynthia if she knew there was one person in the room who wasn’t there just to make sure the old hag was really, truly, officially maggot-food.
I’ve always hated funeral homes. The smell, the lighting, the furniture- Hushed, sobbing voices that make me grit my teeth and beg some almighty deity to strike me dead. At least then I’d be the one in the box, and I wouldn’t have to listen to all of that sentimental gushing. It’s almost like the sound of all the wailing enters my ear, and then spends the rest of the day rattling around inside my brain. Sometimes it feels like the noise is louder, bumping through my skull, than in the rooms and hallways. I guess it’s because the floor of my brain lacks a hideous carpet.
Immediately, as I entered the white doors with smudgy, “I’ve-wiped-my-mascara-laden-sopping-wet-eyes-with-my-finger&rd quo; prints on the frame, I knew I must have miscalculated something. Even before I got to the room at the end of the hallway, I could hear wailing- dying cat, fire siren wailing, with elephants trumpeting their sniffly noses for effect.
Maybe Cynthia’s mother wasn’t an absolute cunt-rag. Maybe she’d only acted like that around me. Had she despised my very existence all this time, and I’d never known? What could I have possible done to offend that putrid, acidic mass?
I picked up my pace, as if somehow these questions would be resolved by Cynthia’s mother once I reached her- completely and conveniently forgetting about the fact that she’d rarely opened her mouth in my presence during life. Unless of course she was spewing excrement or spitting rusty nails in my general direction.
The hallway was very long. I began to regret the pint of Ben and Jerry’s I’d had that morning for breakfast. I only wasted a couple of moments on this thought, however. After all, it’s so very hard to regret chocolate chip cookie dough, or brownie batter. Or “Phish Food.” I wonder if it was Ben or Jerry who thought it would be clever to name ice-cream flavors after bands. Either way, they’re both pricks.
They say obesity is an epidemic, in America. I personally think that food is the epidemic. All we need now is a sudden outbreak of self-control. Unfortunately for me, I’m resistant to cultural diseases. Like going to the gym. Sometimes I’m so disgusted by this phemonema that I almost forget to be amused by the fact that these people try their hardest to look good. And yet, they’re still assholes. Every last one of them.
Finally, I reached the room at the end of the hallway. The moment I set foot in the door, I was immediately accosted by a miniscule, balding, troll-like old man in a dusty suit. He hugged me around the waist, soaking my blouse with tears and snot. I tried to protest, to pull away, but he peered up at me with red, puffy eyes through his cracked, dirty spectacles, and sniveled-
“Allison! Oh Allison. I’m so glad you came. He would’ve wanted to see you.”
I opened my mouth to tell this doddering old geezer that my name certainly isn’t Allison, but the room had gone completely silent. I could hear pins and tears and dignities being dropped all over the damn room, it was so silent. Everyone, and I mean EVERYONE, was staring at me. So, I let the little freak lead me to the coffin in the back of the room.
Kneeling beside the coffin, bawling her eyes out, was this twig of a girl with her nappy red hair in pigtails. This little fluffball didn’t even know enough to wear black to a funeral! She was dressed completely in white, with streaks of mascara running down her face. She was throwing herself all over the corpse, kissing it all over. She was practically tonguing the damn thing! I silently decided that I’d rather be alive if being dead meant being molested by a crazy chick who doesn’t even know what color to wear when people kick the fuckin’ bucket.
After a few moments of me standing there, with this dusty little pixie at my elbow, the batty-pigtailed-chick finally backed off the corpse enough so that I could see the guy’s face. And let me tell you- he was HOT. I mean, this guy was drop-dead sexy. No pun intended. So, I just stared at him. I mean, I was mesmerized. You know, the way deer are when they’re standing on the highway, right before you slam on the breaks? But then you lose control of the car and you end up spinning out of control so instead of having a head-on collision with the deer, the thing ends up getting splattered all over the passenger side of your SUV? Like that.
Right about then, I noticed that the girl with the pigtails was talking to me. I’d be so stunned by the dead guy’s good looks that I hadn’t even noticed that she’d moved. Or that she was talking. She had this high, whiny voice. It was literally the most obnoxious sound I’ve ever heard in my life.
“I’m sorry, I don’t think we’ve met. How did you know Steve?” she sniffed, while all of the other drippy-nosed partygoers looked on with a hungry kind of curiosity.
“Oh shit,” I blurted out in response, “His name was Steve? That’s a fuckin’ ugly name!”
I don’t think I’ve ever heard a more grating silence. In retrospect, that was probably not the most tactful thing to say, but I was still dazed, y’know? Probably a lot like the way that deer is still just a bit dazed, even after it’s been splattered all over a Chevy, but right before it actually dies.
Actually, the crazy-ass chick with the pigtails looked a bit like a dazed deer, too. She was staring at me as if I’d busted through the ceiling in a space ship with a cooky accent and demands to be taken to the president, or something. She had enormous eyes, almost like she was possessed. In fact, she might’ve been, the way her mouth was slack and hanging open. There might’ve even been some drool, but that could’ve probably been attributed to her make-out session with the sexy dead guy.
Anyways, I was very obviously in the wrong place, and there wasn’t much else going on, so I disentangled myself from the mini-troll, grabbed some cookies, and left.
A couple of minutes later, I finally found the room that Cynthia’s bog-witch had been chucked into. It was literally the furthest room from the main entrance. Other than Cynthia, there were only two people in the room- Cynthia’s younger brother, and nephew. Both of them were bawling.
Cynthia’s eyes were puffy, too. She pulled me in a bear-hug that would’ve been enough to crush any man to death. No wonder she’s single.
“Amanda,” she sniffed at me, staining my arms with her mascara-tinted fingertips, “I almost thought you weren’t coming.”
“Yeah, Cynth,” I said, looking around the room casually. The old hag was definitely dead- she was in a box in the corner. And the hot chocolate machine was right next to her little shrunken head. I gave Cynthia a long, slow, sincere smile.
“I’d better go pay my respects, and all.”
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I'm glad i took the time to read this. You've done an exceptional job with the funeral-home thing and the action/idea development is fueled with the expectation of seeing the old bat, which we do at the very end, and when we do, it's an anticlimax. A lot of good stories end that way.
When i was younger, funeral homes used to bother me. Since i'm closer now to God's waiting room they don't so much anymore, but your story made me recall exactly how they made me feel. I like your prose style, i guess because it reminds me a little of mine.
It took courage to put your stuff out there and ASK for criticism. I've put out a novella and a short story but never asked anyone to read them, much less criticize them.