At the Funeral

It’s been a week already and the funeral isn’t over yet. For seven days and nights we’ve been roaming the hallways of Frinkel’s Death Emporium whispering in each other’s ears, massaging each other’s elbows, politely trampling each other as we ransack the hors d’oeuvre table, which is replenished with a fresh round of fruit punch and cold Swedish meatballs at noon and sundown every day. The Emporium’s staff consists of two short, round men in bird costumes. When they’re not setting out provisions and cleaning up after us, they wobble around on their big yellow feet, making bird noises. Out of respect for our loss, they’re careful not to bug us and interfere with our grief by pointing these noises at our faces.

Seven days and nights of walking around a funeral home is enough to make anybody tired, and yet nobody seems to be tired but me. I start asking people why they don’t sit down for a while, maybe take a nap, but everybody just smacks their lips and waves me away.

Annoyed, I decide to look for a bed and take a nap myself. I find one in a secret room. The bed is king-sized and made out of Queen Anne’s lace. On the far side of it, my sister Jain is sitting there playing with a doll.

In the middle of it, The Deceased is laying there dead.

The upper half of The Deceased’s body is hanging out of a black, halfway unzipped body bag. He isn’t wearing any clothes and His skin is absolutely colorless. His eyes look like they’re on the verge of popping out of His head.

I sit down next to Him and frown at Jain. “Did you unzip this body bag?” I ask. She shakes her head. I say, “You’re telling me you didn’t unzip this body bag? Is that what you’re telling me?” She nods her head. I cock mine. Then I say, “Well, I guess he unzipped himself. I guess that’s what happened, isn’t it?” This time my sister doesn’t respond to me. She whispers something into her doll’s ear and giggles.

Ignoring her, I use my feet to try and stuff The Deceased back into the body bag, but it doesn’t work, and when I’m about to lay my hands on Him, my mother walks into the secret room, scolds my sister and I for being there, then sits down on the bed and places The Deceased’s head in her lap. She strokes His curly brown hair. A few seconds later ... He coughs.

“Holy moly,” I say.

My mother closes her eyes. “No, no. That’s just a reflex.”

“Reflex? He’s been dead over a week.”

Now my mother rolls her eyes. I make a bitter face. My mother begins to massage The Deceased’s neck. The Deceased coughs again. Then, purring a little, He mumbles, “That feels good.”

Before I can say anything my mother looks at me and says, “Reflexes. It’s all reflexes.” I stare at her. My mother shrugs. “Listen, I have to go. Aunt Kay’s been feeding meatballs to the spiders and I have to try and convince her to feed them to herself instead. You two can stay here for now, but don’t let me catch you in here later, okay? Be good.” She removes The Deceased’s head from her lap, gets off the bed and leaves.

The Deceased flexes his jaw. He coughs again, and again, and again. He keeps on coughing until a rotten apple flies out of His mouth and across the room. It nails an antique lamp, shatters it. Jain and I leap off the bed as The Deceased starts gesticulating like an angry worm. “Get me outta this damn thing,” he says.

“I don’t think that’s such a good idea,” I say. Jain adds, “We might get in trouble.” Then, out of the corner of her mouth: “Is this a reflex, too?”

I don’t even bother to respond.
The Deceased gives us a dirty look. “Fine. I’ll get out myself. And I’ll never forgive you two for being so crummy to me.”

Jain and I glance at each other. After a brief struggle, The Deceased manages to unzip the body bag the rest of the way. He climbs out of it. He stretches his wiry, naked limbs, rearranges His genitals and strides out of the secret room without a word. Jain and I watch him go.

Then we leap back onto the bed and take naps on either side of the open body bag.

Out in the hallways The Deceased approaches the attendants of the funeral, one at a time. He taps them on the shoulders and asks them if they can spare some clothes and if it’s not too much trouble a meatball and a cup of fruit punch, too. “I’m very cold and undernourished,” he says, staring at his toes. But everybody just frowns at him and pretends they don’t understand him, except for my Aunt Kay, who, in response to his plea, spits on him and then shoots up into the ceiling on a thread of spidersilk attached to the back of her neck. The Deceased breaks down and cries. When He gets tired of crying, He starts swearing at everybody. He keeps on swearing until my grandfather threatens to have him hanged. “We’ll string you up right here and won’t even think twice about it!” my grandfather twangs. The Deceased snarls at him. My grandfather snarls back, then signals the Emporium’s two bird men and they all chase The Deceased back to the secret room and tell him not to come out again unless he wants to die.

“I’m already dead,” says The Deceased as my grandfather slams the door on His face.

Jain and I are fast asleep and don’t wake up. The Deceased shuffles over to the bed. He stares at us and thinks about what he should do. Should He kill us? Should He maim us? Or should He just leave us alone? Since He dislikes us so much, the most sensible thing to do would be to kill us. But He can’t make up His mind. He tries to wake us and ask us to make up His mind for Him. No luck—we’re sleeping like a dead things. No matter how hard he pokes our shoulders and screams in our ear holes, we won’t open our eyes.

The Deceased sighs. Then, having nothing else to do, He crawls onto the bed and back into the body bag, and zips Himself up as best He can.