Page 3 of Grave Humor

“I’m listening.”

“Choice one: you return quietly to your coffin and play dead until your funeral. Choice two: I call the priest so he can deal with you. Choice three: I tell you why I quit school, and when I’m done, you return to your coffin.”

“And?”

“And what?” I returned the phone to its cradle. “That’s it. You return to your coffin. The end. Do whatever you want, but I’m not going to have some old dead coot judging me because he’s an ignorant ass.”

“You’ll lose your groceries if you let me do what I want.”

“You’re the town’s troublemaker. I’m an idiot for even entertaining the idea I might get a bonus tomorrow with you involved. Why get my hopes up?”

“I’ll take option three, please.”

Since when the hell did Old Man McGregor take mercy on any of his targets, especially when there was fun to be had? Well, if he wanted the truth, I’d give it to him—and maybe the old coot would go bother my parents for a while before heading to his grave where he belonged. “Dear old dad took my college fund and wasted it on hookers and blow in Vegas. My mother cried because I told her the truth, but she wanted me to think she hadn’t taken her half. She also wanted me to give her money. She’d used her half to get high while Dad was busy banging every prostitute in Nevada. Since I couldn’t afford college, why bother finishing the rest of high school? I dropped. No point in a diploma I can’t do jack shit with, and since my oh-so-loving parents returned to Vegas to finish blowing whatever the fuck else money they stole, I needed to get a job and work or live on the streets. Happy, Mr. McGregor? There is your story about the town’s shamed dropout.” I rose from my seat, snatched my work keys from my desk, and headed for the door. “I’ll be back in ten minutes. Do me the favor of returning to your coffin so I can get this place cleaned up before your family arrives.”

“No, Anwen. That story didn’t make me happy at all,” the corpse whispered.

“That makes two of us. If crashing your own funeral makes you happy, be my guest—just try to keep the screaming to a tolerable minimum, please.”

Like always, I’d get my honey rocks—and my groceries—another time.

I needed a smoke, but one of Director Hammel’s employment criteria involved abstaining from puffing away at lung cancer in a box. He viewed the smell as unprofessional, and the only stinking bodies he allowed in his funeral home were the corpses. As I could afford the occasional cigarette but couldn’t afford pixie dust, not when the low grades sold for twenty dollars a pop when added to some shit coffee, I usually kept my flirtation with lung cancer to the weekends. It was one thing to light up in the comforts of my backyard, as I could wash my clothes, never smoked inside, and took every reasonable precaution possible to hide my addiction. It was another to do so where I could be caught in the act.

Director Hammel likely suspected I cheated on his stupid rules, but he hadn’t complained about my habit, and until he did, I saw no point in making any changes.

I had one damned cigarette left in my pack at home and no money to get a new one.

Maybe Old Man McGregor and I could switch places; we’d both be better off.

Walking around the funeral home’s pristine gardens helped clear my head, and ten minutes later, I returned to my office. The unpleasant funk of embalming fluid lingered, evidence I hadn’t hallucinated Old Man McGregor’s post-mortem visit. I armed myself with paper towels, spray cleaners, and air freshener before waging a bitter, futile war against the funeral home’s lingering miasma of decay and death.

Lemon smelled so much better than rot. As far as the restless dead went, Old Man McGregor hadn’t left me with too much of a mess to clean. He’d stayed mostly intact, limiting his oozing to a spot here and there. It took me twenty minutes to erase the evidence he’d gotten out of his coffin and taken a walk.

Five minutes later, Direct Hammel and his merry band of somberly dressed assistants arrived. Why did Direct Hammel need four men to stand around? Most viewings, even the big ones where the whole town showed up, only needed two attendants. The rest of the time, I could handle the work without any help at all.

While the viewings sometimes had upwards of the town’s full three hundred people, I couldn’t think of a single funeral with more than twenty attendees since I’d started working at the place. The old stayed, the young left, and with a world full of magic to discover, who wanted to stay in Sunset, Alabama? If my college fund hadn’t been bled dry on drugs and hookers, I would’ve been on the first bus out along with the other six seniors in my class.

“Any problems?” the director asked, sniffing the air.

I bet he smelled the lemon and wanted to know why I’d been cleaning. “No problems,” I replied. Any other day, Old Man McGregor rising and coming out of his coffin for a chat would’ve counted as a problem, but I was too worn and tired to care. Like with all things, problems were relative. If the restless dead hiding in his coffin decided to cause a problem, I’d back up and watch the fireworks. “I finished my other work for the morning, so I cleaned to make certain everything was ready for the viewing, sir.”

“Good job. Our clients will arrive soon. We’ll handle the rest from here. Mr. McGregor’s family is rather conservative, so if you could handle inventorying and cleaning the preparation and refrigeration rooms, that would be useful. Otherwise, go home.”

I didn’t need a diploma to read the writing on the wall. If I went home, I wouldn’t be invited back to work, which meant someone hadn’t done their job cleaning the basement.

The funeral home went through inspections once a month to keep its license, and we were due to have a government worker poking around the place. Plastering a smile on my face, I nodded. “I’ll be downstairs if you need me, sir.”

“Good. Call the main line if there are any problems.”

Once again, I read the writing on the wall: if I had any problems during the viewing, I would be in need of a new job.

I struggled to maintain a neutral, professional expression. To keep guests from wandering into the restricted parts of the funeral home, Director Hammel locked the stairwell door and turned off the lift. I’d spend the next six hours in the basement. After the surge of restless dead and corpse possessions, the funeral home boasted reinforced lower level walls and doors, fashioned of a mix of concrete and steel to keep the bodies contained should they decide to get up and take a walk.

Fortunately, excluding Old Man McGregor, we only had two bodies in storage, and John Doe had been in our freezer since before I’d been born. If he decided to get up, they’d hear my screams in the next state. While the rules kept changing, one thing stayed the same: the older the corpse, the stronger the undead it became. I hadn’t seen Mr. Doe, but I sometimes heard Director Hammel talk about him in hushed, fearful tones.

Nothing scared Director Hammel except our John Doe.

The other body we had didn’t worry anyone; the vampire wasn’t going anywhere until someone reattached his limbs and revived him with a lot of blood. I wasn’t sure why we kept the vampire on ice, but someone from the CDC came once a month, along with the funeral home inspector, to make sure he remained as alive as an undead got. I’d gotten to take a look at the vampire, as Director Hammel wanted to make certain I knew to avoid the sleepers in the freezer.