Oh, the horror
I wrote a horror story for a thing at school. Apparently I’m better at angry than scary. I also can’t decide whether or not I like or need the last two paragraphs, but I’ve already submitted it so it doesn’t matter too much. Still, I’d love to hear opinions overall as well as regarding their necessity.
The Funeral
I slammed hard on the brake. The car made a series of little jumps to accompany the sickly squeal and inevitable stall, grabbing hold just in time to spare me the exchange of insurance information and a plastered-on faceful of grudging contrition. “Why does the left lane come to a dead stop when the idiot’s in the middle? Why does no one pass him? That’s what the left lane is FOR!” I shouted through my shut window, over the rattle and hum of the radio, gripping the wheel ferociously and turning my shoulders for leverage.
“Seriously, if this Tahoe would just GO,” I launched into my tirade again, the last word coming with an athletic emphasis as I threw the wheel hard to the right. The force of my arms displaced the air from my lungs, forming the last grunting syllable. My mouth opened to start on the road rage postmortem when I shut it again in deference to the stereo’s pop punk drone as I realized exactly what I had done. The behemoth cruising along in front of me had prevented me from seeing that there had, in fact, been far less space in the middle lane than I had anticipated.
In my frenzied hurry, I had managed to wedge myself between the slow-moving Lincoln, now keeping pace behind me, and a hearse. “It’s not fair!” I thought. “That last one hadn’t had its hazards on!” I hadn’t noticed, at least. Sobered by shame, I did the only thing I could think to: I flicked on my blinkers and joined the crawl.
As the procession moved down the southern sun-gilded highway, cars whizzed by on the left, content to move at whatever pace was the mandate. None tried to insinuate themselves into the cavalcade. If I had been patient then, I would not have had to be doubly so now, not to mention on my way to a burial.
On the right, however, just ahead of the hearse, a small brown sedan kept pace. “What a terrible driver!” I marveled. “Who goes the speed of a mobile funeral willingly? It’s probably some ancient creature wondering why the world has suddenly begun to drive civilized again. I guess those cars you had to crank left one with a taste for a more leisurely commute. It’s killing me just to look at her!”
I wanted to get a look at this curiosity of a driver, but I had never been informed of proper procession etiquette; I didn’t know how close I could get to the hearse before it was considered tailgating and the driver would stop short and let the casket fly out the back and through my windshield just to spite me. A lapful of cadaver may have been a fitting punishment for my impatience at this point, and at least I’d have a chance to meet the deceased before they put the thing into the ground.
Following on, I stole glances to the right whenever I dared take my eyes off the nearly curtained-off mound of flowers I was now, more than ever, concerned with keeping a safe distance from. The woman, for I could at least tell that much, was scrupulous about maintaining her distance as well, so from my vantage I could see little more than her backlit halo of white hair and two bony hands arching over the steering wheel. “Maybe she should just hop in too,” I thought. “She’s probably an old pro at this. It may as well be her sister in the box. She’s old enough that it could be her kid and there wouldn’t be anything unnatural about it. Is it still unseemly when a parent outlives a child who’s outlived the maximum life expectancy for American males?” I supposed it was, after all.
In all my morbid contemplation, I barely noticed that we had come up to the gates of a cemetery. These gates were all the same from what I’d gathered: tall and curved at the top with evenly spaced vertical bars like eternal strings to be played eternally. They always reminded me of the harps angels carried in Renaissance illustrations and I wondered if the association was intentional. They opened outward to swallow us and we offered ourselves in, cutting a path to the gravesite.
The mourners left their cars winding snakelike down a slight hill and then back up again. “Do they charge more for plots with scenic views? Are rolling hills and manicured lawns really a necessity when the tenant’s not going to know a thing?” I wondered. “When I die, have them throw me into the sea. That way, I’ll be eaten by fish, who eat worms, rather than the disgusting little worms themselves. That’ll show them.” Right now, however, before I could be made feast for halibut and bottomfeeding fluke, I was simply glad I had settled on the third outfit I had tried on that morning, a plain black dress.
Two men slid the casket from the hearse’s rear hold. The thing looked so heavy with foliage I wondered how it had taken only the pair to lift it. They set it onto the contraption of rods and ribbons rigged delicately above the yawning hole in the ground. This act always choked me up a little. The finality of the lowering into the ground made it feel as if my heart was sinking in too, girded by ropes and let down little by little. Yet before it began, before anyone spoke a word, the slam of a car door pealed across the verdant expanse. Every head turned to watch the old woman steady herself on the brown sedan and gingerly pick her way down from the crest of the hill.
“If she was coming here anyway, why did she have to hold up a whole lane of traffic on her own?” I wondered in the throes of my fixation on justice for all drivers who yearn to disobey speed limits. “Once people hit a certain age, they’re convinced they can do whatever they want. Maybe it’s sort of a reward for being shrewd enough not to let yourself get killed longer than anyone else.”
I looked around at the faces of the proper funeral guests around me. The veil of reverence that had settled upon them suggested that, for her, a private stretch of highway was a casual, assumed courtesy like a handshake or a door held open. Perhaps it was her son or daughter that had passed and the gathered friends and family offered the bereaved old bat boundless pity in the kindly guise of respect.
As she broke through the crescent of mourners and approached the laden casket, people jostled closer together, wrenching hands. Ragged sobs began to escape, first in isolation and then more steadily as shame receded and grief took hold. The woman took her wheel-gripping claws and fixed them on the lid of the tomb. I could see the bones and sinews in her back tighten and pulse under her jacket as the top of the box clattered off. Flowers flew into the midmorning. They collided in the air, stems and petals, then cascaded to the ground, some falling victim to six more feet’s worth of gravity than lucky others.
I thought identifying the body was done privately by close members of the family and open caskets were reserved for the businesslike atmosphere of funeral homes, but I had longed to know who it was being buried since I had gotten myself into this mess, and so I looked into the uncorked coffin. My stomach pitched in horror. The thing was empty. No wonder it had been so light! “This must be a joke,” I thought. “Oh god, maybe I’m living in a horror movie hell! It all seemed like chance to me, but maybe they’ve been planning this all along, knowing I’d cut in and escort myself to my own funeral!”
The old woman looked out at the crowd. I nearly expected them to fall on me at her signal, tear me apart and jam me into the coffer dead or half-alive. Instead, an offbeat smile wound across her face, half crooked and half beatific. She waved with two hands like an eager child in a hometown parade, then stepped forward to kiss a few of the red-eyed chosen on the forehead. Some reached out to her, but she patted their desperate arms away gently. Finished with her anointing, the woman walked away backward, waving jollily again as the sobs intensified. I swear she looked at me quizzically, just for a moment, before she smiled one more time, then turned, gripped the lip of the casket, and climbed in.
The two men replaced the lid, a bit askew, and her hand emerged momentarily to pull it closed over her. Then she was gone. The pulley ropes slackened and the bare coffin jostled downward, finally settling on the lilies and leaves that had preceded it. I emerged from my confusion to find myself wracked with sobs, perfect rivulets of tears holding their shape as they coursed down the side of my nose and lingered at its crease before watering the earth and the front of my dress.
I nodded my condolences silently as the mourners dispersed and moved back to their vehicles. I considered following them once again, surely to a loved one’s home to eat rings of coffee cake and tell funny stories about the old crone to put off full realization as long as possible. Guilt for having berated her last drive on this earth kept me from celebrating what was certain to have been a fascinating life. In fact, I wondered as I returned to my own ride, “Who is going to drive her car home?”
5 days ago
