Night Funeral
A cat screeched- impaled its claws into the fabric of darkness and left a mark- several of the mourners raised their heads at the noise and, somewhere close by in her own yard, she heard her dog bark in response. She looked out the window, curtains drawn open to the nighttime, and thought the sky looked about ten thirty-ish.
The widow came to speak to her now:
“Hello, darling.”
“Hello. I’m so sorry for your loss.”
“Thank you, love- it was just his time.”
She nodded.
The widow continued:
“Have you had anything to eat yet?”
“No- I don’t like to eat this late.”
The widow nodded sympathetically.
“Yes, it is quite late; I’m very sorry for that.”
“No, no-”
“It is unusual-”
She shook her head.
“-only he was very clear, you know, about being buried at night- 9 o’clock exactly, he wanted, he told me over and over-”
“Mmhmm,”
“I mean, really, he was relentless- even after he’d died, he just kept going on about it.”
“Mmhmm,”
“I loved him, you know, I loved him something fierce, so I didn’t mind all the nagging but when they took him away to the funeral parlor-”
“Yeah,”
“-I heard from the directors, well, it’s just two of them, the two brothers, you know-”
“Mmhmm,”
“-no, sorry, dear, they do have a friend there working with them as well-”
She nodded.
“-and they were complaining to me after just a day. They said, ‘Christ, but he talks too much, dear’ and I said I know but what can I do, the poor man is dead and doesn’t he deserve but a few more moments to air out his thoughts? You know, he was always such a thinker-”
“Mmh,”
“-I was half terrified they would cancel everything and bring him back but, bless their hearts, they really pulled through and now my dear husband is resting at last- I mean, you heard it, didn’t you? Absolute silence; not a word he said during the whole service-”
She nodded.
“-that’s him done, then, bless his heart- I’ll miss him something awful so.”
She nodded again.
As soon as the wake had ended just before midnight, she took the short walk across the widow’s backyard into her own. The night was cold and the air felt recycled somehow, as if it had all been breathed in and out before. Her dog was waiting behind the wooden gate that she had left closed but unlocked, and when he sensed her, begun to scratch frantically to be let out. She had planned to maneuver the gate open and slip inside without creating much of a gap, but the dog threw the entirety of his weight against her and took off into the night. She stared after him for a minute, then left the gate open and walked into her house to bed, at last.
The dog did not return during the next day, but it was Sunday so she let the matter rest. He would be back eventually with something he had killed, and she would have to bury it in the garden - that was the routine. When he did return, it was late into the night and she could tell through the dragging sounds that what he had captured was something much larger and heavier than he had ever managed before.
She had come downstairs and seen in the darkness her dog standing in the living room- for surely, he had gotten the door open- his blackness a deeper and smoother blackness than the one that was staging the night, tail wagging in excitement at first sight of her, and panting over the body of the widow’s husband.
The problem then became apparent very quickly, and she developed a deep sympathy for her widowed neighbor upon discovering that, really, just as she had been foretold, the corpse would not cease to talk. She tried to remember if he had been this loquacious in life, but she really could not as she had avoided her neighbors as much and as often as she could, in the fear that they may turn out to be an exceedingly verbose set. So, she could not let her dog get into trouble for exhuming a corpse from the cemetery, but she could not continue to live with its monologues either so, she would either have to give him back to the widow or bury him herself in her yard like she had done all the other times. Still, the dog’s behavior was escalating, and she worried what he would bring home next if she continued to cover up the evidence of his pastimes.
She asked the corpse what he thought:
“It’s fine, really- whatever you want.”
“I don’t really want anything.”
“Mhhm.”
They looked each other over for a moment.
“Well, look, I understand your issue with turning me back over to my wife, so if you’d like to just bury me in the garden then, that’s fine with me”
“I would prefer that, actually.”
“Great- then, that’s great with me.”
And the next day when the widow burst through her door lamenting over her husband’s missing body, he had remained silent in the kitchen where she had propped him until the widow had completed her tragic monologue and left once again, in tears.
“I kept quiet, you see-”
“Mmhmm,”
“-because otherwise she would have known it was me, and that I was just here-”
“Yeah,”
“-since we’re in this together and all.”
“Mhhm.”
And he had smiled and shot her a knowing look.
That day, however, she could not bury him because the dog had run out the gate once more and, worried about what he may return with this time, she had gone out to search for him and bring him home. She found him at the entrance to the cemetery, attempting to slip through a wider gap in the fence and put a stop to it, and walked him home enshrouded with a dangerous air of severity.
But the widow had attached herself to a chair at the front of the house and waited day and night for whoever to bring word of her husband’s whereabouts. She begun to fear leaving the house not just for the sake of being caught with the cadaver, but for becoming trapped in the storm of cries and monologue that rained perpetually upon her residence from the next-door.
“You could do it at night?”
But that was not better either as the widow would rise from her chair at sunset as if possessed and in her grief wander through the network of shrubbery barefoot and in a remarkable state. As the widow’s condition worsened, so did her own sense of guilt but consequent fear of being caught.
As a result, the corpse stayed, stayed, stayed in its position in the kitchen where it would ramble to itself without pause and call out to her, and she would take great pains not to reply and to move around the house as quietly as possible so as not to summon its attentions. Inevitably, however, she would be required to make her way to the kitchen to forage for her and the dog, and it was during one of these times that it would begin its work of persuasion:
“You know,”
“Mhmm.”
“I’ve been thinking about it-”
“Mmm.”
“I don’t have much company here, and it’s been really stressful not being buried... I-I’m just very stressed.”
“Yeah.”
“And I can hear the wife’s been going around and I just, God, I just miss her fiercely. And awfully,”
“Mmhmm,”
“It would just be lovely to have some more company while you’re handling all this- I imagine this must be quite difficult for you as well.”
“Mmm.”
“So maybe you could stop by and spend some time more often,”
“Ye-es, maybe. I do have a lot of work as of now.”
“I see.”
“Sorry.”
“Yes, no, I understand. It’s just a bit funny to me though, seeing as how this whole situation is mostly your fault.”
“Sorry?”
“In fact, it is your fault.”
“Dog brought you in- I didn’t tell him to.”
“Yes, and it’s your responsibility as a pet owner to keep your dog on a stricter leash, so to speak.”
“Sure- I am sorry about all of this.”
“And now, to just spend all day alone, I mean- have I done anything to deserve this?”
“Well, you’d be alone at the graveyard too, to be fair.”
“That’s really not the point, is it?”
“Well, what is the point, then?”
“That it’s your fault and you won’t do anything to offer me even a shred of comfort at this dark hour! I’M DEAD. I died- do you have any idea how that feels?”
“No.”
“NO. You do not. And yet when Dog dragged me in here, I really thought there might be a silver lining to all of this- that you and I were finally going to get to spend some time alone together-”
“I see.”
“-and yet you’ve been nothing but cold to all my displays of interest in you.”
“Mmhmm.”
“I may be dead but I’m still a man. I hear how you refer to me when you talk to yourself and Dog, as IT. ‘IT’s starting to smell’ or ‘I just can’t go in there and face IT’. What do you expect from me?”
“Mm.”
“I’m going through this, too; I want to be comforted, too, you know.”
“Mm.”
“I thought you might spend time with me, and I might have the chance to tell you, well how beautiful I’ve always thought you were.”
“Mm.”
“I think you owe me a great deal-”
“Mm.”
“-and the fact that I’ve been here quiet and cooperating when I could have yelled out anytime for my wife to come collect me is… I don’t know, it’s pretty generous of me, don’t you think?”
“Mmhmm.”
And that was how they came to begin sleeping with each other, as she bought herself time to determine once and for all how to slip the body out unseen.
The corpse was determined for at least one tryst a day, and she obliged him at the threat of his screams calling attention out to his wife. At this point, given all the distress she could see she had caused the widow, she became more convinced of the severity of the action that would be taken against her, and she cried often and quietly- lest the corpse may hear her- trapped in the world between the kitchen and the widow’s outside dominion.
On the day that the widow finally discovered her husband’s corpse, she had been in the shower, washing off his decay, and had not heard the widow wander phantom-like inside, nor the cries and exclaims exchanged over the next several minutes between the couple.
“Darling, but you’re here!”
“Yes, dear-”
“How did this happen?”
“Well, dear-”
“Have you been here all along?”
“Well, yes, dear-”
“Has that… has that girl been keeping you here all along?”
“Ye-es. Yes, exactly, I could not escape.”
“Oh my God-”
“Yes, YES, she trapped me here- dug me up and brought me here herself. Kept me as a sex slave, darling, I mean, you can see nowadays I’m stiff all over-”
“I can’t believe this-”
“And it was agony being apart from you, dear. To have you so close, and yet-”
“Stop it-”
“I wanted to be with you more than anything and yet she threatened your very life should I make a sound-”
“I can’t believe it-”
“She said she would absolutely murder you-”
“Jesus-”
“-with a butcher’s knife, no less-”
“I’m in a terrible way-”
“-but I always knew you would come for me, eventually. Nothing, not even death, it seems, can part us.”
The widow struggled for a moment then tried to collect herself, but she was weak and flustered and she stumbled quite a bit as she pulled the knife from the drawer and made her way upstairs. She had expected herself to fly into some terrible rage and attack the girl in a great struggle, and she held this scene in her mind although it remained that she was much too spent to impress in physical display. She opened the door to the girl’s room and found her half-dressed and surprised to see her, at first, but then watched the surprise turn into terror as she made the realizations and caught sight of the knife in the widow’s grasp. She did not put up a fight against her.
“Do you have any last requests then?”
“I suppose not.”
“Alright then-”
“But, oh no. Actually-”
“Yes, have out with it.”
“Dog’s snuck out again without me noticing, could you take care of him when he comes back? He can be a bit of a nuisance sometimes but-”
“Yes, that’s fine.”
“Would you?”
“Yes, very well, I like Dog very much.”
“That’s great, thank you.”
“Alright, then-”
“Oh, and also-”
“Yes, yes?”
“Could you bury me in the back garden?”
“Just out there? Are you sure?”
“Yes. Please.”
“That’s just as well. I probably would have had to anyhow.”
“Alright.”
“That’s it then?”
“Yes.”
“Very well. Thank you for making this easier for me.”
“And thank you.”
