Funeral Home Short Story

I’ve always wanted to know what a funeral home really looks like, TV pretty much has it pegged but I just never really realized how boring a funeral home really is. I mean sure, the stench of death follows you everywhere you go and the eerie feeling of dead bodies waiting to be buried is still there but there isn’t a shady old guy working there or spiderwebs consuming the walls. In fact, it pretty much looked like a grandmother's house. Plastic covered furniture, wax flowers, and the lingering smell of mothballs are exactly what a funeral home is, and now I had the wonderful opportunity to see one first hand.

Because I’m dead.

Not in a figurative way either I mean I’m physically dead, deceased, pushing up daisies. Whatever way you want to put it is fine by me. It’s not like I have any say in it.

It’s a shame
really, only twenty-six and already six feet under, at least I will be at twelve o’clock on Wednesday at Parks cemetery, according to my information card tacked onto my coffin, and according to the card I died from intense trauma to the brain, but that’s a given when you’re ejected through a car windshield at seventy miles an hour.

I suppose deaths not that bad. Sure, it was a shock learning that I kicked the bucket but you get over it, just like everything in life. Ironically.

So here I was, staring at my lifeless corpse that was laying flat out in a swanky ebony coffin and it turns out that the corpse of your body looks basically like the alive version of yourself only slightly bloated and incredibly pale, but with the power of makeup and staples, even the most death like can be turned into a sleeping beauty. I turned away from my bloated corpse and tried to to collect my thoughts. One: I’m dead. two: I have no idea what’s going to happen, and three: being dead isn’t really as awful as people make it out to be.

Suddenly I realized that I finally posed the one thing I never had in life.

Nothing. No responsibilities, no worries, no fears, no nothing. Is that really a bad thing? I mean, I accomplished a lot in life, I don’t regret anything. So all in all, I’ve lived a pretty good life, so why not enjoy being dead? I strolled out of the funeral home and onto the street, watching people hurrying to places, passed through me, not even having the slightest idea they were passing through a dead girl. Amazing.

I walked past buildings and business, occasionally stopping in to rustle some paperwork or knock a couple of knick knacks off a shelf just to ruffle somebody's feathers. Not bad. I started to travel the failure trial to the apartment complex where I lived, or used. I finally stopped and swooped into the timeless brick building, the familiar smell of newspaper and incense greeted my nose and I climbed the old familiar staircase one final time, their timeless creaking was comforting. I let myself in and gazed in remembrance at the the final place of my living life. The place I had lived at for seven years, that housed not only myself but memories of birthdays, celebrations of graduation, and parties for old friends. Now it meant nothing to me anymore.

The white walls, cluttered with framed pictures of events and loved ones, the leaky sink that never properly shut off and would drive me crazy on nights I needed the most sleep, and the scratched wood floors that never really fit in. It all meant nothing anymore. If I could still feel and have emotions, I’m sure sadness would be running though me, or something like that way. Oh well.

After looking over a few things I wouldn’t see ever again I returned to the funeral home, since I really don't know where to go of what to do. Unlike Beetlejuice there was no Guide to the Recently Deceased, which would really come in handy right about now.

When I returned and I found out that they moved my coffin to a new location for the final burial preparations. I pulled down the box that held my possession off of the shelf that housed all their clients possessions that they wished to be buried with them and pulled out my wallet.

I pulled out the picture of me and my best friend Lucy, who, from what I heard through the wilted grapevine, had a tough time learning that I bit the dust but she's doing better. I traced the outline of my face, and glanced at my corpse.

My pink plump lips that once told stories and kept promises, were now shriveled and dry.
My hazel eyes that glistened with the thirst for life and never dying hope were now dull and lost without the zest that consumed them.

Talk about a bummer, am I right?

I tucked the picture back into my wallet and closed the box and stuck it back on the shelf. As soon as I placed it back in it’s rightful place, a sharp, searing pain shot through my hand, I clutched my hand, surprised that the deceased could still feel pain and more importantly, why I was feeling the stinging pain.

Tears welled in my eyes, which was another surprise. Shutting them, I fell to the floor, writhing in pain which was slowly engulfing my whole body by now. Suddenly it stopped just as soon as it started. I carefully opened my eyes and peered around. Darkness., That’s all I could see or feel, I failed my arms around and was surprised to hear the dull clang of metal, I kicked and thrashed till whatever I was in, opened a crack. All of a sudden a harsh light hit me in the face. I sat up straight, breathing heavily. I regained my bearings and realized I was sitting in a coffin.
Alive.

Of course.