Recapitulation: Grave digger Barry and grave robber Jenna have teamed up to further Jenna’s cause of self-enrichment. In a lead-up to a lucrative job, Barry has crafted a plan to take a dry run at the funeral home the day before to work out the kinks. However, his main goal is to force Jenna to confront the living as well as the dead, and perhaps change her course of action.
Viewed from the front, with naught but the lofty ceiling and wooden pews and the two of them walking slowly down the aisle, they might as well have been participants in a shotgun wedding. Barry half-dragged Jenna forward, her mind and body still trying to stay hidden in the back of the hall. Each laborious step, perhaps anticipating labor in six to seven months, brought them closer and closer to the child-man struck down far too early by fate’s cruel designs.
Viewed from behind, a horrible joke. Never should that many children attend a funeral, especially for a friend. Never should parents have to bury their child, especially a child twice as old as them, but still too young to shave. Never should morticians ply so young a child in order to present serenity to the world. Never, never, never, consigned to the everyday here.
White velvet lined the casket, a plush bedding. Inside, Jimmy lay peacefully, his overlarge eyes closed, sewn shut. They dressed him in a clean white t-shirt and blue jeans that had never seen dirt or stains or any other signs of life. Probably sneakers too, a fresh pair just popped from the box, still unlaced and with that new rubber scent.
“Open your eyes.” Barry nudged Jenna. “Look at him.”
Just because she stole from the dead and cried on command didn’t mean she lacked feelings. Jenna looked down at Jimmy, what used to be Jimmy. His bald head, the thin skin stretched across it, couldn’t hide the tracework veins that pathed across his scalp like a fresh leaf. The mouth, posed on the verge of a smile, shut off-center, a function of missing and malformed teeth. The paper-thin skin about his head and neck had been powdered and puffed by the morticians, working their morbid magics, making him look as if he’d been napping. His avian visage raised a strange longing in Barry’s heart; he knew this was just an empty vessel, yet still lamented that this boy, this child, should suffer misfortunes this severe.
“Let me go.”
“No. We’re going to sit down, sit through the funeral, and go to the burial. We have a test run to complete.” Barry took Jenna, all too willing to be led away from the half-casket. They picked a pew towards the back, so as not to block any of the children. Jenna shook free from Barry and sat down. A loud fart sound erupted outward. Jenna screamed. She reached down, pulled out a whoopee cushion.
“Oh God, I’m so sorry.” Willa rushed back. “Jimmy wanted me to plant the whoopee cushion, but I lost it. I’m so sorry.”
“It’s alright.” She handed over the deflated cushion, as flat as her confidence right now.
They sat in silence, waiting until the ceremony started. Barry wanted to ask her what she was thinking, but disrupting her thought process right now might send her into throwing up her shell.
“If you could all take your seats, we’ll begin soon.” Willa spoke at the podium. The children found their parents and sat down, another life’s lesson taught through abject example, seated in pews instead of wooden desks.
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