Once again, we're switching formats, to a more story arc style. I have no idea how this story is going to go, as my original idea has already changed, and I won't tell you just yet what it is. I'm also not sure if there should be SF elements or if I should just "play it straight." It is a bit morbid, fair warning.
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Barry turned to Caddy’s dead body, asked her to “Keep watch, tell me if anyone comes.” Her slack jaw, hardly yokel in its rigor mortis, paused mid-chuckle. Once dead, she found everything Barry said funny. This would have chilled her, if she was in any position to care. Caddy rested against the fresh gravestone, customized for “Bernard Di Ciza.” The original plan involved this gravestone guarding Barry’s eternal repose. He’d picked out the plot in a fit of paranoia when power line radiation necessitated making longer-term plans for a shorter-term lifespan. Now, it served to back Caddy as she sat where he’d dropped her, and soon, she’d rest forever under the epitaph, “Here lies an honest man.” Well, zero-for-two ain’t bad.
The waning full moon illumined the graveyard, rows of irregular gravestones like neanderthal teeth, scattered across an ancient verdant plain. Nary a cloud threatened this night’s clarity. Barry somehow hoped for a dull rain to match his mood. Instead, he was stuck with this quite nice weather, cool enough that soon he’d be able to shed his jacket. He looked down at his friend, Ol’ Rusty. Oh, if only Ol’ Rusty could have been useful earlier, maybe this wouldn’t have come about. Barry thunked the old shovel blade-first, the grass parting like lips accepting a cigarette. Soon, the shovel tipped over, levering a thick dirt chunk out of the ground.
He heard the kids coming long before he saw them. “Thanks for the warning Cad.” Teenagers, no respect for the dead. Loud and clumsy and fumbling, and that was just walking into the graveyard. Barry weighed his choices. Not fun. When in
Barry slipped around behind his own gravestone (was there some sort of penalty for defiling your own grave?), to Caddy’s body, Caddy’s body succumbing to entropy already. Caddy’s trusting face, too trusting. Like an old fish, her cloudy eyes stared off towards the sky, towards the moon, towards wherever her soul looked down on Barry, about to further defile her. Without any hint of desire, he crouched down next to Caddy, whispering to her. “Oh baby.”
His left hand stroked her hair, matted with bits of bone where he’d shot her. He put the right hand up to her mouth, palm to lips, trying to quiet the screams he could already hear from her, feeling her cold lips, like a frozen worm in an ouroboros, forever consuming itself. Thank God, she wasn’t breathing. Oh God, she’s not breathing. Eyes still off somewhere, he tried thinking of baseball, of multiplication tables, of his grandparents, anything to make the moment go by quicker. Then, Barry, in an ironic twist, started to make out with his own hand, rather than the reverse.
His own lips ran cold against the back of his hand. At first, he closed his eyes, but as soon as he envisioned his own grandmother, Barry’s eyes shocked open. Confronted with Caddy, he couldn’t work with that. The next five minutes comprised an awful joke, his hand starting to warm Caddy’s face, even as he could feel the blood drain from his face, his head, far far away where it could ignore what was going on. His own breath, slipping through his nostrils, kept whispering to him, sweet nothings to a sweet nothing.
Their voices receded, much as his own mind seemed far far away. Maybe to the moon. Once he believed they had disappeared, Barry stood up, took several steps, vomited on Wilson Carpenter (1882-1961). He wiped his mouth with the heel of his right palm, looked down, vomited again. “Hope it was good for you baby.” Caddy tasted salty, sweaty, a little sweet even. Still tasted alive.
Barry got down on his knees, supplicant to the dead. Using Ol’ Rusty’s blade, he carved out square sod chunks, placed those aside to replace on top of the dirt later. Six feet deep he’d dig, six feet long, three feet wide. Eighteen sod squares, each about a foot to a side. The earth crumbled between his fingers, almost granular silk. Cool, as cool as Caddy’s lips just now felt. Earth to earth, ashes to ashes, dust to dust. What a burial service.
Barry stood up, dusted off his pants, then started digging. Pierce, lift, dump. Pierce, lift, dump. Caddy, back still to him, still sat, he presumed, watching the moon. Barry also looked up, watched, wondered what brought him to this point.
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