Games of the Dead and Dying
I drove my truck back to the home. My home. The funeral business ran out of the basement. I figured Mrs Anderson had a few days, tops. That Mr Anderson was a weenie. She always said so, when we was stuck between her calico sheets. I’d talk him into sending his wife off in style.
My basement had been empty for a month.Them two other jack legs in town stole people who rightfully belonged to me. Old McSweeney beat me to that monster of a wreck out Highway Nine. Five people died, and he claimed every one by the time I got there.
Him and his dumb ass name. McSweeney’s Palace of Eternal Rest. I don’t understand why people try to dress up death with flowers and perfume and visions of the happy hereafter. It’s all going to rot in the end.
And, that other one, that I-talian, he charges everybody for services he don’t even do. Why, I once saw him switch out a fancy casket for a pine box right there at the hole. I think he sold that casket a dozen times. Swindles them all, right when they’re the most vulnerable.
They deserved to be toyed with in the worst way. Both of them.
I grabbed my jug and headed back out to the ambulance. Squealed out of my driveway, my siren blaring all through town. Past Old McSweeney. I gave that I-talian the finger for good measure.
They jumped in their ambulances and followed me, hoping for at least one corpse at the end of the chase. That I-talian even rammed my back bumper one time as we shot over the hill out of town. I floored the gas and left them in the dust. Whatever my business woes, I always had the best ride.
When they caught up to me, I was sitting down by the river. Slugging moonshine out of a jam jar and watching the light dance on the water.
If nobody would cooperate and die, at least we undertakers had our games we liked to play.
Welcome to The Undertaker Series, a set of stories inspired by my father. He told me a story late one night, on our trip to Tennessee. If this is your first visit, please click here to go back to the beginning.
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