On The Subject Of Funerals, Part 4: End Game.

I mentally braced myself through the drive back to the graveyard for whatever lie ahead. I didn’t care what I faced, I didn’t care if Mrs. Carol had moved on to another location, I didn’t even care if I survived this mess... I just needed to know that the others got out alright. After that, well.... We’ll see what the night holds, I told myself grimly.

The ride seemed like it was taking no time at all, even though when I looked at the tiny clock on Jim’s outdated radio a full half of an hour had gone by. A glint of light reflected off of the gun next to me caught my attention for a moment. I reached out and fondly stroked the revolver sitting on the seat next to me as I drove, feeling the cold steel and simple strength course through it to my hand. It almost seemed like it was imbueing me with power... The power to move on, the power to end Mrs. Carol. The power to end it all.

I looked up from the gun just in time to slam on the brakes.

The old lady had wandered in to the middle of the highway, seemingly lost and unperturbed by the near accident. I waited for her to pass by in front of me, impatiently drumming my hand on the steering wheel as she slowly shambled by. After waiting for a full minute, I started to get an uneasy feeling in my gut, and my reptilian brain shouted at me (in no uncertain terms) to run her the fuck over and keep moving.

When she got closer to the driver’s side of the truck, I got a closer look. Her hair seemed to be sticking out in multiple directions, her shawl was disheveled and trailing from her like a cape, and perhaps most alarming of all, she seemed to have no indication whatsoever of her surroundings. The uneasiness in my gut rising, I honked my horn at her, hoping to alert her to the fact that she was in the middle of the highway, with... wait, where are the other cars? The highway was too quiet, and now that I thought of it, no cars had passed me by or even been on the other side of the road that I can recall. 

“This can’t be good,” I said out loud to no one in particular. The stress of everything, of losing Lilly and Jim, and now my growing unease with this unfortunate looking woman was making my stomache tie itself in knots at this point. Thinking it might help ease my tension a bit, I pulled a cigarette from my pack on the dashboard and lit it. The nicotine took hold once more, easing the headache I previously didn’t realize I had and gladly restoring the numbness to my hands.

I only got three drags off of the cigarette before I noticed the seemingly drunken old lady had dissappeared. I looked left and right, hoping to catch a glimpse of her on one side of the street or the other, to no avail. She was simply... gone. I added another knot to the collection my stomache was trying to accrue and took another drag. I was afraid of driving forward; what if she had fallen? Only one way to find out, I told myself calmly.

The truck reversed slowly, afraid as I was to hit or possibly injure the lady. I scanned the area around the front of the truck as I went, hoping to catch a glimpse of her dressing gown or shawl or anything relevant, but saw nothing. After backing up twenty or thirty feet (I never was good at distances), I took one last look around and, still seeing nothing, put the truck in drive and sped forward.

BANG.

The sound came from the bed of the truck as before. And this time, I didn’t question it. Pitching the cigarette, I reached for the gun sitting next to me. Bravado, that dumb sunuvabitch that’s led too many people to their graves, dictated my actions from this point. I pointed the gun over my shoulder, slammed on the brakes yet again, and double-tapped the trigger.

BLAM! BLAM!

The sound was deafening, and for a moment I thought I had permanently lost my hearing. I dropped the gun immediately, clapped my left hand to my hurt ear and howled in pain as the truck sat idling in the middle of the deserted highway. The pain lasted what seemed to be a near infinite amount of time, the thought of the old lady completely lost at the moment.

After a minute or two, I managed to pull my hand free of my ear, and I was startled to find my palm covered in bright red blood. Great, I thought, I’ve gone and blown out my fucking eardrum. Then a rattling sound from the trunk pulled me from my thoughts and brought me entirely back to reality. I hastily wiped my bloodied hand on the back of the seat next to me and undid my seatbelt, grabbed my (Jim’s, I thought briefly) gun, and jumped out of the truck.

It was the old lady, like I thought, sprawled out in the bed of the truck and writhing in agony. Her entire head was matted with a dark, viscous fluid that I guessed passed for blood. Perhaps it congealed, I wondered to myself while looking her over for any other damage. Then I saw it: Two large bullet holes, one on top of the other, going directly through her left eyebrow. And she was still fucking moving.

I backed off from the truck slowly, all thoughts of bravado and action movie heroism gone from my head. I turned to puke again, but accomplished nothing but dry heaves. It was then that I realized somewhere in the back of my mind that I hadn’t eaten since breakfast that morning, and what little there was in my stomache had been left artfully plastered on the lawn in the cemetary. My stomache and nerves didn’t know or even seem to care, though. They kept doing what they wanted, consequences be damned.

The dry heaves lasted longer than expected, notbeing helped at all by the miserable moaning recently added to the writhing sounds coming from the truck bed. After a few more minutes I (finally) stopped, gasping for breath and slowly pulling myself to my feet. The gun was still on the ground where I left it when I fell to my knees; I decided to leave it there for the time being and concentrate on one thing at a time. Then the noise died away all at once.

I peeked back over the side of the truck bed and had to do a double-take.

She was gone. In her place was a dress and a shawl, filled with a roughly-old-lady-sized pile of ash-like granules. The granules intrigued and repulsed me, and almost instinctively I reached out my right hand and stroked the top of the nearest pile. It felt almost like engorged sand with an airier quality, and had the delightful aroma of ten week old meat left in the Louisiana sun. If I hadn’t just been sick, this would’ve been the kicker. 

Another thing caught my attention, too, when I looked over the pile again: Bits of flesh were left. It was not much, and certainly nothing large enough to even be considered “parts”, but they were there. Perhaps they were contributing to the aroma too? I pushed the thought out of my head before it took hold and forced another set of dry heaves on me. Too much today, come back tomorrow when the holding tank’s full again, I thought satirically.

After looking over the piles again, I found myself with a limitless amount of unanswered questions going around my head until it seemed fit to burst. I decided to put them off and simply go forward, and hopefully the questions will answer themselves with time. I was almost always the one with the patience. The questions can wait.

To busy myself from the thoughts in my head I laboriously lowered the tailgate. I didn’t have a broom on hand, but hopefully jetting forward with an open tailgate on an open highway would do a decent enough job in lieu. As I turned around to head back to the cab, my foot brushed the revolver on the ground, reminding me to pick it up. I set it delicately back on the seat next to me as I climbed in to the driver’s seat. One crank of the engine later and I was back on my way.

The rest of the trip went by relatively fast compared to the first half. My head was still occupied by questions, and with no one else on the road, I was free to put my driving on autopilot and do some much needed contemplation on the matter at hand. I started with making a mental checklist of questions surrounding the situation:

A, Is Mrs. Carol dead or alive? And if dead, why is she moving and killing people?

B, Who was that old lady, why did she suddenly go “Buffy” on me when I shot her, and was she already dead too?

And most importantly, C: Where the holy fuck is everyone else? I don’t even see police cars out and about, which is fairly scary on it’s own.

And as I thought of those questions, I realized with a fatally re-emerging sense of dread that I had been sitting in the cemetary’s parking lot for a few minutes now, with my headlights on and the engine running. So much for the element of surprise.

Damned autopilot.

I steadied myself against the steering wheel as I turned off the engine, taking deep breaths and trying like all hell to stop the shakes before their inevitable return. The wheel provided no comfort, and in near desperation I found myself reliving Jim’s words to me hours ago: Just calm down, baby. That seemed to work, and though I still felt two seconds away from a full-blown panic attack again, I felt my hands ease up from their white-knuckled grip on the molded foam. I slowly clenched and unclenched my hands in front of me, easing the tension and using the time to build myself up for what lies ahead.

After what seemed like another century, I ran my hand to the revolver next to me and found the grip, picking it up and feeling the reassuring weight once again. Strength and Power, I told myself over and over, mingling in with Jim’s words of comfort in my mind. I pushed the gun slowly in to my pants pocket, careful not to catch the trigger in the process, and swung open the truck’s door to enter the humid night. A rattling in the bottom of the door brought a stroke of revelation, and I hurriedly grabbed the Mag-Lite from his small holding area down there, not knowing if I’d need it but knowing it wouldn’t hurt.

Now I’m ready, I told myself Now I’m ready for the end game.

I strode forward, relying on my memory to guide me to the semi-secluded spot where Mrs. Carol was supposed to lay forever, checking the ground as I went for any signs of blood or a struggle or something. Instead, I found absolutely nothing. No bent grass, no blood pools, not even a dismembered finger to guide my path or provide hints of what happened in my absence. Nothing whatsoever. Which, naturally, only seemed to deepen the ever-growing sense of dread taking over my entire being.

I eventually reached Mrs. Carol’s grave site, still set up for her graveside service, with the chairs for the immediate family still arranged in a neat row and the Minister’s well-worn Bible sitting on top of the seat closest to where the struggle had taken place. I didn’t see the minister anywhere, though, and in my mind’s eye I saw the minister set the bible down as he walked to the group of people surrounding Jim and I when I first saw Mrs. Carol’s return. He probably ran for it when he saw the mayhem, I rationalized to myself. I shrugged internally, decided it made sense, then moved on.

I hadn’t taken more than two steps when I saw, just beyond the horridly bright green felt laid down on the ground, what I had been looking for. Mrs. Carol. Or, rather, her purple dress and the few assorted “parts” that hadn’t managed to disintegrate yet.

 They seemed a jumble of ash-like granules and slime-ridden bits that wouldn’t make sense to anyone but those who knew of their true origins, all strewn on the ground before me with small condolence to any rhyme or reason, unlike the old lady earlier. I pulled the gun out of my pocket and bent down to inspect the remains, prodding piles of ash with my foot and pushing bits with the gun, until I found the biggest part of her I think I was going to find at that point: her eye. Prodding from the gun separated it from the pile of ash rather quickly. 

Once separated, I looked down at it, and rather quickly noticed the back of the eye slowly starting to crumble into more of the ashy granules. I crouched down and watched it dissolve, from the back at first, then crab walked around and looked at it from the front. I looked deep, not expecting anything but secretly hoping in the last seconds I had left to find something. Answers, mostly. An answer to the madness, an answer to the litany of questions resurfacing in my head, an answer for everything that has happened to me in the last twenty-four hours.

I found it.

I wasn’t ready for it.

Idontwantitidontwantitidontwantitidontwantitidontwantitidontwantit

idontwantitidontwantitidontwantitidontwantitidontwantitidontwantit

idontwantitidontwantitidontwantitidontwantitidontwantitidontwantit

I felt tears begin to well up suddenly at the magnitude of what I saw. Before I knew what I was doing, I felt my hand grip the gun tighter and work the muzzle up slowly to the soft underside of my jaw. The barrel felt warm on my sk

-Fin.

Reflections From a Quiet Room, A Poem

As the quiet surrounds me
In this small room,
My Inner Serenity
Begins to bloom.

My thoughts turn inward
To while 'way the night
Many hours ahead
Even after the light.

But there is another
Side to this tale
That of a man
Feeling fated to fail.

What makes me afraid,
So precious and pure,
Is the thought of losing
My feral allure.

I once was a man
Too hated by few
And as the years passed,
My handsomeness grew.

But now I feel old
and though I still know
My years are yet few
I take it as blow

To see those who flocked
And frollicked with me
In years soon passed
Have forgotten of me

The friends who called
For me to return
Now see set to fit
My image'theirs burn

And I love my new life
And all those I know
From my gorgeous true wife
To my friends now in tow

But still I feel that
Those I once knew
Will forget me more
With memories new

To the point where I,
A faded old man
of a jaded Twenty-Eight
Am not part of the plan.

And those I've impressed
And those I've appalled
And those I've distressed
Will forget me, all.

Is there a way back?
I've yet to find one,
But I know this one fact,
I'm pretty much done.

My wife brings me strength
And to her I'll stay true
And a life lived without
I shall never rue.

I've had my fun,
I've had my thrills,
I've loved many people,
In suits and frills.

My family true,
Both blood and without,
Will be in my heart,
 'Till the days run out.

I shall never forget thee,
My friends of old,
But it's time to move on,
(If I may be so bold).

So as I mourn
The days long passed,
One thing left to say:
With you, I've felt blessed.

Childhood Memories, A Poem

Hatred courses through me
Like the California Wildfires.
The taint of reading
About the children's suicide
And the Pain they've endured
Flashes me back
To the days of my own
Suffering and humiliation.

The times were less then,
The days seemed shorter
And the hatred infinite.
The children drew their power
From my naivete
And turned it all back on me,
Whisper campaigns
In the old child's way
Following me like flies,
Constantly buzzing
And tearing my attention
Away from those
Who deserved it most.

These harsh words,
About my size
And about my preference,
Were wolves of grammar,
Gnawing at my
Pride and self-esteem,
Until nothing else
Was left in my place
But an insecure child
Frightened to be outside
Or communicate with others.

My friends were my toys,
Bits of plastic
Imbued with thoughts
And feelings and souls,
Entire communities of them
Existing purely
On the power of
My imagination.
I was a superhero,
A god manipulating
The good guys
Into confrontations
Where the bad guys
Always suffered as I had,
And the heroes
Always saved the day.

On particularly bad days
The villains would die,
Limbs rent from
The injection molding
And sent flying,
Old toys meeting their end
And making way
For a new input group.
The life cycle was short
And replacements
Were a beg away.

But when I would leave
The pain would return,
And a turn of the corner
Would bring my happiness
Crashing down.
The neighbourhood kids,
Intimidated by intelligence
And frustrated
By unimaginative lives
Would torment me
And humiliate me
And turn my life
Back in to
The hellish world
I frequently knew.

I see a new generation
Coming up as I had
And feeling the pain
As I have felt.
I want to reach out to them
And guide them
As I wished to be guided
Or give them
The tools that helped me
Endure the pain.
But I can't.
This type of pain,
As I know from experience,
Is a personal matter,
And learning to live
With what they've done
Is a part
Of growing up strong.

Some people can not.
Some people have seen
And felt too much
And in their eyes
Life is pain
And death is the excess
They've been longing for
So they indulge.
I can not nor will not
Hate or judge them.
The people who drove them
To their untimely graves
Need to suffer
As we have suffered.

And once more
I am reminded of
The ineffectual concept
Of Karma
And how "What goes around
Comes around"
And realize
These bullies and their ilk
Get what they want
One-hundred percent
Of the time.
And I weep for the future
Of not just America
But the world.
For in seeing what I know
Is coming of age
I know of our
Downward Destiny.

On The Subject Of Funerals, Part 3: Going Down.

It took a minute or two for my breathing to slow down enough to talk. By that time, we were already on the highway, doing 70 miles per hour in a 45 zone. In retrospect, I'm amazed we weren't pulled over.

I thought of the situation back at the graveyard. Was everyone okay? I know Lilly and Vincent were dead, but did anyone else survive the onslaught? I felt immeasurably sick to my stomach, and I think this time it had nothing to do with being concussed. My guilty conscience at running away from the massacre was tugging at me, telling me in no uncertain terms...

"We have to go back..." I started, but Jim cut me off before I could start to explain.

"Like hell. Did you see that? She tore Vincent's fucking head off!"

"And it's still in the bed of the truck, yes I know!" I contested hotly, "But the fact of the matter is we need to stop that... that... whatever that's doing it! We need to make sure everyone else is okay! And we need to get a policeman or a SWAT team or something!"

"And why exactly would we have to go back there for that?" He countered. He was already on his third cigarette since leaving the cemetary. I couldn't smoke, my hands were shaking too badly.

"I don't know, I just... I just know it. We have to go back, baby," I added calmly. The shaking had spread from my hands to the rest of my body by the time I had finished talking, and it was all I could do to keep myself from throwing up again out of fear. Still, I have a pretty good sense of right and wrong, and I knew, in this instance, that I was right.

Jim was quiet for a minute, concentrating on maintaining his hellish speed, until he finally slowed down and pulled off to the side of the highway right in front of a grocery store.

"Are you sure, baby?" He asked in an ominous tone, staring at me with a face that registered both fear and anxiety. “I want you to think really hard about this, and tell me it’s the right thing to do.”

Lilly and Vincent dead. Mrs. Carol back from the dead, killing en masse. A whole funeral’s worth of possible casualties. Run away. For fuck’s sake, tell him to step on it and never turn back around again. Tell him to grab his stuff and we’ll move to Samoa or Fiji or somewhere! Just don’t say...

"Yes," I replied with certainty.

Idiot.

"Then we'll need supplies. You mind if we make a stop by my place?" he asked.

"Ummm... What?"

"I am not going anywhere near that thing without packing something, and I'd feel a lot better if you were packing too, baby. I've got a few guns my dad left me in his will with the ammo for 'em and a machete in the garage. Which one you want?" he added quickly with a glance in my direction.

I paused, the prospect of using a weapon turning over in my mind. I’ve never fired a gun before, but I was pretty sure I could at least point it in the right direction if needed. But a machete? I knew how to handle a big knife well (being raised by a professional chef will do that to you), and even though I was scared shitless about having to use it, I preferred the devil I know.

I turned to Jim, still shaking so much I was practically vibrating with fear, and said, “Machete.”

He nodded curtly, pulled back into the travel lane, and floored it to his house. Ten minutes later we got there.

He took the shortcut in, squealing around corners and barely missing the cars parked along the side of the road. He even gave his elderly neighbour down the street quite a turn, almost running her over and causing her to curse at us in a choked voice as we sped past. The last I saw of her was a middle finger in the rear-view mirror.

Jim was already unbuckled by the time we got in his driveway, and he dashed off without saying a single word to me. I hastily hit his garage door opener a split-second later, and waited patiently for the archaic machine to spring to life and let me inside. In the meantime, I looked around Jim’s yard; he had spent an awful lot of time out here, planting shrubs and meticulously edging and trimming his yard. The man lived for working outside, and it certainly showed.

At last the garage door went up enough for me to enter, and I did so rapidly, keeping my eyes peeled for any sign of the afore-mentioned machete. I spied books (many of which were so peeled and faded from years outdoors that you couldn’t tell what they were from the cover), old issues of home improvement magazines, tools and machines, and at last, a tactical machete sitting on a shelf above the washer. It was high up, but one of the boxes of faded books proved to be all the stepladder I needed to fetch it down. 

As I felt the cool plastic handle in my hand, I heard an extremely loud noise that sounded like two pieces of wood being slapped together. And at that exact moment, what little colour I had left in my face drained. I know that sound. Oh please dear God don’t let it be what I think it is. My feet started to move me without my consent, running through the door in the back of the garage into the living room.

Nothing there.

I tried the living room (“Jim?”), the kitchen (“Baby, where are you?”), the dining room (“BABY?!”), the guest bedroom (“JIM?!”), and the hall bathroom (“ANSWER ME, GOD DAMN IT!”), and found nothing out of sorts. 

It was when I took my first step in to the master bedroom that I knew what happened. The master bathroom light was on. He never left the lights on, and was meticulous about that fact. A sense of cold dread swept over me as I stole in to his bedroom, creeping past the bed that we shared, past the dresser I picked out, and past the closet full of the clothes that still smelled like him. Creeping to the door to the bathroom. I peeked my head around the corner and almost collapsed on the spot.

Jim was in the bathtub with the clear curtain liner drawn. You could still see the fragments of his skull sliding down the tile behind it.

I fled from the room as fast as I could, blindly running in to things along the way, until I managed to make it to the living room. I finally collapsed on to the couch and drew myself up in to a ball as the tears started.

******      ******      ******      ******      ******      ******

Day faded to night as I lay there on the couch. In my head I was recounting the times Jim and I had jostled with each other for the mirror in the bathroom, the times we would make dinner for one another (I did most of the cooking, but the man was a genius when it came to grilling and steaks), even the times we were making love. And that’s what it all boiled down to: I loved him. I had been vehemently opposed to telling him before, but I did. And now I couldn’t.

I don’t know how much later it was that I got myself off of the couch. I slowly approached the master bedroom again, taking care to look for anything out of place. Nothing was wrong in the room itself, aside from an open shoebox on his bed still housing one of the guns and two boxes of ammunition. I turned away from it and went to the closet. And as I closed it, I felt my guts wrench even more. Too painful, too soon. 

Also, too necessary.

I moved on to the bathroom and braced myself.

The bathtub was the same as I left it, with Jim’s corpse huddled in the corner opposite the tap and surrounded by the curtain liner (presumably so as not to have left a mess behind himself). I looked around the bathroom for any sign, anything he might have left me to tell me why. I needed closure, almost craved it at this point. As I turned around, I found what I was looking for: a hastily scribbled note sitting on the counter by the sink. I picked it up and read:

“Thomas,

I didn’t do this to hurt you, baby. I did this because I can’t deal with this shit. I can’t deal with dead people walking, and I can’t bring myself to kill someone. Take the guns and run away, baby. Go. Save yourself. I’m saving me.

I love you. Have since the moment I met you, and will forever in heaven.

-Jim Hollister”

I set the tear-stained note back down where I found it and slid to the floor, my back braced against the sink cabinet. I hated myself right now, more than I ever have or thought I ever would. I killed Jim, I thought. I pushed him in to going back to the graveyard, and he couldn’t cope. Jim was my life, he was everything I’ve lived for since the divorce and the coming out to my parents, and this is how I repay him? I’m not worthy of his love.

Despondant, pissed off, confused, and miserable, I lifted myself from the floor. Misery and fury coursed through my veins, and (at least in my mind’s eye) I heard the most peculiar sound...

Snap.

I strode to the shower, threw open the curtain, and picked up the gun from the bottom where it had fallen out of Jim’s hand. After wiping the gun off with a hand towel, I closed the curtain for the last time, grabbed the box off the bed, and made my way back through the house, closing doors and turning off lights as I went. By the time I got to the garage door (shoving the machete in my pants as I got there), It was so dark I couldn’t see my hand in front of my face.

The truck turned over obligingly as I cranked it. I pulled out the driveway, put the truck in drive, and sped off to meet my death.

On The Subject Of Funerals, Part 2: Waking Up.

The sound of Jim's worried voice hit my ears before consciousness fully returned.

"Thomas?! Baby, are you okay? Please wake up...." It sounded like he was extremely worried. My eyes opened a fraction to see Jim knelt down besides my prone body, a handful of tears rolling down his cheeks and worry evident on his face. I opened my mouth in an effort to reassure him that I was okay, but all I managed was a drawn out grunt. That seemed to be enough for Jim.

"Thomas, oh my fuckin' god! I was so worried..." he trailed off. "What happened? Are you okay?" He added hurriedly. I groaned again in response. That seemed to be my thing lately.

Jim went to pick me up in his arms, but a new voice entered, stage right, and said "Don't move him yet, I want to check him out first and make sure he's okay to get up."

I rolled my head to the source of the new voice, and saw one of the younger pallbearers that I didn't want to know kneel down next to me and promptly pull a penlight from inside his jacket. Apparently there was a doctor in the house. I closed my eyes and chuckled at my own joke, then slowly made the effort to open my eyes fully and investigate the world around me.

There was a circle of people surrounding Jim, the doctor and I, most with worried faces. Those that weren't seemed amused by the situation, and although I felt my anger flare a bit, I took it in stride externally. Never let them see you sweat, as the old expression went. I looked around and saw Lilly, Vincent, Mrs. Carol, the other pallbearers, the minister, and a few others looking down... at...

I double-took, and indeed there she was, in all her glory, wearing the purple dress she wore to Vincent's wedding 2 years ago and looking like hell. Her eyes were sunken in from their normal position, and she was definately more pale than I had ever seen her in life. But still, she was there, with a look on her face that I couldn't quite pinpoint. I pointed a finger at her and began to stammer, but Jim cut me off before I could scream or manage anything coherent.

"What are you pointing at?" He asked in a fairly hushed voice, following the line of my finger until he saw what I was pointing to.

The moment I saw Mrs. Carol reflected in his brown eyes, I saw something that will haunt me until the end of my days: Jim, the man that's not scared of a single thing in this world, my rock in a sea of turmoil, went as white as a ghost. He too started staring and stammering at Mrs. Carol, finally managing to mutter the word, "How?" several times in succession.

The pair of us making what was evidently a scene had started to cause a bit of an uproar in the crowd around us. Those nearest us, the doctor included, looked around wildly, trying to identify what the source of the problem was. Lilly was the first after Jim and I to catch on. Her face scanned the crowd like everyone else, shock and concern plastered across her thin face, until she spotted her mother.

Her face lit up as soon as she comprehended what she saw. Lilly then squealed loudly, tears pouring down her alabaster cheeks, and ran to her mother in a manner reminiscient of a small child who had lost their parent (which, I reflected, she had). She threw her arms around Mrs. Carol haphazardly and hugged her rather tightly as one might have expected.

Mrs. Carol seemed to not notice Lilly at all at first, still facing me with that disconcerting look that almost seemed like... Was that hunger? Or anger? Or longing? I shook my head violently, inducing a wave of dizziness and nausea as I did so.

The dizziness went away after a moment, but the nausea didn't. I hurriedly threw my head to the side just in time to vomit on the ground between me and Vincent, whom jumped back out of reflex and bumped into the woman behind him. The woman, in turn, hit Vincent around the head with her suitcase of a purse and cursed vehemently at him in mangled spanglish, prompting a brief apology from him and a whithering look at me.

The nausea passed after another moment, but the fear and paranoia of another wave stuck with me. I held my head to the side while enduring the acrid stench of my own sick, letting the aftershock wave roll over me before I attempted to sit upright and figure out what in the hell was going on. My head spun from the fumes, and I felt another lurch come up from stomach as the smell fully hit me. Mercifully it didn't come.

Jim had partly diverted his attention from Mrs. Carol to me, crouching over me in a half-way defensive position while rubbing my neck slowly to help ward off another bout of vomiting. He was still staring at the recently deceased with a wary face; like me, he obviously didn't trust what he saw in the situation. Something wasn't right, and he wanted to make sure I was safe and taken care of before anything else. My protector.

I looked up and realized that Mrs. Carol had finally noticed Lilly, and had embraced her back. She was even crying as she buried her face into the curve of Lilly's neck. Upon later contemplation, I even think it was morbidly artful the way both of their tears mingled with the outpouring of blood coming from the area where Mrs. Carol's face met Lilly's flesh.

Lilly gasped and tried to pull away. Mrs. Carol wouldn't let her.

Lilly's struggles were causing her more pain, as Mrs. Carol still had her teeth embedded deep in Lilly's neck. She was chewing and gnawing like an old man who had only recently remembered how to eat and was determined to be sated. Lilly audibly cried out, sobbing at first, then screaming at the top of her lungs. A piercing sound.

Most people nearby whom had formed around me and Jim had by now excitedly turned to Lilly and her mother, expecting to see a tearful reunion. Instead, they stood transfixed by the grotesquery before them, not sure of what was going on, most being too cautious to approach or intervene.

"HELP ME!!!" Lilly cried out at the top of her lungs, but the sound was wet, as though being forced through a glass of milk. "PLEASE SOMEBODY HELP ME GOD DAMMIT!!!"

Vincent was the first to step in, running around Jim and I and trying to forcibly seperate the two before being thrown backward single-handedly (!) by Mrs. Carol. Lilly's screams had at this point fully devolved in to gurgles as more and more of her neck and throat were devoured. Jim hurriedly stood up, grabbing me by my shoulders and forcing me to my feet.

"We have to get out of here," he said in a low, urgent voice that only I could hear. "Can you walk, baby?"
"Yeah, I think so," I replied, still not taking my eyes off the slaughter, and took one tentative step in the direction of Jim's truck. Thankfully I found my weight supported me, and took another, all the while being supported by Jim and his farmer's strength.

We made our way to the truck slowly, winding around the onlookers in our path with the pretense of needing to get me to the hospital. It didn't take long, and as soon as we climbed inside the cabin, I pulled out my phone and dialed the three numbers we all know by heart while Jim lit two cigarettes and handed me one.

"911, please state your emergency," came the bored voice on the other end of the line.

"Yeah, my name's Thomas Black and I'm at the Requiem Gardens Cemetary in Metairie, and I'd like to report what I think is a murder!" I blurted out rather quickly.

"Hold on, sir, you think it's a murder?" came the operator in a voice that suggested she couldn't care less if World War Three had broken out here today, just so long as she got her paycheck.

"Uh..." I trailed, "Yeah. I know this is going to sound wierd but please follow me. My ex-mother-in-law, whom we had just had a funeral for, got out of her coffin and is eating my ex-wife's neck while everyone is standing around and staring.... That's murder, right?" I added almost childishly. On second thought, yeah, I really didn't think this out.

I pulled a drag on the cigarette Jim had handed me while I sat through a thoroughly stunned silence on the other end of the phone. Eventually I heard the telltale clicking of a keyboard being worked furiously, followed by the sound of multiple people in the background snickering.

At this point, my temper started to flare a bit, and I added, "You do believe me right?" in a serious tone.

More snickering. And finally, my anger broke.

"Listen here, you stupid fucking bitch," I started, causing Jim to look my way with a mixture of awe and solemnity, "I just witnessed my ex-wife have her neck turned into fucking kibble by a dead fucking woman and all you're gonna do is call your stupid-ass dumb-fucking coworkers and laugh at me like I'm some crazy fucking transient making a god damn crank call?!"

"Whoa, baby," Jim said out of the corner of his mouth, his eyes still scanning the graveyard in front of him in case the carnage spilled our way.

The laughter at the other end of the phone stopped almost as soon as the last syllable left my mouth. Apparently I had been put on speakerphone without my knowledge or previous consent. Before I could press that advantage, though, a new voice entered my phone.

"Sir, I don't like that tone you're taking with my operator, and I would appreciate it if you'd apologise to her right now or hang up the phone and take your damned fib elsewhere," came a deep voice that I presumed to be the supervisor. I opted for the latter choice.

"What are we gonna do, Jim?" I asked after roughly shoving the phone in my pocket, "Do you want to stay here and try to stop her or do you wanna bail and try and find an actual policeman to..."

BANG.

"What the fuck?" I half-screamed. Jim cautiously craned his head around to see the bed of the truck, where the sound had eminated from. Almost instantly he shot back around, put the keys in the ignition, and tried like hell to crank the engine up with the celerity of the gods.

"What was that?" I asked, afraid to turn around.

"........."

"Baby...?"

"Vincent's head."