This is a short story I wrote for the Australian Writers' Centre's Furious Fiction competition in July. I'm not very comfortable with the self-promoting side of things, but if you'll allow me to indulge my ego for a second, I really like this story a lot and I'm very happy with the way it turned out. I think if I can find a way to expand it - even if it's just as a longer short story - then it would be pretty fun to elaborate on.
So anyway, here's an everyday tale about an alien funeral taking place inside the corpse of the deceased. Normal, normal stuff, I think we can all agree.
The rules:
In addition to the 500 word maximum and a three day window to write it, the rules for July were:
Each story had to take place at either WEDDING or a FUNERAL.
Each story had to include something being cut.
Each story had to include the words “UNDER”, “OVER” and “BETWEEN”.
THE ART OF MOURNING
Art was my friend and business partner. I’d known Art since college and we made a lot of money together in solar gravitational adjustment, or ‘planet shuffling’ to the layperson. Planet too hot or cold? Crops fail every year? Too many bugs? Not enough bugs? Want year-round summer? Easy, we’ll move you to a nicer cosmic neighbourhood... for a fee, of course.
Art died when his heart gave out. To put it in perspective, Art was a hefty fellow - a 623 tonne, building-sized Gigantoboar, three times the size of a Blue Whale to be exact. His heart – the size of a frickin’ small car, let me remind you - crushed itself under its own weight when the support fluid in his life tank drained away. The death certificate cited operator malfunction. Death by misadventure was the conclusion.
Art never struck me as being particularly religious. I kind of assumed people worshipped him as opposed to the other way round. But extra-terrestrial whale entities have a way of surprising you. Art’s will stipulated a funeral in observance of The Old Ways, and let me tell you, his species’ ‘ways’ aren’t so much old, as primordial. In cosmic terms, Art’s ancestors were around when our sun was only just flickering into existence.
So there I was, along with two hundred and forty nine other mourners, entering Art’s humungous, pristinely embalmed body cavity through the rectum, on course for his skull. According to the funeral pamphlet, the walk (a 1.8 kilometre round trip in case you were wondering) allowed us to experience the ‘Journey of Art’s Life.’ There were pictures, video installations, mementoes and reminders of Art everywhere inside, but it’s tricky to get the mood when you’re trying not to trip over his intestines or duck under his spleen. It makes sense now, in retrospect, why the funeral notice said to dress ‘practically.’
The route to Art’s head was slow and punctuated by melancholy pauses and moments of reflection, as his friends and family stopped often to remember him. Our eventual arrival at the skull meant the Transference Ritual – the ceremonial excision and consumption of the brain, by all in attendance, believed to ‘absorb the knowledge of the deceased’. A deed Art had alternately described to me as either “mythical claptrap” or “religious bunk” whenever the subject arose. But it turns out Art was wrong about his religion. Just as he was wrong in blocking me from accepting that bribe to move a rich planetoid closer to the sun. Because as soon as Art’s nearest and dearest chowed down on his moist, chewy and slightly over-spiced grey matter, I knew what was happening.
Nobody said a word but I could see it in their eyes and their twitching ganglia. Their febrile, alien protuberances quivering with the shock of sudden onset religious awakening. Alien and human minds, flooded with darkness alike. A shared moral eclipse. Between them, they knew everything. He cost me billions. Art didn’t drain the tank. I did.
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