7 DAY STORY WRITING CHALLENGE #12 2nd RUNNER UP

And the winner is…

Lis Murphy

DICTATED

HUMOUR

That old lady in the tweed green coat had given us all her scripted lament. She was definitely my favourite mourner. Casually collecting free gossip, along with a huge pile of egg sandwiches, plain crisps and cream cakes off the buffet table, she dutifully did the rounds, dipping her hand in the holy water and making the sign of the cross at least 5 times. Then, while everyone was distracted by the solemn, comforting murmurs, I saw her wrapping her food hoard awkwardly in a plastic rain hat, tying it together with a neat bow, and scarpering via the fire exit, presumably for her next death-filled dinner on the circuit. The cream of those cakes had smeared itself against the clear plastic bonnet like a suffocated baby's milky vomit. 

Back at home, I am sitting on the hard floor of my living room, a stack of magazine corners jutting into my legs and I can't be arsed to move. I’m pissed from all the advocaat and sweet sherry I drank earlier. I put my cigarette butt in the naked lady gash-tray and down the dregs of the vinegar tasting red wine one of my piano pupils gave me as a leaving gift. The leaves outside my window are clinging desperately to their branches, as the wind tries to extravagantly dance them to death. The TV is shouting at me from the corner. I would turn it off, but I can't find the remote. A cardboard box of dead lady items I won at the wake is next to my sofa. I reach over and grab a small grey 80s retro dictaphone from the top of the pile. A cute tiny tape is still inside. I press play. Nothing happens. I turn the machine over. On the back are 2 cylindrical gaps, each with silver coils and a thin red ribbon where the batteries aren’t. Of course they aren't.

Funerals are not my thing to be honest - too many clinking cups on saucers, and the dying thing is too creepy, too familiar, too unknown. Your own skimming life on show, while your fleshy body squeezes inside with a million thoughts, occasionally calmed by the slippery warmth of your organs. This funeral had been different though. The feeling of loving a relative in death from the choices I have made in my own life. My auntie Valerie looked well sass in the photos in the memorial booklet, with her 60s eyelashes and brightly coloured outfits. She never married - maybe she was a lesbian! (some people whispered). So what? Now, burnt into delicate wisps, she is just the dusty memories of anyone who shared an attended moment with her. A lollipop man who laughed in 1962 when she tripped up a kerb and grazed her face, a stray cat she fed weetabix to in 2010, a child she scolded in 1974 for playing with her giant bra dangling on the washing line in the back garden. 

I had never felt trapped in the life I created for myself and neither had she, not like all the other whingepipes in the family.

I find the remote, turn off the TV and scuffle for some batteries at the back of the kitchen drawer. Ivan had asked me once, when we first started dating and my front room was dark, if I was the sort of person who kept spare light bulbs, like this proved I was a responsible adult, capable of planning for eventualities such as darkness or emptiness. See, Ivan. I have spare light bulbs and spare batteries now. I am that sort of person who has those things. Prick. I put the batteries in their places. The orange button clicks and holds this time. Silence. Then… something… at least 30 seconds in, maybe more.. there is something.. plates clattering in the background? a toilet flushing maybe? something crunching? This goes on for at least another minute and I get bored and laugh and stop the tape. 

I decide I want to guess who is on this tiny tape and what they say… It's definitely family confessions. Got to be. Oh My God Yes! Catholics love a good confession. That would be amazing. Skeletons in the closet. Bubbles in the bath. Chickens on the run. This. is. too. exciting. So… grandma had a baby at 47… I bet it wasn't hers.. I bet it was one of their daughters and they kept it secret because they were mega Catholic… or maybe Uncle Joseph the priest was gay? All too obvious.. Or maybe the oldest grandchild had run off to join a cult… What else? What if it's just boring prayers being recited? Or… where the family treasures are buried? No, they were way too skint to have any treasure. Argh, what else could it be?

I get another bottle of wine from the kitchen, sit on the floor again and roll another cigarette from the tobacco dust at the bottom of my dark green plastic pouch. The warning picture has a toddler smoking through its dummy, like the Athena poster from the 80s that my sister had on her wall, but without the sunglasses and the leather jacket. I laugh, then a few sad tears sneak out. I breathe and imagine my mind is a palace. Somehow I always get stuck in the toilet in this exercise and I can't get out. Maybe I am trapped, just in my own mind? I don't know anymore… (Short pause for more tears).

I remember that another of the items chucked in the cardboard box is a tear jar. I grab it. It looks like a tiny cut-glass vase, but you are meant to put it under your eye-lid and catch your tears as you cry. The Victorians say when the jar is full, your grief is over. I put it under my eye-lid and try to keep crying but the distraction of the tear-jar has put me off. Also, I would be mainly crying for myself about being dumped by Ivan and having to go to the funeral on my own, rather than my aunt dying. She would be maybe only 4-6 tears from each eye, so would it still work? If the tears are mixed, does it still work?

I put the jar down and press the button on the dictaphone again. A cough and then Grandpa’s posh voice.

“Hello, hello.. Can you hear me...?” 

A pause.

“Christmas list number 7.”

A pause.

“Ahem.” 

Another pause.

“This year, the turkey was dry as I left it in the oven too long without tinfoil, and the sausages were of terrible quality because the local butcher has started injecting water into them and it has seriously affected the flavour. I shan't buy them from him next year and I told him that myself..”

“Peter? Peter!” a voice shouts from the background. The door opens. “What are you doing?” She shouts. ‘It is Friday you know, you’re meant to be...” 

Loud Click. Silence again. 

I stop the tape. Ivan had once said to me while we were watching Season 2 of Twin Peaks, that he would like Laura Palmer's theme to be played on the piano at his funeral. He joked that the coffin would be lowered in the intense dark forest part, lifted back up in the hopeful C major middle section and then lowered back down in the return to the C minor dark forest part. This could also be repeated if required or requested. I imagine playing it at his funeral and how much people would love me and are impressed by me and are so sorry for my loss. I imagine my mother saying well done after a wooden hug and then telling me it should have been G sharp in bar 22 and why hadn't I brushed my hair.

I run to the toilet and empty my buffet through my mouth, accompanied by a guttural sound I have not heard before. Like someone possessed, spasmic waves take over my whole body as I retch again and again and tears stack up in my eyes and eyelashes. I wipe my mouth with some bog roll, flush it away and pick up the plastic oblong I held under my piss flow before the funeral. The 2 blurry blue parallel lines laugh in my face like a trigonometry question I haven't revised for. 

A pause.

Hello baby, I tell my stomach.

A sigh. 

I cry me a river down my face, leaning my head on the bath and imagining that Ivan had sent me a tape. I imagine he left it on the doorstep in a padded envelope he had drawn silly pictures and hearts on, to say in some mega beautiful, over-romantic way that he still loves me. I imagine he had made me an old skool mix-tape with More than Words and Love in an Elevator on it. Yes, he had actually dumped me 2 weeks ago by posting a letter -  in 2016 FFS! - but maybe, was it possible he might send me a mix-tape and leave his wife? 

I lift my jumper up above my boobs and stare at my bare skin breathing up and down.

Shall we tell them baby? I ask my stomach.

The stomach stays silent.

Only me and you know. Only me and you, y’ know. I explain to it.

Still no reply. 

I sing the whole of More than Words, with full emotion and including the guitar solo like the original. It's true, bathrooms do have the best acoustics. I lean forward to kiss my belly, but I can't reach.