This short story is based on an experience I had IRL when attending a relative’s funeral. The entire lobby was filled with shit to buy. It truly was a gift shop and felt incredibly crass. Anyways the situation always felt ridiculous and has stuck with me for years.
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Anna lingered around the lobby of her little parlor setting everything right. The flowers were plastic and didn’t needed to be changed but their positioning was one of concern. The pamphlets were next: There were many sales brochures listing products of dubious quality that all looked about the same.
‘Your friend has crossed the rainbow bridge to Skettiland. Celebrate them with your very own custom artwork’
‘Keep your fluffy close to your heart with jewelry made from their ashes’
‘Grieving is a difficult process. Make it easier with our custom-bred biotoys’
This was a franchised funeral parlor. One of Hasbio’s great schemes to push up profits. There was nothing to be confused about: It was incredibly profitable. The chain was called ‘The Rainbow Bridge’ because of course they would have to milk that old cow for all she was worth. Each of the buildings were mandated to have an outside color scheme that was bright and cheerful. The lettering for the signs had to be the jumble of cutesy childlike letters associated with Hasbio’s brand.
This was a funeral home but may as well just be another Fluffmart. The lobby was basically little more than a gift shop to sell more shit to people going through a difficult time. All sorts of trinkets or doo-dads to divide people of money from their wallets. Talk of death was practically forbidden. It was always ‘crossing the rainbow bridge’, ‘new beginnings’, ‘sleepy times’. The experience of death was as ersatz as fluffies themselves. A hollow mockery.
Everything was ready for this morning’s service. Anna walked to the state room where the body was laying in wait to be visited. Just it’s family, of course. Rarely did you see a large group of people come to visit what was legally just a toy. This fluffy was a cotton-candy pink mare named Missy. Her owners had brought her in after a rather savage dog attack. In a sagging, leaking garbage bag. Normally this would mean a closed-casket service but Anna had been a real mortician before switching venues. She’d pieced together torn apart limbs, cleaned blood out of fur, restructured the mare’s face to look as normal as it could. Well, the top half that could be viewed look perfectly fine. The lower half was rather gruesome looking still but who needed to know? The creature looked innocent and carefree down in it’s little casket.
Speaking of the casket, it was just like anything else Hasbio produced. Garish pink with rainbow lettering on the side declaring it was a ‘HAPPY BEGININNGS JR’, and of course their logo. Anna left the corpse and went to wait in the lobby for the family to arrive.
A young girl and her parents. The parents looked as if they were running late to an appointment and already seemed as if they wanted to leave after entering.
“Come on, Mikayla. Let’s go see Missy.” The girl’s mother, a tired looking woman with her hair down up in a tight bun would say to her daughter. Her daughter had dressed in her best clothing, was ushered off to the state room to view the fluffy. Anna followed along at a respectful distance.
“Mom! She just looks like she’s sleeping. She’s not really. Is she?” Mikayla asked her mom, leaning in to get a look at what had been her best little pal. The girl had been at school when the attack occurred, luckily. Had she seen the body when Anna had dumped it out on a table, she would have no questions. That fluffy was a dead as a doorknob.
“No, honey. She’s…you know.” People didn’t want to talk about death. Especially in a place like this which practically begged for the subject to be tip-toed around, obfuscated in flowery language or tricky little mind games.
The girl reached out to settle a palm against the fluffy’s cheek, rubbed against her cold fur. Pulled away, perhaps feeling something was off. There was. There were places which had to be filled with cotton just to give substance. That dog had really done a number on Missy. Her father lifted up one of the leaflets he’d nabbed from the lobby.
“Look, Mikayla. We can get you a stuffed toy that looks just like her. We just send a photo in and they send us one in the mail.” Ah, Hasbio had gotten another one. Why bother trying to let your child experience the natural process of death? Just buy something and get them to shut up for awhile.
“I’ll leave you to your remembrances. Please find me in the lobby if you have anything you need.” With that, Anna would go to the lobby. Sidled behind the cash register, because this was basically just a gift shop after all. Several minutes passed before the family came back, the father stepping forward with his wallet already in hand.
“We’ll take the customized doll. A locket. A custom portrait…” Anna tallied up the purchase. It totaled $400. Well, these people had more money than they had a capacity for trying to navigate through difficult emotions. That was their bread & butter clientele.
“We’ll be enshrining Missy at Fun Time Park soon.” Fun Time Park. Just the word for a field where they planted the bodies and put up a marker, if a marker was paid for. “Will you be joining us?”
The father gave Mikayla a look. Shook his head. “We’re honestly too busy. But, uh, tell her bye for us.” Anna nodded. Of course. The family left, Mikayla turning to give Anna a shy wave goodbye. It was returned which left her to go back to the state room.
“Seeya later, alligator.” The mortician/funeral director told the mare down in the casket. Closed the lid with a squeal of shitty hinges.
