The Funeral

The casket was in the courtyard of the mosque, covered in the red Turkish flag and on top of a marble slab. Three friends were just a couple of meters away, talking to each other in hushed voices.
A.:“I’m 31 and this my first funeral. ”
B. “Really? I’ve been to a couple before. And I’m younger than you.”
C.: “Explains a lot.”
B.:”Ah, just shut up.”
A. and C. grinned secretly while B. started looking around. The courtyard was full with visitors who were paying their respects to the family members. The only son, their friend was greeting everyone at the entrance. He was wearing a suit with a tie. His eyes were red shot, his cheeks glimmering with the occasional tear streak. The streaks shiny reflection reminded B. of the slugs from his childhood, the shiny paths they would leave behind while crawling around in the grass. He turned back to his friends.
B.: “It’s unnerving but I do smile a lot on such occasions. I had a constant grin during my grandmother’s funeral. People didn’t get upset though, they knew it was a tick.”
C.: “Yeah, look around. Everyone is laughing or smiling once in a while. It’s not just a tick, they look genuinely happy from time to time. They see old acquaintances, old friends, someone tells an old story about the deceased and everyone just lets loose. I want to be like that too. Better, I want people to laugh at my funeral. I’ll even employ a standup comedian; give him the entire background story about me so he can come up with some hilarious sketches during the funeral. ”
A.: “I’m game too. I’ll also throw a party for my old geezer, he won’t object at all. Pass all the mosque and prayer shit. Give a decent Orleans style funeral march, handout some free booze. Get it over with.
B.: “Worth trying out. What I want to pass is the grave part. I don’t want to end in a dark and cold pit. I want cremation, so you guys could scatter my ashes to the sea. But there are no cremation facilities in Turkey. I think you guys will have to rent a pide oven, slide me in with a humongous wooden spatula and fire it up.
C.:”Now that’s gross. And what if pide ovens aren’t that powerful? You’ll start smoking and leaking stuff, bleah.”
B.:”Come on, you’ll find a way. I’ll let you even use some part of me so you can use it on your plants. With all the shit I’ve been eating recently, I’ll turn into the best fertilizer you’ll be able to find on this side of the planet. …” Their discussion was cut short when the Imam arrived and the crowd started getting in line for the prayer.
The Imam went through the prayer in an unhurried fashion. Everything was finished in 10 minutes. The casket was shouldered by friends and family members and carried away to the family grave. By then some of the attendees had already left, hurrying to work or some important appointment. The 3 friends gathered outside and pondered what to do next. They decided to attend the final part of the funeral but they were at a loss at which direction to go. The courtyard of the mosque was filled with people and they had lost sight of their friend. At the last moment C. saw the distinctive red of the flag on top of the casket. They hurried to catch up. The procession was just entering through the cemetery gate. The cemetery itself was a jumbled mess of various graves which were crammed in no distinct order. There was no space or path to navigate through this stone garden so they had to step on other graves to make it near. When they arrived the casket was being just opened, revealing the body which was covered in a white shroud. The family members held the body by the shroud and lowered him to their friend who had jumped into the open grave. He and the local mosque worker positioned the body while the Imam started chanting prayers into his microphone which was attached to a portable loudspeaker. The imam with his microphone and rhythmic chanting reminded B. of a MC who was improvising to a crowd, trying to gain time as the positioning took longer and longer.

Their friend, in an open grave with a perfect suit all covered in dirt, the rhythmic chanting of the electric imam, the family members lined around the grave like light bulbs around a make-up mirror, all in the middle of a maze of graves…the 3 friends were soon hypnotized. Each lost in their own thoughts, each having simultaneous fantasies about their own funerals. Wondering and knowing that theirs with all their pomp and eccentricity would not be able to rival this surreal scene.

The Getaway

Breaking News: An unidentified naked male was spotted running down the main avenue of the cities financial district. Police were called in but failed to apprehend the suspect who vanished. Eye witnesses’ accounts describe the person as being in an extremely good mood and non-threatening:”… the only thing he was sporting was a real big smile” or “Dashing bloke, wish he had worn something underneath though...”. Police investigating the incident came across a discarded Blackberry on which the following e-mail was found:


For Immediate Release

Stockford Industries report 10% sales spike

18th February 2010-Stockford Industries reported a 10% sale increase in their agriculture machinery…. …I’m at the office and writing these lines embedded in a press release which I’ll have to send sometime during the day. It’s the best camouflage for my extra curricular writing sessions. No one is interested in bothering someone who looks like he is writing something as boring as a press release or some kind of invitation. Not that anyone from my room would object, the ruse is just for the assistant managers and our HR manager. HR Manager? Strike that, we don’t have anything resembling a human resource plan at the office. Probably the main reason why I’m intensely fixed at the monitor and hammering something on the keyboard 340 wpm right now. Looks like today’s post is going to be about my firm, which in my opinion has made some spectacular wrong business decisions. I won’t dwell on each one of them but the latest was the latest wake up call for me: My raise which was not only subpar, but also insultingly low –Mini conference held at desk right behind me right now, keep on writing without bating a lash-. Not that I’m the only one with the same problem. I’m one of the few who after hearing the raise didn’t storm the managers office and demand a proper raise. Me, I should have burned down the place but my lack of enthusiasm with anything concerning the office resulted just in a weak “Meh”. I rather spend my energy on an escape plan. The simple and brilliant one, where you leave everything on your desk and run like hell. Starting fresh, leaving everything behind. Especially an office which makes you feel like you’re buried alive for most of the day. Look at the weather outside, it’s beautiful. A spectacular spring day, the whole city basking in the sun. Ah fuck this…

The police are investigating a possible connection regarding the Blackberry and the identity of the mysterious exhibitionist.

Why Vampires are Agoraphobic

Researchers of the occult have it all wrong. Vampires can scarcely go out during the night at all. They are agoraphobic, not by nature but by circumstance. They are bound to stay indoors most of the time because god has played a dirty trick on them. He had given them the gift of immortality on the condition that they were to shun the sunlight for the rest of their eternal lives. The candidates who had set their eyes on everlasting life with the occasional binge of human blood had accepted this offer gladly. Who were they as to mistrust the most revered of all beings, the creator of everything known to the human mind. Little did they know that god was and had always been a sneaky bastard who loved to get his way. And who could have blamed him; he was everything and anything at the same time. He needed distractions and a good and albeit cruel joke never lost its appeal. So he arranged a conned deal and the candidates took it. Hook, line and sinker.

Prior to their turning the candidates had been given a form which explicitly stated the conditions for their transformation. One of these slabs of stone had been unearthed some years ago in Lebanon (paper or papyrus was hard to come by these times: not that god was cheap, he just liked to experiment with different mediums. The Ten Commandments were also made during the same time.) The archeologist’s and historians who inspected the slab couldn't come with any explanation for the strange bullet point lines and their meanings.

Below is a partial translation with a modern interpretation of the to-be-vampires comments in brackets.

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….by signing this contract you accept the following terms to come into effect....

Extreme allergy to sunlight (I’ll be okay, I’m more of a night person anyway. My circadian rhythm is night centered, I’m an owl, better, a bat.)

Relinquishment of your soul (Who needs a soul with all the pain, suffering. Heavenly Detox, here I come!)

Superhuman strength, super fit body (Sweet, no more monthly fees for the gym. No more pilates, never liked yoga anyway)

No reflections (Whatever, I’ll check myself on the webcam)

Blood diet (Beats being a vegan, I was getting tired of eating tofu anyway)

Drop dead gorgeousness (Rpatz, move over)

Eternal life with high chance of boredom, depression and apathy (Nah, won't affect me. I've got Facebook, worst case scenario I'll play Animal Farm)

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The transformation came into effect instantly. They turned from human to vampire in the blink of an eye. Most were wise enough to undergo the process in their houses, protected from the sun which would turn them into a walking, short-lived candle in mere seconds. Yet once their transformation was over and night set they were in for a surprise, for god had kept the punchline to the end.

The thing was that at that time astronomy wasn't very popular with the common folk. Few people knew about the celestial objects and their nature. They mostly assumed that the world was flat, the moon and sun part of the divine curtain which was put there to divide them from heaven. They associated daylight with the sun, its absence with night. So they thought they would be safe after sunset. They were wrong.

The first vampires to step out of their homes at night were surprised with the intense pain as their blood started to boil, their skin turned to ash and their new beautiful faces turned into lumps of molten flesh. They retreated to their houses and raised their fists at the heavens for not having been faithful to their arrangement. God responded quickly, giving them a crash course in astronomy: The earth was round, orbiting around the sun while the moon was orbiting around earth itself, all in a big void which had no matter at all, space itself. The moon, being a desolate big chunk of rock should not be visible to the casual observer were it not the fact...and here comes the punchline...that it's illuminated by the rays of the sun. And even during the night most of the rays are reflected from the moon to the earth, grilling the unaware vampires in the process. So supposedly it wasn't gods fault but the vampires ignorance of basic scientific facts.

The vampires being deceived in such a scientific way retreated to their homes. Some wowed revenge while others settled for getting out on every new moon. Others again used their eternal life to accumulate scientific data so they could somehow change their predicament. The most concrete of this millennial old research was the birth of the cosmetic (sunscreens) and arms industry (a nuclear winter would block most of the sun).

But whatever their choice, all vampires are agoraphobic now. By circumstance and by a wicked sense of humor.