Read Online A Questionable Shape by Bennett Sims - Free Book Online

have. And that shit-eating skeleton grin! That lipless rictus of exposed jawbone! That’s what you’ll see! Have you ever even seen maggots? Do you have any idea how revolting they are to see? Do you know what garbage men call them, when they find them writhing in the trash? “Disco Rice.” Well, your father’s face will have contracted a full Saturday Night Fever of disco rice, it will be alive and white with disco rice, I can guarantee you that, when you open that coffin lid.’ ‘Jesus, Michael, you think I haven’t thought of all this already?’ ‘Honestly, I don’t think you have. If you had thought this all the way through, if you’d really considered the emotional damage you’re going to sustain when you see your father in that condition—and not in a dream this time, Rachel: in real life, in full Technicolor 3-D!—you wouldn’t still be asking me where we keep the shovel.’ ‘You’re right. I may regret it, he may not have reanimated, I may be better off forgetting about it. But I can’t just forget about it. He’s my father, and I have to see for myself. I couldn’t live with myself if I didn’t.’ ‘You may not live long with yourself if you do. Because what if he has reanimated? We bring him here and tie him to a chair in the kitchen? Strap down
his arms and legs, like Wolfman, so that he doesn’t bite us in our sleep?’ ‘You’re my boyfriend—I need you to support me in this.’ ‘That’s exactly what you don’t need me to do. You need no more support in this than you did in caring for him. You know, or you think you know, that this is the right and daughterly thing, and what you need right now is for me to tell you that it’s insensible, a bad idea.’ ‘Is that what I needed when I was caring for him? For you to be there telling me that helping him into his wheelchair was “insensible,” “a bad idea”?’ ‘If he had been undead, yes, absolutely, that’s precisely what you would have needed: a friend to tell you that it’s insensible for anyone but a government agent, in a Hazmat suit, to help an undead man into his wheelchair. No one is in more awe of your dedication to your father than I am, but even I can see that grave-robbing is above and beyond the call of daughterly duty.’ ‘You would have me leave him in his coffin.’ ‘“You would have me leave him in his jail cell.” “You would have me leave him in his hospital bed.”’ ‘Stop it, I hate it when you do my voice.’ ‘The dead belong in their coffins. You wouldn’t spring your father from prison, just as you didn’t help him abscond from ICU. That’s not your duty to him. In all the time we’ve lived together—’ ‘A year?’ ‘In all that time I haven’t once heard you say, “My father is in a coffin, how uncomfortable, I have to dig him up.” You’ve made peace with your father’s death. Every time we talk about it you seem at peace and announce how at peace you are. Even when it happened you were at peace, not only with his death but with his burial. You’ve told me this before: how hard his relatives lobbied for his cremation and the scattering of his ashes and how it was you, not your mother, who defended his desire for a traditional burial. Now who is it who wants to drive out to his grave with a shovel and dig him up? Not his widow or any of his relatives but you. Have you even spoken with your mother about this yet?’ ‘She doesn’t believe that the buried are reanimating. She thinks only the recently deceased are.’ ‘A sensible woman. There’s no
proof, not conclusive proof anyway, that any of the undead are coming from cemeteries, and in fact that seems more and more unlikely. Are any of them wearing suits and dresses? No, they’re all