Grave Diggers

2
Vote

Posted by Shaun_Avery_1982 (#32) 657 days ago (Editorial)

Here's a short little look at where our obsession with fame might take us. Enjoy!

Grave Diggers

Clark stared at the stranger in the coffin, pondering the man’s mind.

The vicar came to stand behind him. ‘Did you know the deceased well?’ he asked, voice loud in the emptiness of the church.

‘No,’ Clark said. ‘I didn’t know him at all.’

Then he went and took a seat near the back.

Nobody recognised him.

People never did. Which made him wonder, like always, what had driven the dead guy to make this request in the first place.

Not that he was alone, of course; Clark and a handful of others were getting to be seasoned pros at this.

Sadly.

When it was over, when the tears were dried and people were discussing the wake, Clark stood beside the grave, staring down.

He didn’t realise he had company until the girl coughed.

‘Do I know you?’ she asked when he turned around. She squinted as she spoke, trying to work out the puzzle that was his identity.

‘No,’ he replied. ‘No one does.’

Not any more.

He drove.

Thinking along the way.

Remembering a time in his life when there’d been glamour, when there’d been success. When the papers had charted his rise to the top in a flurry of puns and one-liners and it had seemed like the whole wide world was not big enough for all the fame he had to taste.

But things couldn’t last forever, and the hits dried up and he grew old and unfashionable and the parties to which he was invited had less media coverage, fewer stars involved.

Then they’d stopped altogether.

Those that had come before him had had reality TV to fall back on when all else failed, but that was a dying format by his time. Now all he had left was . . .this.

Clark called his agent.

Planning to shout at him, ‘what do they get out of this? Why is this world so obsessed with celebrity that they’ll pay money to hire me or one of your other clients just to sit at their funeral when they’re gone? And if they’re that bothered, why won’t they just go and buy my songs when they’re alive?’

He burned with a need to say it all.

But there was no reply.

Another day, another grave.

That was how he measured his life now.

Alone, the service done, he looked down into the grave.

It was a woman, this time. Someone he’d never known, someone who had never known him. Someone who just wanted to feel the thrill of being near someone ‘famous’ in death.

He couldn’t understand what she got from it.

He didn’t know why he was providing it.

Other than the fact that he had nothing else to do.

And a sudden fury at what his life had become took him and he leapt down into the grave and sprawled down on the coffin and started to tear at the lid.

Gripped by a need to see which of them was the most dead.

.. (Editorial)

Readers | Discuss | eMail Story To Friend

Social Satire

Share on Tumblr

Who Voted for this Story

Shaun_Avery_1982

Grave Diggers

Comments

Who Voted for this Story