Word: Sepulcher

sepulcher

[sep-uh l-ker]

noun

1. a tomb, grave, or burial place.

2. Also called Easter sepulcher. Ecclesiastical.

1. a cavity in a mensa for containing relics of martyrs.
2. a structure or a recess in some old churches in which the Eucharist was deposited with due ceremonies on Good Friday and taken out at Easter in commemoration of Christ's entombment and Resurrection.

verb (used with object)

3. to place in a sepulcher; bury.

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Greg Thompson

    1985-2018

    Greg stared at the carved words.  That was it? That was the sum total of his life?  33 years and all it came down to was two small lines on a rock.  Not even a nice one either. It was made of cheap stone, and the stonework was mediocre at best, sloppy at worst.  He wanted to complain, but he had no idea who to complain to. Was there a complaints department somewhere?

    Maybe he could try haunting his parents?  No, that probably would not work. They would either be completely oblivious of try and find a way to cash in on it.  Besides, he was not even sure how to haunt someone.

    “Ouch.  That’s rough.”

    If Greg still had skin, he would have jumped out of it.  One does not expect to hear other voices in the afterlife, after all.  He quickly turned to see who had spoken. THe man reminded his of something he had seen on the internet a few years ago.  He was tall and skinny, with pale skin and a crisp, clean suit. His face was friendly enough though, as long as you could get around the eyes that looked more like black marbles than actual eyeballs.

    “You don’t see such a simple gravestone too often anymore.  Well, I guess the really cheap or really poor families that get those little flat ones, but never a standing stone.  Those usually get a bit more.”

    “Who...who are you?” Greg asked.

    “Oh, right.  How rude of me.  My name’s Phil. I’ll be your Reaper.”

    “Reaper?  You mean, like, the Grim Reaper?”

    “Yes and no.” Phil said slowly.  “Grim is the head Reaper. He gets all the attention just because he’s been around the longest, but he’s not the only one.  I mean, did you really think one person could oversee all the deaths in the universe?”

    “I didn’t really think death was a person.”

    “Not person, people.  There’s a lot of us.”

    “Well, good to know you won’t be overwhelmed, I guess.” Greg really had no idea what else to say.  What was he supposed to think?

    “Yeah, well, it depends on the jurisdiction and time period and all that.  I’m just glad I wasn’t assigned to England during the Black Plague. Talk about paperwork.”  Phil shuddered at the very thought.

    “So, uh, what happens now?  Do you, like, guide me to the afterlife?”

    “Eventually, yes.  Right now, no. See, every spirit needs some time to acclimate to being, you know, dead, before they can properly move on.  If I took you right now, there’s be all kinds of problems later down the road. So yeah, I’ll be taking you there in a few years once you’re good and ready to move on.  Right now though, I’m here to give you a few basics. Just the basics though. You’ll have to learn the details later. And don’t complain about it, it’s part of the acclimation process.  Everyone goes through it.”

    Greg closed his mouth.  Phil had obviously done this a lot, seeing as he was able to anticipate what Greg had been about to say.  Phil kept going, undaunted.

    “So, yeah, obviously, you’re dead.  I know it’s obvious, but I still have to say it.  You’d be real surprised how many people are in denial about it.  So yeah, dead and buried and all that. Now, for the next year or so, you won’t be able to move very far from your body, which is currently about...oh, four and a half feet…” Phil paused.  “Wow, your family must not’ve liked you very much if they couldn’t even get the full six.”

“They probably just couldn’t be bothered to shell out the cash.  Honestly, I’m surprised they got as deep as they did. I was thinking they’d just throw me in the woods and let the animals take care of it, just because it’s the cheapest thing.”

“Ah.  Penny pinchers.”

“Cheapskates.”

“RIght, well, at the very least, there’s a very slim upside.  A new spirit can only move ten feet away from the body. SInce yours is closer to the surface, you’ll have a bit more lateral movement than most.  So, good for you.”

Greg was less happy.  He was not surprised by his family’s lack of respect, but neither was he thrilled by it.  His thoughts almost distracted him from what Phil was telling him. Mostly things about how he was not able to interact with the physical world, and what he needed to do to move on and all that.  Greg barely registered any of it. Phil seemed like a nice enough guy, but the material he was covering was dry as a bone, even with the Reaper trying to dress it up a bit.

“Okay, and that’s all you need to know for now.” Phil said after far too long.  “Sorry I couldn’t give you any real details, but like I said, discovery is part of the point.”

“That was without the details?”

“I know, I know.  Long, tedious, and boring.  It sucks even more for me, since I have to say it so many times.  But regulations and all that.”

Greg nodded in understanding.  Even in the afterlife, bureaucracy was alive and well.  Apparently death and taxes were not the only things that were certain.

“So, any questions?” Phil asked.

“Lots.  But can you actually answer them?”

Phil opened his mouth wide, but closed it soon after.  He mulled over Greg’s question for a moment before replying.  

“In all likelihood no.  There are a few I can probably answer, but the usual questions are no goes.”

“Because I have to find out on my own, right?”

“Bingo.”

Greg sighed.  Most of what Phil had told him was fairly useless for daily life.  Or death. Daily afterlife? He would think about that later. Either way, Phil’s speech was only mildly useful, and most of what he wanted to ask would probably go unanswered.  

“In that case, no, I’m good.”

“In that case, I’ll be seeing you.  I’ve got a lot of graveyards to visit today.  I’ll say one thing about being a Reaper, it’s got great job security.”

And with that, Phil was gone.  Greg stood there in the middle of the graveyard that was his home and asked himself the one question that seemed most important:

“Okay, now what?”

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Okay, I admit I'm cheating a little bit with this one. I had already written the first few paragraphs a while back. I was intending to do something more, but never did until just now. I wonder if that means I have to keep going...

Word: Disjune

disjune

[dis-joon]

noun, Scot. Obsolete.

1. breakfast 

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She plopped a blob of something meat like in front of him.  It rested on a round object that was not unlike a plate, and served to keep the meat like substance off the dusty ground.

    “What’s this?” He asked.

    “Breakfast.  What else would it be?” She replied gruffly.

    She dropped another plate nearby and sat down in front of it.  She grabbed the meat and began to tear into it. His stomach reminded him that he had not eaten that day yet, so he dug in.  The meat was cold, stringy and tough. It also tasted like rubber and copper. He was unpleasantly used to the taste though, and so managed to push through it.

    “I miss eggs.” He said after a few bites.

    “Hm?” His wife-by-association grunted around a mouthful.

“Eggs.  You remember those?  Now there was a breakfast.  Eggs and bacon. Best thing ever, really.”

“Meh.  I wasn’t much of a bacon girl.  Now a nice veggie omelet, that was good stuff.”

He felt his mouth start to water at the thought of food.  Real food. Not whatever mystery substance he was currently eating.

“Yeah, that was good stuff.  Veggies, I mean. You never really know what you’ve lost until it’s gone.  I mean, if you’d have told me a few years ago that I’d be longing for broccoli, I’d say you’re crazy.”

“I hear that.  Although I will say this, having to kill your own food really makes you appreciate it in ways that just buying the stuff doesn’t.”

“I suppose that’s true.”

The conversation came to a slow end.  He looked over his kind of wife. The actual relationship of husband and wife had long since died out, of course, but it was convenient to think of her that way, since they had been traveling together for a year and a half.

He found his mind wandering as he ate.  For some reason, he thought back to when they had met, ironically because of breakfast.  The day they had met, he had just brought down a...something for breakfast. He had, however, made the mistake of eating in a place with other people.  People that were decidedly not friendly. She had done something very similar. The resulting fight was an eye opener. Seeing her literally rip a man’s head off with a set of long, sharp metal claws was a thing of beauty.  It was almost poetic in its violence. As she watched him smash through three people’s heads with one swing of his hammer, they both came to the same conclusion: They were not sure who would win in a fight. Because of this, they started traveling together.  It was the closest thing to love anyone got these days.

“What?” She asked after she swallowed a chunk of meat.

“Nothing, nothing.  Just thinking.” He said.

“Right.” She said slowly, drawing the word out a bit more than was needed.

“What?”

“You just never struck me as the thinking type is all.”

“Shows what you know.”  he tore another mouthful of meat and swallowed before continuing.  “I’m all about thinking. Before all this happened, I spent most of my time thinking.  Well, that and playing D&D.”

“Huh.  So, you were a nerd, eh?”

“Big time.  You?”

“No way.  I was one of those girls who only thought about where to get a better deal on shoes and purses.”

“An airhead.”

“No!” She paused a bit before hanging her head.  “Okay, maybe a little.”
    “Huh.”

“What now?”

“So, if this never happened,” He said, waving his hands around the barren landscape,  “then you’d be the kind of person who wouldn’t have given me the time of day.”

“Pretty much.”

“Well, I guess that’s something like an upside, right?  I mean, us meeting and all that.”

She smiled lightly.  It seemed odd on her hard, solid face.  She ran a rough hand along his equally rough face.  “Oh honey.” She said tenderly. “I’d trade you for indoor plumbing in a heartbeat.”

*********************************

I hate to admit it, but I'd probably be one of the first people to die once the apocalypse happens. I've got no practical skills, and have too many physical issues to really make my way in a world without modern technology. It sucks to think about, but it's true.

Word: Busticate

busticate

[buhs-ti-keyt]

verb (used with object), busticated, busticating. Northern U.S.

1. to break into pieces.

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Ted looked at the elaborate framed mirror.  It’s brightly polished silver frame was molded into flowing, elegant shapes that were studded with gems.  It stood high enough that Ted could see his entire body in its glass. The problem was with what he saw in that glass.

    The reflection he saw in the mirror was not his own.  Any other mirror showed him his form well enough, but this one did not.  It showed something ugly and perverse. Something more akin to a monster than a man.  It showed a beast with withered, discolored skin. Boils and blisters coated the dank skin, making it lumpy and distorted.  It stood hunched over, with a noticeable hump on its back. It was painfully thin, with bones clearly visible all over its body.  Its hair was thin, wiry and chaotic. Its eyes were sunken and glazed over. ANd yet...and yet it was still clearly his reflection.  Ted could see his facial features in the ugly perfersion of the human form. He could tell it was supposed to be himself in the glass.

He had no idea why it was that way.  He could not claim it was his so called true self, because it was not.  He was not a bad person. He treated others well and volunteered at various places.  He was well liked and respected in the community. Nor was the mirror reflecting some kind of inverse of his physical body.  Ted was not one with a perfect form. He was a bit on the short side and was starting to develop a belly, despite his best efforts to avoid it.

And yet, the mirror still insisted on showing him the most horrid version of himself he could think of.  And somehow, it was affecting things in the outside world. Ever since he had gotten the cursed mirror, his life had taken a turn for the worse.  At the first sight of his twisted doppelganger, he had gotten fired from his job for seemingly no reason. Then his girlfriend of three years had dumped him out of the blue.  Misfortune had plagued him relentlessly and ruthlessly. Murphy’s Law was not just in effect, it was running on overdrive. And it was all the mirror’s fault.

Ted was not sure how he knew that, but he knew.  It was a deep seated, almost instinctual knowledge that the mirror was somehow responsible for everything bad that had happened since it entered his house.  And Ted was fed up with it.

He brandished a sledgehammer.  The image in the mirror held a similar one, although rotted and rusting.  It followed Ted’s movements as he raised the tool over his head. He brought it down with all the force he could muster.  

The mirror shattered.

Glass shards, both large and small, broke apart and lay on the ground.  Ted bashed the frame in with all his might, denting and breaking the silvery metal as much as he possibly could.  He broke everything about the mirror into as many pieces as he could manage.

When he was done, he stood there, panting, gasping for air.  He smiled for the first time in weeks. It was done. The mirror was broken and could do no more harm.  He was finally free to resume his life properly, without fear of anything bad happening. He knew bad things could still happen, of course, but at least it would not be because of any cursed mirror.  His life, once broken, could begin to mend.

He looked with disdain at one of the larger pieces of glass that remained, barely the size of his hand now.  His heart froze and his blood ran cold.

Within the shard was his misshapen doppelganger.  Only now it made no pretense of following his movements.  It smiled its crooked, discolored smile, pointed at him and laughed.  And Ted knew. He knew that the mirror’s curse was still there. He looked around at they hundreds of shards of glass, each one containing his distorted form.  He fell to his knees as the weight of his curse grew with each one.

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When dealing with cursed objects, reflective or otherwise, consult an expert before taking any action against said cursed object.

Word: Benighted

benighted

[bih-nahy-tid]

adjective

1. intellectually or morally ignorant; unenlightened:

benighted ages of barbarism and superstition.

2. overtaken by darkness or night.

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There was a scraping sound from behind the wall.  It was too big and heavy to be from mice, and had been occurring off and on since Kevin and Mary had moved into the house a few weeks ago.  Kevin had gotten fed up with it, and so had decided to see what was there, much to Mary’s chagrin.

    And so it was that he stood in front of the questionable wall with a sledgehammer.  He hefted the heavy tool, brought it up and slammed it into the wall. He heard something yelp from the other side of the wall.  He slammed the hammer into the wall over and over, pulling out chunks of wood with each swing. It was clear that there was a hidden room there, and that something was inside of it.

    After a few more minutes, he finally broke through the wall enough to see what was inside.  There were three things inside of the small room. One was a human skeleton resting on the far wall.  Scraps of clothes clung to the decayed body, although they were so dirty that it was impossible to tell what they used to look like.

    But it was not the bones that Kevin was looking at with alarm.  It was the two pale skinned teenagers huddling near the bones that really got to him.  They looked to be around 14 or 15 years old and wore scraps that could have been torn from whatever the skeleton had been wearing when it still had flesh.  They were covered with dirt and grim, and were hiding their faces against the light.

    Seeing the two youngsters huddled there, Kevin did the only sensible thing he could think of:  He called for his wife.

    Mary slowly entered the room and questioned her husband on what the problem was.  All he had to do was point her attention towards the room and its occupants. Mary was just as stunned as Kevin was.  She was, however, quicker to do something about the issue. SHe immediately told Kevin to call the appropriate authorities while she tried to figure out what was happening.

    Mary knelt in front of the pale teens and beckoned them forward with outstretched hand.  The two of the looked at her hand and then at each other, but did not move. Mary spoke to them in a soothing, gentle voice, but there was still no response from them.

    Kevin came back just as Mary was beginning to get frustrated.  She voiced her problem. Kevin had an idea and ran off. He came back with a variety of foodstuffs, ranging from fruit and vegetables to some leftover meat to some cookies.  He offered the food to the walled in teens. Like with Mary, they simply looked at the food, but made no move to leave the room.

The husband and wife backed away and spoke to each other in hushed tones, mostly asking each other what they should do and coming up with no answers.  The teens were completely unresponsive. So unresponsive, if fact, that it was like they simply did not know what anything was. Like they had no idea what Mary was saying, or what the offered food was.  Both of them stopped. Once that idea was voiced, everything made much more sense. Their unresponsiveness was simply due to ignorance of anything outside of the dark, sealed off room.

They moved to a nearby couch and sat down.  They looked blankly at an intact wall. How could they not know anything?  How could they not know words or different kinds of food? And from they way they kept to the darker recesses of the small room and shielded their eyes, it looked like they did not even know about light.  

The two of them sat there, periodically turning to look at the teens.  It was all they could do until someone better qualified could arrive. Maybe they would be able to figure something out.

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Sooo....creepy kids sealed in a wall, huh? Oh yeah, this is going to turn out well for EVERYBODY, I'm sure.