The Girls

By Arcadia

Absurdist fiction in reverse, if that is possible, where there is an inherent purpose in life but not in the very
real world of death. Discover now how the afterlife is purposeless and absurd, as is life, but refusing
to climb out of the grave just for knowing what awaits you back at home? Make sense? No? Good.

• Language: English
• Publisher: BookBaby
• Release date: Sep 30, 2014
• ISBN: 9781483539607

Book preview

PSALM"

1

Our Present

There were two of them behind the curtain, awestruck, from head to toe, sharing a copy of the script, their make or break moment. Drama class. No more pretending, time has come today, with first impressions critical, the hall packed to overflowing. Jr. College.

Thank God for the curtain. They waited, then waited, then the exhale, eyeing the scenery, hearing the bustle from out front.

The first young lady, a freshman in her initial college stage production asks the second young lady, also a freshman, Where do you think she is?

Impossible to know, she answers. She’s just so regular at being irregular.

Suddenly, out of nowhere, or so it may seem, the third and final player appears, from right over there to the right, to the freshmen’s left. Finally, freshman number one damn near screams, "where the hell have you been?"

Around, the third young lady tells the both of them. "Relax, I’m not late. I can tell time," she scolds.

Curtain goes up in three minutes, lady number two tells her.

The third girl, an upperclassman, looks at herself then at her cohorts, contemplating their costumes. You two look ridiculous.

And I suppose you don’t? number one bites back.

Never, the junior tells her. I look good in this. Fact: I look good in anything.

I, myself, love my costume. I sometimes wish I had lived during that era, announces freshman number one.

I don’t doubt it for one minute, states the junior-comelately.

Time for freshman number two to have her say. I feel the same way. I’d have loved living on a farm or a big ranch, roughing it, the whole smear.

You’d have starved, the junior tells her. Like her, she grins, pointing at girl number one. She woulda drank herself to death… roaring 20s, my ass. Now, she asserts as she idles over to her mark, let me concentrate. And remember, don’t screw this up.

One of the young ladies tosses the script behind a stage prop: a cemetery gravestone adorned with a watchful angel perched on high, smiling, with red hair, a broken left wing, and ebony eyes that seem to follow even the slightest of gestures.

The curtain goes up and the junior declares: In a heartbeat, I’d switch lives with them. We’ve lived our lives, why then not all? Under her breath, she asks herself, Waiting, waiting, waiting, isn’t there more to life than just waiting? If this play is as lame as it reads, I’m going out now and buying myself my own cemetery plot and jumping in it. Waiting and waiting on those two imbeciles over there…

The spotlight now belongs to freshman number one. To we who’ve outlived the young, a child, so few hopes on those mornings they are not here, but yon’… She sums up her dissatisfaction: Come on, come on. Maybe she’s right, maybe I do look ridiculous, and why would I want to live in the 20s? Nothing wrong with the era I live in now. O.k. for grandma, but not me. This hat and wig itch so bad. Look at her over there, so smug, so above it all. Waiting and waiting, come on, you freak, stop staring at me…

Freshman number two now recites her first lines of the evening. Mourning, til one can bribe yet one more heartbeat from the souls they once possessed. She smiles, then the spotlight leaves her in the dark. She asks herself: Darkness, why am I always in the dark? I’m the star of this lame production…and damn, why didn’t I pee before I put this stupid costume on? How’d they stand it back then, so itchy…jeez…hell, this bonnet and dress are so dumb…my God, I ain’t gonna be able to hold it…and why did we have to do this particular play…oh, right, the director’s pathetic little troll of a wife wrote it… look at those two over there, so smug, so, so S-D-S.I hate the dark, like what death is gonna be like…and why is this crap supposed to be taking place in a cemetery? Morbid…jeez, look at all those lame-o people out there…must not be charging admission to get in…

Our Past

2

They were here, said their farewells, now and perhaps forever. The faith it took to continue on. We’ll be with them again, someday--when hope takes over, step by step, heartbeat after heartbeat, eyes dry as the wind, for long ago all have shed what tears they once possessed.

Their motto: One foot in front of the other.

LYN & LENORA & BETHEL

They were someone’s child. Generations separate them & blood binds them. Blood separates them…then generations bind once more.

Newton and Viola said goodbye to her when she was 13. Ivy and Anna said goodbye to her when she was 5. John and Bess said goodbye to her when she was 24. Her children are, then, 1, 3, and 7. She left them with John and Bess, a reconciliation, a reunion just around the corner. A payback, take one, give three back. A situational Job, multiplying a horrific loss with a great gain.

3

In a cemetery. Dusk.

They woke to a setting sun, the three of them, Lenora first, then Lyn, then Bethel. Lenora asked, Where are we?

Where do you think? Looks like a cemetery. Quacks like a duck, walks like a duck. Gotta be the old boneyard. Lyn was in fine form this evening.

Almost always the peacemaker, Bethel replied, We get it, Lyn.

Lately, Lenora said, they seem to be dropping like flies.

Bethel cleared the sleep from her tongue by wiping it on her sleeve. I’ve never been to an evening funeral. Spooky, always morning or early afternoon, never dusk.

Where is everybody? Lenora wondered.

Huh, Lyn snickered, you don’t think we’ve outlived them all, do ya?

Now that’s a thought, Lenora stated, smoothing the front of her best funeral-going dress.

"If we are the last then who will pay their respects at our funerals?" Bethel was a mess at dusk. She was a morning person.

If anything she’d rather gag than face the onslaught of the night.

"I didn’t know you’d ever earned anyone’s respect, Bethel," Lyn sniped.

Bethel started to cry, sans the tears. Not nice, Lyn.

Brother, get a grip, Lyn spewed.

"It was a joke, Bethel. You never have had a sense of humor, Lenora taunted. It’s like humor just bounces off you and lands out in the road somewhere. Like roadkill."

Hey, Bethel said, desperate to fit into any conversation, "did I ever tell you about the garden my great-grandma had? Well, she planted some tomatoes and when they were ripe she and my grandma harvested them. When they went to can ‘em, they discovered that nary a tomato had any meat in ‘em. They were all full of sap. Catsup! No one believes me, but that was the year my grandmas actually invented the catsup plant. They’re my favorite veggie. She didn’t know about catsup at the time and promptly tossed them all out. She didn’t can even one tomato that year. Funny, every time they’d stick a knife in one, it’d be like the tomatoes’d squirt like a slit wrist, a steady stream, then once it was all flushed, the skin’d look like a flat tire, or a stick of chewed gum. My great grandma really did invent catsup. Grew the first catsup plant, and that’s a fact. So I heard."

Lyn and Lenora shook their heads in disbelief. "First of all, Bethel, what does that have to do with what we was talkin’ about? Secondly, it’s called ketchup, not catsup, ‘less your grandma used cat shit for fertilizer. Third: tomatoes are a fruit. And lastly, have you lost your frigging mind?" Lyn yelled.

Last time I checked I hadn’t, she replied, serious as a heart attack.

Lenora deadpanned, Actually the tomato is a berry.

4

They slept standing up so as not to wrinkle their funereal finery. Like horses they swayed against the wind, or little or no wind, didn’t matter, with arms out as if they were rocking a baby to sleep.

They arrived in the same dresses, for every funeral, same shoes, hats, save for Lyn who never wore a hat in her life, same costume pearls and earrings, same pocketbooks, same makeup. Always, almost as if these were the clothes they had chosen for themselves to be buried in.

They continued to sway, imaginary moves, humming to a mute choir singing silent dirges for the next-of-kin.

Lenora sighed, Knock it off, blasphemers. It’s a funeral not a hoe-down. Then, "Just where is everybody?"

Where’s the body? Who died this time? Bethel whispered.

"I wish they’d hurry up.

Reviews for The Girls

[arcadia95 · Rating: 5 out of 5 stars]

Absurdist fiction. If your cup of tea is reading knowing what-will-happen-next fiction then this novel is not for you. Otherwise,
read this! By the time you finish reading it you will know what
absurdist fiction is, which is knowing the un-known...because if you believe you know how absurdism has always attached itself to the living...then what happens when an author attaches it to the deceased?