MicroHorror

Remember the last time you saw Grandma?

And how she was laid out in that pine coffin, all flabby and smeared with makeup, and how everybody at the funeral home said how At Rest Granny looked, and how Daddy said you had to kiss Granny goodbye as he dipped you over the side of the casket, and then told you how it just wasn’t right at all that Granny be left alone her last night on earth, and how he made you scoot down in there with her right after everyone left, and how scared you were when the lights went out and how cold Granny was, and how badly you wanted to scream, and how even though you loved Granny when she was alive you remembered how hard she’d hit you with that wooden spatula if your fingers got too near her cookie dough, and how you kinda knew that screaming might wake her and then she’d do much more than smack you with that damned spatula, and how you kept quiet for hours until the lights came back on, and how you heard breathing noises coming from across the hallway, and how you slowly got the nerve to peek above the side of the casket, and how you saw that nice funeral home man working on that young woman in the room across the way, that young woman who you’d heard had her heart attack her, and how his back was to you and you weren’t quite sure what he was doing as he was standing on a stepladder over the upper part of her coffin, and how his clothes were kinda all loose and scrunched up behind him and you figured he must be having a heck of a time pulling out her tooth or something because his torso kept shaking backwards and forwards with all his exertion and his breathing kept building and building until he must have removed that bad tooth from the lady because he stopped and lay there over the coffin for several minutes until his breathing slowed, and how afterwards he finally turned off the lights and left you alone with Granny, and how you squirmed all the way down to the bottom of the coffin because you just knew that Granny might not really be dead and she’d think you’d touched her cookie dough again, and how she might reach for you with those long fingers of hers until they reached around your scrawny neck and how Granny might squeeze and squeeze and squeeze until they’d have to get you a pine box to lie down in as well, and how you darn near cried in joy when Daddy showed up early the next morning and lifted you out, and how happy you were when Daddy bought you them pancakes at that diner before he took you home, and how grateful you were when you were finally allowed to go back to your blankie in the crawlspace.