High School Short Stories

by: Kristina Killgrove
September 25, 1994
Period 3

    It was a chilly spring day. The temperature was cool enough to allow for pants, and warm enough for me to go outside without a jacket. Today, however, I wasn't going outside to play. I was in New Jersey visiting my grandmother, and we were off to a funeral service for one of her friends.
    Being so young, I had no concept of a funeral. At three years old, death was an idea I could grasp, but not the whole funerary process.
    My mother had told me about this funeral, and said not to be scared. Quite the contrary, I was curious. My mother did not come with us, with the excuse that she did not know the woman whose funeral it was.
    My grandmother and I got into her car and left
    "Grandma," I asked, "where are we going?
    "We're going to a funeral, Krissy, like your mother said."
    "What's a funeral?" I asked.
    "A funeral is where you go to say goodbye to a deceased person," my grandmother replied.
    "Oh." I thought hard. "What's deceased?"
    "That means dead."
    "Oh."
    We arrived at the funeral home where the woman was lying in state. My grandmother got a bouquet of flowers out of the car, and we started into the funeral parlor.
    "Grandma, what's the dead lady going to look like?" I asked.
    "Krissy, her name is Mary, but I think she is going to look the same as she did when she was living."
    "Oh."
    After getting into the room where the casket was, my grandmother started to talk to her lady friends. I looked around the room, never relinquishing my hold on my grandmother's hand. It was dimly lit, with flowers everywhere. Never had I seen so many pretty flowers in so many different colors! It was like a garden!
    Then I saw the casket. It was not open yet, but the very presence of it filled me with the sense that I was supposed to be afraid of it. It was a very nice coffin. Made of a sturdy wood, perhaps maple, it was shaped like the typical Halloween coffin, but with fancy sides, carved into scrolls and polished. My grandmother noticed how intently I was staring at the casket, and asked one of her friends when the viewing would begin. The answer came that it would be shortly, so we took seats to listen to the minister and the family speak.
    One of the deceased's sons got up, and made a short eulogy. He pointed out all the good things in Mary's life, and said how sad he was to see her dead.
    "And I also thank all of you for coming here. I see many of her friends among you, and I greatly appreciated your presence on this solemn occasion."
    "Grandma," I whispered, "what's solemn?"
    "Sad," hushed my grandmother.
    The son started to cry, and sat down. 'Why was he crying?' I thought. 'She's dead. He can't change that.' But then I thought how sad I would be if my mommy went away and never came back. I sympathized then with the poor man and his loss.
    Then, the minister got up and stood in front of the coffin.
    "I want to thank you again for coming. Mary is now in god's hands, his very capable hands. She is in heaven with the father, son, and holy ghost. Mourn for her, but remember that she is not alone up there. There are many angels and her husband to comfort her."
    He then turned toward the coffin, and recited some prayers, none of which I can remember because they were all in Russian. (I did not find out until a few years later that my grandmother belonged to the Russian Orthodox faith, but did not much mind that the songs I sung in church were not in English.)
    As he recited and sang, he was mechanically opening the casket, revealing the body inside. It was now time for the guests to form a procession for viewing the casket.
    As we took a place in line, I thought of the more shallow aspects of death. I was afraid that when I died, I would be put in one of those awfully constricting caskets. I also had to lay on my back, but I didn't want to do that; I wanted to lay on my stomach the way I slept. But I also believed that the sides of the casket, no matter how restricting, would be good protection from the monsters. (I always feared that if I dangled my arm or leg over the side of the bed, a monster would come and eat it while I was sleeping.)
    Our turn was coming. We were close to the end in line, because the family went first. They took a while, looking at the body and praying. Everyone would kneel down in front of the casket, bow their head, and mumble something, slightly moving their lips.
    Soon, it was my grandmother's turn. She knelt in front of the coffin. She, too, recited something in Russian, and said, "God rest her soul."
    I felt that my grandmother had done something totally blasphemous. She had addressed the woman as 'her' instead of directing the wish to the woman herself. No matter that she is dead, the woman should still have things said directly to her.
    It was my turn.
    I looked in the casket. The woman did not look ghoulish, nor did she have silver dollars on her eyelids. She also did not have great big X's where her eyes should be like in cartoons. Not that I expected the X's, I knew the difference between cartoons and real life, but they would have been better than what I saw. I saw a normal looking woman, in her best Sunday dress, who had not the slightest hint of death about her. I longed to reach out and touch her, just to see if she were still alive, and only pretending to be dead.
    Instead, I knelt just like I had seen everyone else. I wanted to say something to her. I longed to tell her it would be all right, she shouldn't be afraid, these people are her friends. I wanted to say how sorry I was that I couldn't have met her, or known her. I wanted to cry for my own mortality, realizing for the first time the concept of death, and that I too will die.
    I did not say anything.
    My grandmother took this as a sign of fear, and told me I could get up. Only a few seconds had gone by, but I thought a lot about life and death in that brief time.
    As she took me out of the dark parlor into the brightly shining March sun, she asked me what I thought about death.
    Still contemplating, I replied, "She wore green."

See? This is why I don't indulge in creative writing anymore. I tend to turn out ridiciulously heavy-handed stories such as this, ascribing some kind of moral consciousness to my three-year-old self. I mean, "I wanted to cry for my own mortality"??? Give me a break! Of course, what most offends me now is my egregious use of commas. :) What amuses me most is that I refused to capitalize words like God, Heaven, and His, even when I put them in the mouth of a Russian Orthodox priest.

Untitled

by: Kristina Killgrove
June 4, 1995
Period 5

"I heard you thought our beach idea was stupid," Bart said to me as we were waiting for our table at Brasa to be ready.
"No. I didn't say that. I thought you two were going to drive to Richmond and eat dinner there," I replied. "And I thought it was dumb because I wasn't invited."
"Of course you're invited," Nat chimed in. Bart and Nat had just graduated that morning and were obviously looking for something incredibly teen-aged to do.
"OK," I said, "Why in the world would you want to drive three hours to the beach at midnight?"
"Because it'll be cool," was Bart's answer.
I thought about it through dinner. Even though it seemed a male-bonding type trip and meant I would not be home until about six in the morning, I agreed to go. There was a lack of stupid actions in my life that this little jaunt would make up for.
Of course, being the responsible people we are, Bart and I actually told our mothers where we were going, kind of taking the fun out of it. But soon we were off driving down I-64 at 11 p.m.
Immediately, it began to rain. I asked Nat to slow down from his normal speed to one within the speed limit as the rain grew in intensity.
"Oh, perfect weather for driving," Nat said.
"Yeah, I hope it's not raining at the beach. That would be so uncool," Bart replied.
But the rain continued to almost torrential status. Nat had slowed down, so we were all talking about everything from cars to the weather to people at school.
This continued for a while, basically small-talking with Bart as he told us about his father's beach house and rich friends. Not a very thrilling conversation, so I just listened.
We had to stop for gas and go to the bathroom, so Nat pulled into a Shell station. Here we got a taste of Virginia Beach night life. Across the street was Bubba's Beach Club. At least twenty guys, looking completely drunk, were wandering through the road and hanging out in the parking lot. They even did a clown-like maneuver: squashed at least ten people in this tiny car, with guys hanging out the window and opening doors while the car was moving. Leaving as quickly as possible, we drove to Bart's father's house.
By now, it was about 2 a.m. We had not made good time because of the rain. So we drove up to the house, which was very nice, but could not go in, obviously, because it was late. Bart then gave directions to get to the beach, and we drove around a bit looking for a public entrance.
"Take 66th street," Bart said, and Nat complied.
We found the entrance, parked, and walked into the beach. It was absolutely beautiful. No people in sight, an ethereal glow coming from a hotel down the beach. Standing, listening to the waves, the three of us were silent for a minute.
"You know," said Bart finally, "it looked like it was going to rain and be a really stupid trip."
"But it turned out to be damn cool," Nat replied. I looked out at the small bit of light emanating from a boat, and thought that I could not have said it better myself.

It wasn't until this year that my mom admitted she never wanted me to take this trip with my then-boyfriend and his pretentious friend. I think she was actually more afraid that I couldn't fend off two guys (which she shouldn't have worried about) than that I would be killed in a fiery car wreck (which was much, much more likely). Anyway, my favorite part of this story is my obvious hatred for writing dialogue, as evidenced by the transitional sentence beginning, "This continued for a while, basically small-talking..." Yup, I'm no David Sedaris.