365 Creative Writing Prompts: The Vessel

Full disclosure: the only way I'm getting out of here is in a hearse. 

When it comes, I'll be waiting on the edge of the sidewalk in the parking lot. A few cars will pass by without a second glance at me, their drivers focused on street lights and lane lines and the occasional text-message-that-can't-wait. Then my ride will come--a long, black, shiny hearse--and I won't be able to see the passengers through the tinted windows, but it won't matter and I'll climb willingly into the back all the same.

My seat will be long and lined with satin, and I'll lie down without snapping the seatbelt into place because there won't be a seatbelt that far back in the car. The manufacturers will have long ago considered such a safety measure pointless, expensive, and too late. They did, however, install a heavy lid onto the top of my seat so that I don't bounce out and frighten the neighborhood children. I'll close the lid and cozy up to the cobwebs and the stench of formaldehyde.

We'll stop at the gas station just up the street to fuel up before the long trek to the cemetery. Blood, not gas, will gush forth from the nozzle, and fat red drops will spill onto the pavement after the gas tank is full. I will peek out from under my lid out of curiosity. Filling up will have cost the undertaker fifty dollars. A sign beside the gas pump will tell me that the blood was oxygenated, but I'll be too afraid to ask where it came from.

The rest of the trip will be smooth until we pass the cemetery gates, where the speedbumps will jostle me just enough to unfold the hands that I will have so carefully crossed over my chest. The door will open a few minutes later, and I'll hear nothing but cawing crows and an occasional elk call (why elk were welcomed into the cemetery and mourners were not, I'll never know). Once the lid is nailed to the coffin, I'll have to imagine the dead tree leaning over my grave dripping bird poop and leaves like tears. The undertaker will lower my coffin into the dirt, where I will be greeted by ancient spiders and newborn earthworms and the skeleton of a saber-tooth cat from the Holocene era. 

And as the first shovelful of earth settles over my head, I'll lie back with my new friends and my old body and my favorite Emily Dickinson poem and drift away into a peaceful, eternal sleep.