Chapter 14
The Tomb of Saint Elliot
It didn’t take long to locate Saint Elliot’s tomb among the thousand others in the mausoleum garden. In addition to being one of the morgue’s first aboveground sepulcher (and justly overrun with enchanting emerald lichen), it’s also the only crypt with a particularly decrepit wooden door and a welcome mat featuring a grotesquely splendorous ladybug wearing a Flemish straw hat.
According to Slug, a caravanning fortuneteller ordered the tomb’s erection for five hundred dollars, cash. However, before she could assess the final edifice, Madam Saint Elliot perished in the 4th great Merryhill brothelfire of 1769. At that point the crypt was already 92% finished but without a body to entomb (save for a fistful of ash) and no one alive or willing to acquest it, the tomb remained incomplete and unoccupied for some time. The 21st century yielded a couple of odd girls who commandeered it for a clubhouse before the morgue finally converted it into a walk-in gardening shed. It might’ve taken a decade and some change but the prodigal daughters of Saint Elliot’s tomb had finally returned.
“I don’t recall it being so weensy,” sneers Nora, frowning loudly.
“I can’t believe it still reeks rotting fruit and rat turds,” Slug coughs plugging her nose.
Slug’s leg fires forth like a Mark 14 torpedo, bashing the crypt door inward nearly off its hinges.
Nora gazes vacantly into the abyss beyond the tomb, like a deep sea diver floating just above the Mariana trench.
“If a ladder and a shovel’s all your looking for, then you need not look any further. Just make sure they’re returned before the groundskeeper needs them.”
“Why? Is he deranged?”
“Whose to say? He’s only been here a few weeks or so but will only speak to Pop and Baba gives him instructions via post-it-notes. I suspect the man might be a Lennie Smalls type.”
“Well, I wasn’t planning on getting stroked by the groundskeeper today but now I’ll make extra-super-double sure he doesn't.
Slug doesn’t laugh.
“This shouldn’t take long,” Nora decrees, “I’ll be alright. You should take your place with the procession and remember, only shoot from the waistline up and if anything emotional happens exploit it like a tragedy.”
Slug’s finger staves Nora by the shoulder.
“If that’s what you want me to do, and you really think it’ll help then I’ll do it. But I’m going to need some reassurance that this’ll all serve some point and that your onions haven’t just caramelized over into a madness salad.”
“An all-onion salad would be madness, but mad I am not. Cooking with nitro? Oh most certainly but you should know by now that I pose no immediate threat to myself or others. I just have to have something presentable for tommorow because officer Fuckface Hiddlestón took it upon himself to erase all our video from existence!”
Nora finds herself unable to read Slug’s face, looking like a mask of pure grief and solemnness, like she’s on the verge of tears.
“Whatever you say,” sighs Slug, “I’ll catch you at the service.”
Slug’s azure dreadlock turns and sway behind her like a wad of hydrilla caught in the current and with that, once again, Nora is alone. A twinge of guilt, or perhaps even an itch, prickles along the inside of her throat but she refuses to let something as trivial as emotion-based acid reflux get in her way. Not when she’s so close.
Nora breaths in a deep, harsh, breath of air and ash before leaping over the ladybug welcome mat, plunging into the darkness like an unfettered anchor, let loose into the abyss.
. . . . . . . . . . . . .
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