You Have to Dig Deep to Bury Your Daddy by Alan Kelly

1

Walking past reception was always such a task for Mary. The group of heifers from admin, who engaged in regular routines of pampering, pruning, pigging-out and petulance, would all be gathered around discussing their weekend and would invariably attempt to engage her. Mary looked at the floor and walked by quickly . She had never been the kind of woman easily tempted by novelty and catharsis.

With her neck still red from the noose’s kiss, Winnie Ferns, a gangly, flat-faced, dreamy nut of a woman, shouted Mary’s name.

“What is it, Winnie?” Mary asked in a quavering, fragile voice.

Winnie dangled a large envelope at Mary like a fisherman teasing a fish. “A note was left at reception for you.”

Mary gingerly pinched the edge of the offering with her thumb and index finger as if it might bite her. “Thank you.”

Later, Mary sat on a park bench and looked at the envelope. Enclosed within were two curious items. The first was a photo of two children, emaciated and lying face-down with their blond hair matted with dirt. The second was a press-cutting which was about the apparent murder of a teenage boy found in Phoenix Park.

Then Mary noticed a third item: something folded up in a piece of white parchment. She opened it and discovered a Union key with a ragged blue tag containing the letter C and the number 165. A message written on the parchment:

“Failure to adhere to this custom could result in serious consequences”Mary furiously crammed the items into her bag. There had obviously been further developments in the death department. Mary saw that the rain had started.

2

On the way home Mary hummed to herself, trying to shake off her glum mood. She walked a meandering path, not caring that she was sopping wet from the rain. She never carried an umbrella.

Walking up the terrace to her house, Mary turned and saw that a large blue Cadillac was driving her street, toward her. Mary sighed, “Because I could not stop for death, he kindly fucking stops for me.” The car stopped, the door opening by itself. “Get in Mary, we have people to see,” said the chauffer, an impertinent skeleton speaking in dulcet tones. Mary got in and closed the door. The car moved sluggishly through the city. Mary looked at the sky, a pale orange canvass with grey freckles. The car stopped. Mary rolled down the window and observed the life rotting away in a towering estate. “The children are upstairs, Mary,” the skeleton told her. “Of course,” she replied and opened the door. She walked towards the high-rise, blankets of drizzling rain fogging her breath. Mary walked up a spiral staircase and noticed sweet blue flowers struggling past the crude graffiti on the walls. On the first balcony Mary counted the doors, ten in total, no 165. She walked up another flight of stairs, struggling to catch her breath. C was apparently the last balcony. She rested on the second flight, looking down at car carcasses and old shopping trolleys. She realized this high-rise hadn’t been occupied in a while. She went up to the final floor.

3

Outside 165 Mary held her skinny hand over her mouth to keep from throwing up. The entire balcony was peppered with small animal parts: eight headless pigeons, several cats with their legs removed, two skinned puppies, bleak moments. Mary put the key in the lock and turned the doorknob. The door was stuck so she threw her whole body against it before it opened. The hallway was dark and damp andMary thought, for want of a better cliché, deathly quiet. She went in, kicking the door shut. Mary once fell for an American gardener. She never noticed the defect but her mother, the quintessential town gossip who always spoke seamlessly, quite often about nothing at all did, and her father, a moody man of dark quiets, ignored him completely. He was aspiring to be an anthropologist and she had been house-sitting for her Aunt Jean when they chanced to pass. He showed up at her Aunt Jean’s door with a dazzling bald patch and a spade and she was smitten. They discussed matters horticultural for almost several weeks until her daddy intervened. Her phone rang.

4

“Yes what now?” she asked the caller

“Mary I see it’s raining cats and dogs in parts.” It was The Undertaker. She rolled her eyes . . . “I know that” she replied witheringly. “Well don’t step on a poodle,” he laughed. Her thoughts gripped the word ‘kill’ and betrayed her by quietly latching on to the word ‘fee.’ “Idiot!” she hung upSomething brushed her leg and she screeched like Janet Leigh. Looking into the dark, she saw something scurry into the sitting room. She went in pursuit. When she was inside, the children sat on the floor by a gas heater. They looked up at her and she smiled, a smile trying to be delicate. The stench tasted terrible. “Who are you?” they asked together.“I am the death collector and you’re my assignment for today,” She told them.“What do you mean by that?” they asked.

5

“Don’t be asking such questions. You must take me as I am.” She was not one to digressThey looked at each other smiling and said “But what do you mean?” She was getting annoyed and nauseated and needed a sherry. “I don’t know,” she said, and she didn’t. Holding out her hands, she told them again, “We have to go.” They jumped up and she saw how hideously bony they were, like the baby from Faust had grown up and discovered it had a twin. “We have to bring Sigourney Weaver,” and she realised that it must’ve been some mongrel that had run under her feet earlier. “Where is Sigourney?” she asked and they pointed at the ceiling above her head. Oh, they hadn’t done something awful to another small animal, she wondered, but when she turned to look she let out a small scream like Kate Jackson and she knew why there had been so many dismembered animals out front. The things dead children will do in their spare time. A spider (was it?) about the size of a small boar was balanced on top of the door, made up from the remains of dead animals. Eight pigeon heads looked her over (guggle, guggle), the legs a composite of cat dog and other creatures. She thought she’d lose her stomach on the floor but she found there was something really quite tender about it.

6

“How, may I ask are we supposed to get this to the car?” Mary asked, pointing at Sigourney Weaver. The Dead Children grinned. The children used a discarded shopping trolley and a filthy curtain Mary had torn from the window to carry and cover Sigourney. They pushed it across the soggy grass and Mary looked about to see if any curtains twitched in the other high-rises. The place was empty, she thought. It reminded her of some forgotten graveyard; if you stood still enough you would probably feel the restless presence of past generations, wriggling away like worms in the dirt. It unnerved her. She opened the boot of the Cadillac. “Help please,” she said to the dead children gripping one side of the trolley, the children grabbing the other. “Now, one, two, three, TURN!” They tilted the trolley, Sigourney sliding into the boot. She slammed it shut and threw the children into the backseat. “Now where?” she asked the driver. They drove back through the city. Mary thought she could see a partially skinned man wrapped in Christmas lights, hanging upside down from the GPO. She read that morning in one of the tabloids that a man had been murdered and obscenely mutilated by two teenagers he’d taken in, and then wrapped up in Christmas decorations and fairy lights. She was tired, mind playing tricks on her. The Cadillac turned left onto Parnell Street, driving towards Capal Street and swerved right into Little Britain street. “Where are we going?” she asked, adjusting her scarf. On an apartment balcony a blonde woman danced, her garb leaving little to the imagination, her intestines swinging from above like a meaty bastardisation of a Rapunzel rendition.

7

Cheap, thought Mary. The blonde sucked on her finger and waved at the Cadillac. “Another?” observed The Skeleton. Irritated, Mary opened her purse and looked for the envelope. She reached in and found a card with a honeyed scrawl.

Kiffany Boston-Gifford

Babi Sioux PR

Email: BeKiffed@gmail.com

“One I overlooked,” sighed Mary. “Obviously.” Mary waved up at Kiffany BostonGifford. Kiffany smiled and replied “I’ll throw down the keys, sweet,” disappearing off the balcony and returning moments later. Mary made her way up to the apartment on the second floor. When she went inside, Kiffany was applying make-up. “Have you seen this episode, sweet?” Kiffany asked. A wonderful womanly symphony if ever there was one, thought Mary, even if her entrails were on the floor. Startled by Kiffany’s question, Mary asked peevishly “What episode?” “Doesn’t anyone watch this show anymore?” Mary’s eyes followed Kiffany’s to the flat screen television on the wall. A rerun of Dynasty was playing – Alexis Carrington and that haggard blonde at loggerheads. “No,” retorted Mary matter-of-factly. “I only watch a small amount of television.” Kiffany threw her large intestine over her shoulder and declared, “Out is the new in, don’t you think?” “Speaking of which, let’s go,” Mary said to her. “Just a sec, sweet. I need to get my Louis Vuitton.”

Back in the Cadillac, Mary switched the radio on. “Play some Carly Simon, sweet,” demanded Tiffany. Mary ignored her. A holistic healer was telling a mildly interested interviewer that he assisted at an exorcism somewhere in Eastern Europe. Mary chuckled. The interviewee said that the exorcist told him that he had to be ‘slain in spirit’ and subsequently he had suffered convulsions. . Mary smiled at this, that the cast-outs had taken up residence in him. “Prize fool, everyone knows lowlife spirits only make home in the bodies of celebrities.” Mary laughed so loudly that the dead children poked their heads into the front of the car. The Cadillac stopped at Phoenix Park. “Another?” she asked, already knowing the answer.

Mary got out of the Cadillac, the sky crawling strings of muddy colours. She walked over the green, through some fields into the belly of the park, until she came to a public toilet with a red wrought-iron gate. She tried opening it. “Locked.” She shook it but it wouldn’t budge. She walked a little further and came to an empty car park. A teenage Boy was lying still in the centre. She went a little closer and he sat up.“Awake” she asked and he turned to look at her. The thing she noticed first were his dirty eyes, before his throat gave her a gummy smile . . . “Who the fuck are you?” was the first thing that crawled out of his open wound.

9

“Be quick!” Mary told the boy, looking behind her at the sky. A crescent moon was now sleeping just above the trees. “I kept saying that I wanted to go home. I kept saying that.” The boy was rambling, crawling about on the slick black asphalt. His eyes blinked frantically and his tobacco stained teeth bit down intermittently on the tip of his tongue between rants. The Guinness Factory smoke tunnels were punching a hole in the clouds above the Liffey River in the near distance. “I told him that my ma wanted me back,” It was getting darker in the park, as dark as dread itself. Mary’s phone rang. “Yes?” she answered her voice no more than a fracture.“Bring the boy, the children, Kiffany and Sigourney Weaver to me.” It was The Undertaker. Agreeing, Mary hung up and that was when the Cadillac’s light arrived. “BE QUICK!” She shouted, taking hold of his arm “I do NOT have time for this boy!” the boy walked quickly to the car. Mary threw herself down in the passenger seat. “Where now Mary?”

“To him, always to him” she whispered.

The Cadillac drove back to the city, past the Obelisk, beyond a belt of dead trees. The children remained quiet in the backseat but Sigourney thrashed about in the boot.

10

Mary turned up the radio and could feel sleep calling her from home. Her small comfortable room of panelled doors and pockets of glorious shadows, her bed, Murial Spark’s Jean Brodie to take to bed with. The city was still, falling rain barely catching the lights of closing shops.The Cadillac stopped. The Mortuary looked like a sad broken shed. Mary sat in the car and watched a while. She switched off the radio, gave the skeleton a half smile and got out of the car.

Above the mortuary The Undertaker’s receptionist, Lyna Trash, hovered twelve feet deep in the dark air. The dead kids, the boy and Kiffany stayed behind Mary.

“He is waiting Mary and he is NOT happy!” she hollered down, her short red cropped hair effervescent on her head against the sky.

“I’ll see to that for myself Lyna!” Mary hollered back and took the dead down to meet The Undertaker. Looking back over her shoulder she shouted at Lyna, “You can do something with Sigourney Weaver.”

The melange of murder victims where led down to the morgue. “I’m glad you adhered, Mary. ” The crippling hum of The Undertaker’s rasp slithered out of the dark, a still but thrashing darkness.

“Here are the children and others. Lyna is taking care of Sigourney.” Mary scratched her arm. The Undertaker smiled and stared at her for what seemed like centuries before he said anything.

11

“I see. This,” he said as he pointed at the dead folk, “is not nearly enough.” Mary just looked at him and mumbled, “I’m tired.”

“You have an obligation, Mary. An obligation to do as I say. You Have to Dig Deep to Bury your Daddy!” he screamed. “ Remember, adhere to my custom or the only other option is . . . well I think you know what that is,” and she did know, only too well.“Go now,” he finished, “Go on.” Before leaving the mortuary she looked back at the day’s dead. The Undertaker was placing them in their coffins. Her eyes became glass and she hurried out.

Mary had burned her father alive and was delivered to this limbo. Burned her daddy and she would never eschew this fate. Those who kill are condemned to collect other victims. She knew she would never dig deep enough to bury her daddy, that she would continue calling on those who died violently until she had reached her quota and The Undertaker was satisfied. But a part far deep down in her own soul knew that would never happen.

Mary sat up in bed with Jean Brodie but couldn’t concentrate, so she put on her dressing gown and went into her small kitchen. She made herself a cup of tea, using two bags instead of one and added a capful of sherry. She sipped it, but when she turned to sit at her kitchen table she was confronted with a whisper of a girl. A whisper of a girl violently shaking her head.

12

The pale whisper looked at Mary “In New York, one never notices the rain.”

“Another bloody one,” Mary spat.Mary took two strides across the kitchen to stop the girl shaking, but when Mary’s arm met the girl’s arm she dissolved into sand.

“What” Mary shouted at herself before noticing a hospital tag on her kitchen floor. She squatted down, picked it up and read it carefully.

It read Mandy Moon.