Contest #169 shortlist ⭐️

70 comments

Horror Black Happy

This story contains themes or mentions of physical violence, gore, or abuse.

It's a mortuary fact that dead bodies should not be buried without a banana. Most of the dead people around our town drink too much coffee and spout their mouths out in public, then they just die, die, and the explosive parts of their personality gather energy.


For example, Hilda Benderhole used to have the most terrible intergestion about the way my dog urinated all over her flowers. We all know that flowers need the dogs, especially in a drought. When Hilda died, her husband wouldn't even use those flowers for her gravesite. Bad Muju.


Well, Hilda rang the bell a few days later. (Our town still puts bell wire in the caskets because we had that issue with the last Mayor). Hilda rang and rang the bell, which is now electronic and requires the AAA batteries laid down in mismatched polarities. The batteries resemble Charlie Chocolate's grandparents who all shared one bed, face to feet, so that they never got the Senior version of Frisky.


Hilda is buzzing that bell for hours and hours. The bellwire goes to the Police because they are paid to care. Only our Police were being loaned out to neighboring Salinas because they actually use them while the people of Purdy do not.


We all have weapons at all times because we call them tools. We call guns 'food makers' , knives are 'food carvers', box blade knives are 'food openers' etc. etc. We cannot steal from one another since that incident with the church plate and the fingers that came off with lopers. Our town doesn't believe in bail, defense lawyers or most of the Last Constitution. We like the 1215 Magna Carta version that was easier to read.


Next, Hilda rang her husband. After two days of waiting, Ol' Joe Benderhole was out at the local coffeehouse, showing his farmer tan to the ladies and asking for extra whip cream on his fancy Euro-trash coffee. Man needed some intimacy after forty years with Hilda, we get it. But why does Ol' Joe Benderhole have to ask for extra whip cream on the coffee? He licks it slow as he talks, hoping that someone likes his technique. The man is disgusting. My kids are always watching.


The circuit from Hilda's coffin went to the Police, then her husband, and finally the church. Our church doesn't exactly meet daily, (unless you want to stab your spouse in their sleep or something). We _might_ have a potluck on a wednesday because there is one homeless guy in town and he's too proud to take our leftovers. This inspires my children to say "Ham-oit doesn't eat them and so why should we?"


I tap their knuckles with a wooden spoon and say: "Spaghetti taste better on the second day!"


Everyone _knows_ that, except Ham-oit who has no refrigerator.


Hilda is ringing her bell during the Daily Show, and then the Tonight Show, and then the Late-Late-Show. She hasn't figured out that people need down time. The times of the day when they just zone out. This is the reason that door-to-door salesmen fail in our town. We are all very busy now that entertainment is streaming. We might even wet the couch if the plot is thick enough.


Doo-To-Door Upholstery cleaners do very well in our town. Jimmy is a former convict and we trust that we can leave the house and let him clean all our urine soaked sofas. He can even go clean around my wife's jewelery in the master bedroom. He can see where the family does its business. He is mostly cleaning around our town's hound dogs. A properly trained dog can put eighty pounds of affection on Jimmy as soon as he puts the wrong thing in his cleaning jumpsuit. But Jimmy's Convict Carpet & Upholstery Service doesn't have to ring the doorbell. He doesn't have to knock because he is so busy that everyone meets his appointments faithfully.


After several days of not eating, ringing her stupid bell like we were her servants, Hilda is probably fishing around for some water. The Soledad Prison officials tell us that people can withstand solitary confinement for a nearly a week before they get some really psychotic dreams. The Boy Scouts say that you only get three days without water.


We listen to the Boy Scouts more than the prison and always put in a brass carafe that was used for the monthly Last Supper, the um... communion thing (a pyx). We usually buy another brass pyx on Amazon after a death. We used to just burry people dry but there was that situation with the Steven's boy, who had become a Buddhist. He didn't tell anyone he was a Buddhist, but we read his facebook post after death, had to exhume the kid, add 4 items to the casket to go with the 4 elements of the Earth, rebury the kid, and get a Buddhist Master from the city.


It was too complicated for most of us but we like to be 'Thorough.' That's how the Boy Scouts got to earn community badges by filling brass carafes from the Last Supper, tossing them into the coffins with a lid, and then they had to string up the bells.


One of the kids going for his electronics badge had the clever idea to only let the bells ring in one place at a time. If Hilda had been buzzing "I'M ALIVE, I"M ALIVE" all night to all 200 families, I think we coule have just cut the wires and let us all get some sleep. Some people should stay dead like that.


Instead, I wsa trying to avoid cleaning the master bedroom. Even as a grown-arse-man the thought of spending hours to dust, vacuum, windows, hospital corners, fold clothes (My Lord, I'll just take those single use painter overalls of plastic). Except my kid is an environmentalist so I have to fold clothes for hours.


Yeah. I'll take a second job and get an Oh-Pare (Aupair, whateva) because you can run them at the federal wage and only let them out 2 weekends each months. It's like old school slaving for people that arrive from France.


Anyways, the red bar in the garage was blinking. I could see it from the second story master-bedroom-window because the other direction had laundry. "Oh my. That looks tantalizing."


A person needs an emergency excuse to get out of laundry with my wife. Dead People? Dead neighbor Hilda Benderhole was enough. For I am a man of caring.


Drove down to our cemetery, past the guard at the Solid Waste Landfill which is the only legal place our county allows dead people to remain. Showed the guard my shovel so I didn't have to weigh in and weigh out. It makes funeral processions very long. Especially if there is a person taking his wood scraps in a trailer but he hasn't covered his load; amateur. The funeral backs up all the way into highway 1 sometimes.


I'm trying to remember which plot is Hilda Benderhole, born in 1959, beloved person to someone, dead this day without children. The icon on her headstone is a flower. That's insane since we didn't give her any flowers because she said my dog deflowered her prcious flowers.


I take the pickaxe out of the truck. Hilda was a mean person and so we just put concrete over most of her body. Used the cheap six hundred dollar pine box because "the rental coffin" that is like a Cadillac of Aluminum at twelve thousand dollars and has a trap door on the bottom -- It wasn't natural enough for Mr. Benderhole.


We left the proper air gaps, which are a county regulation. Left the carafe of water, the Scouts set up the wire, and the mortician forgot to put a banana in her bum. Joe Benderhole was too cheap to pay for the banana. I suddenly realized that as I was sledging away on the sides of the tomb so that I didn't hit Hilda in the face directly. If anyone needed the banana, it was Hilda, because that woman must have woke up with a some terse words, and besides, even the homeless need to eat.


So I got a little air hole picked away. Because whoever 'touched it last' is responsible. (That's a real law in the trades. It's not just for kids anymore). I pecked the air hole so gently after getting half the sides done. It was a carefully timed event because the sound of that woman's voice makes me angry.


I said, "Hold your tongue for a few minutes. You don't want to distract me. This is neighbor Tommy. "


By her silence, she must have understood that there were residual feelings that must have came back to life when i found out she wasn't dead. Instead, she pushed a small knife through the air hole. It was that kind of knife that a person gets at the Dollar Fifty store. The kind that used to cost a dollar, before China and The Fed got together give people a bad day; inflation.


I didn't want to touch the thing. It was evidence. Evidence that Joe Benderhole was drinking his whip cream coffee too fast. He should have stabbed her deeper. "No one likes a half ass, Joe!"


Hilda, oh (sweet) Hildegard, the dearly departed, she wiggled that pumpkin carver knife over and over, obvious to anyone at the dump/graveyard that she wanted it out of her coffin/crypt. She wanted it into the hands of someone that should bring her justice.


I looked at my puppy dog that liked Hilda's Flowers so much. I let him come over to where I was working (because I whistled and he came) and then I put a little beef jerky from the pocket so he would stay in one place.


I said "deficate. DEF-I_CATE!" but the hound just looked like I was ordering him to do something that my wife would yell about.

October 22, 2022 02:37

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70 comments

Amanda Lieser
14:22 Nov 18, 2022

Hey Tommy! Congratulations again on getting a second shortlist! This one was a bit funnier than your other piece. I really love the way that you created such defining characters and I was surprised by the r ending. A banana just seemed perfect. My favorite line: The batteries resemble Charlie Chocolate's grandparents who all shared one bed, face to feet, so that they never got the Senior version of Frisky. Nice job!

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Tommy Goround
16:33 Nov 18, 2022

That is just a nice paragraph to wake up to. :) Thank you for giving me a smile.

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Philip Ebuluofor
15:54 Nov 06, 2022

This second reading is even more enjoyable. Congrats Tommy, you are in a class of your own.

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Graham Kinross
10:36 Nov 06, 2022

"Bad Muju," Juju? The image of an old man tonguing a coffee, disgusting doesn't quite do that justice. Does spaghetti taste better on the second day? Your description of the dog disciplining the convict cleaner is really sharp. I like that. "I think we coule have just cut the wires," could. "Instead, I wsa trying to avoid," was. Typed this one in a rush for the deadline? "only let them out 2 weekends each months," month. The foreign nanny thing is bullshit, so is the lower minimum wage for waiting staff who then rely on the honesty of c...

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Graham Kinross
10:45 Nov 06, 2022

Did the MC say dedicate at the end so you didn't have to swear? Personally I would have preferred the swear word, and I think there's a better chance the dog would have understood it.

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Madison Durst
16:15 Nov 14, 2022

no one asked you for your opinion if you don't like the story then don't comment you, hater, it was an excellent story and you ¨ correcting?¨ no one asked smart ass

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Graham Kinross
21:11 Nov 14, 2022

I did like the story. I was giving constructive feedback. There’s no need for insulting me personally. Tommy has shown me the same courtesy of pointing out things in my own stories and giving suggestions on how I could improve them.

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Madison Durst
16:18 Nov 15, 2022

well then I apologize I thought you were criticizing but, I don't regret what I said. so I'm sorry.

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Tommy Goround
17:23 Nov 04, 2022

Thank you all for the very encouraging comments. If you like this story please check out the audio version "Blue Marble Storytellers." It has a sexy Australian host. If this story did just not work for you... Please check out the other 30 stories on that website.. some have professional actors that do the voiceovers. There is one awesome lady that actually does a southern angry woman's voice so well. Kevin Broccoli nails the diction. Please note that my particular story is done after some cheap whiskey and several practices in falsetto. ...

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Dominique Finch
05:37 Aug 19, 2023

I love this story! So clever and funny!

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Tara Leigh Parks
16:09 Feb 27, 2023

"The batteries resemble Charlie Chocolate's grandparents who all share one bed, face to feet, so that they never got the Senior version of Frisky." Hilarious. "Fancy Eurotrash coffee." Yes. "A person needs an emergency excuse to get out of laundry with my wife. Dead People? Dead neighbor Hilda Benderhole was enough. For I am a man of caring." Love. Tommy, I listened to your reading of this and it's incredible. I just found out about Blue Marble because I read through the comments here. Anyway, I like the idea of people reading stories an...

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Tommy Goround
16:32 Feb 28, 2023

That is very kind. In the audio you cannot hear all the times I whisper because... I guess it couldn't be heard.... So The whispers had to be amplified. Came out kind of weird. Hajha

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Wally Schmidt
03:07 Feb 25, 2023

I read the first line with interest-It's a mortuary fact that dead bodies should not be buried without a banana.- and I wanted to keep reading. Loved the zaniness and the humour here. Still smiling.

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Charlie Murphy
22:55 Feb 24, 2023

Can you read my new story, The Wrath of Roachzilla?

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Emre Gül
06:21 Dec 15, 2022

What does ham - oit mean?

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Tommy Goround
16:12 Dec 16, 2022

This is the English pronunciation of potentially a French name. "Ham-wah"

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Emre Gül
06:06 Dec 15, 2022

can i translate the story for a magazine?

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Tommy Goround
16:10 Dec 16, 2022

Which language? You have permission to translate this story and publish it in a non-english place. Also known as a one-time use permit. You have 120 days to use this story. Contact me if you need an extension.

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Emre Gül
19:32 Dec 16, 2022

Turkish, thank you for allowing.🌸

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Tommy Goround
00:32 Dec 17, 2022

Sweet. My people are from Pergamon, a few years back. Let me know if the double entendres don't work in translation.

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Mike Panasitti
03:58 Nov 16, 2022

I just heard your read this on Blue Marble Storytellers. Your voice is unique and lends an ironic seriousness to the the generally zany narrative. The fact that this story was shortlisted gives me renewed faith in the judging process at Reedsy. Congratulations!

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Tommy Goround
14:47 Nov 16, 2022

Thank you :)

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Tommy Goround
04:00 Nov 18, 2022

I love how they often have people with zero comments and zero attention (get shortlisted or win). There are literally 400 stories almost every week to read. So the ability of the judges to find treasure is pretty amazing.

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Madison Durst
16:19 Nov 14, 2022

I love the story! it's amazing and congratulations!

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Tommy Goround
16:41 Feb 28, 2023

(thank you Madison. Sorry I didn't respond earlier. I have no excuses. Laundry)

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Story Time
17:02 Nov 09, 2022

The opening line was just perfect, Tommy. Taught me exactly how to read the story. I also thought you closed it out with a great deal of satisfaction for the reader. Good job.

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Tommy Goround
17:11 Nov 09, 2022

Grateful tidings, kevin

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Jeannette Miller
21:30 Nov 07, 2022

I love the humor and voice of this story so much. I can see why it was shortlisted! Congratulations :) This had me chuckling from the opening to the closing.

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Tommy Goround
22:43 Nov 07, 2022

Do you hear a Bronx accent or Minnesota when you read it?

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Jeannette Miller
15:40 Nov 09, 2022

Ha! Minnesota if I had to choose. I was thinking more middle like Kansas. It reminded me of the people my Grandpa knew in a super small town of Uniontown, Kansas. I could totally see this unfolding there :)

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Tommy Goround
16:58 Nov 09, 2022

Pillow-math is north of eugene. Those are my favorite people out of five states in the northwest.

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Jeannette Miller
00:27 Nov 10, 2022

They're pretty good people :)

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AnneMarie Miles
02:59 Nov 05, 2022

Things I loved: -the opening line -the whole premise of a pull wire and why the town needed one because of that poor incident with the mayor -Jimmy's Convict Carpet & Upholstery Service -Dollar Fifty, inflation is a bitch not even the dollar tree can escape -demanding the dog deficate -took me til the end to connect the title, but yeah, anything to get out of laundry 😂 Congratulations again! 🎉

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Tommy Goround
04:08 Nov 05, 2022

Namah-stay Thank you for spending the time to type or copy paste the things that did work. Hilda is blowing kisses.

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Michał Przywara
20:37 Nov 04, 2022

Ha! What a killer opening line. And then I completely forgot about the banana until it came back :) I'm getting a strong sense of irritation here. Irritation and inconvenience. We don't like irritating Hildas. We don't like being inconvenienced by dead bells, so we send them to the cops instead of the whole town. We don't like being interrupted while streaming. But on the other hand, being interrupted while doing laundry is okay :) I also completely forgot what the prompt was, until the knife made its lovely appearance. It recast the who...

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Tommy Goround
04:12 Nov 05, 2022

Your best lines: "killer line" on murder story... Banana "came back." (That's so naughty, Mr. Prize-wara.) Re: "half ass" I had not considered that her husband must have poked her in the dark place. :) Thank you kindly for the words of encouragement.

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Willie Tee
19:58 Nov 04, 2022

Great story. I’m not sure how I missed it before the awards, but it was definitely worthy of the accolades. I enjoyed the references and commentary. The world you built was only outdone by the story within it. Great conclusion after the climax.

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Tommy Goround
04:13 Nov 05, 2022

Thank you, Willie. I still loved your ending.

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Thom With An H
17:13 Nov 04, 2022

Congrats, well deserved shortlist. I am a big fan of Tommy.

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Tommy Goround
17:18 Nov 04, 2022

You're just saying that because I loved you first. :) So that story about your cowboy... You know... Approaching a woman in a bar the correct way. That story is actually the most memorable for me out of the three. Even though the quilt one is maybe three or four months ago. Good schtuff.

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Thom With An H
17:24 Nov 04, 2022

We are charter members of the Tommy and Thom mutual admiration society. Are there monthly dues? 😀

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17:10 Nov 04, 2022

Called it 🏆 Double win this week! Impressive ❤️

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Tommy Goround
17:16 Nov 04, 2022

Psst... The lottery over here is 1.2 billion.(sic) I need your help because I never play. (Thank you for the good vibes)

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17:19 Nov 04, 2022

Looking forward to reading more from you! Thanks for recording the story before you get famous ❤️🏆😎

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17:10 Nov 04, 2022

Called it 🏆 Double win this week! Impressive ❤️

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