With a writing prompt like that picture, you’d think it would all be clear sailing, right? Well, maybe it’s been too long since I had a holiday but I couldn’t conjure blue skies and an idyllic ocean. Instead, I wrote something which valiantly tries to put the fun back in funeral.
As it turned out, that was fine.
While my persistence hasn’t actually paid off – I did not, after all, win the cash prize – I am pleased to say that my 22nd entry into the monthly Furious Fiction challenge from the Australian Writers’ Centre did manage to get longlisted.
The challenge for September was to write <500 words in 55 hours, inspired by the boat image, with a first word that began with the letters SHO, and included the words SCORE, SLICE, SPRINKLE, STAMP and SWITCH (or plural or past tense variations).
Here’s mine:
That Dress
“Shoddy coffin.”
For one awful moment Chloe thinks Liam’s going to rap his knuckles on the wood in the funeral equivalent of kicking a car’s tyres while you’re talking the salesman down.
He leans closer to the corpse, frowning.
“Reckon Bec remembered to switch Auntie Maeve’s diamonds for paste? These are pretty bling.”
She nudges his elbow.
“Respect, Liam, we’re supposed to be paying our respects.”
He shrugs. “Chill, love, Auntie Maeve won’t mind.”
Her black high heels pinch her toes as she tries to think of something nice to say about his great-aunt other than that the old lady made a great pavlova.
“Is that the same outfit she wore to our wedding?” Liam says.
Chloe has been trying not to look at the body. It seems indecent, somehow, to have the top half of the coffin propped open. She’s only been to two other funerals and in one the coffin was so covered in flowers you could have mistaken it for a florist’s counter. The other was a memorial service, with just a portrait on an easel.
She lets her gaze slide up the side of the admittedly cheap-looking pine box, glance over the ruched satin lining and bounce off a slice of turquoise blue dress just visible under a bouquet of lilies. She takes in the other details in a rapid series of ocular jerks, like she’s playing a macabre game of pinball and doesn’t want to raise her eyes to see how close she is to the high score.
Or, in this case, to another glimpse of Auntie Maeve’s unnatural, lurid make-up.
“Yes, same outfit.”
Chloe reminds herself not to speak ill of the dead, especially when you’re right next to them.
Liam shakes his head.
“The one that looked like she’d just tangoed off the set of ‘Dancing with the Stars’?” he says. The sides of his mouth hitch up. “The backless one?”
“That one,” Chloe growls, since no bride wants to have her wedding dress upstaged by their groom’s octogenarian great-aunt, but no-one had known that Auntie Maeve had celebrated her eightieth birthday by getting a tramp stamp tattoo… until she wore that dress.
Liam grins and starts waving his hands around.
“Seriously? With the plunging neckline and the big frothy white fishtail flounces, and the faux pearls sprinkled all over it? How did they fit the damn thing into the coffin?”
Chloe swats one of his hands and says, “Don’t be mean. She said it reminded her of cruising the Greek islands: the blue ocean, the white foam behind the ship.”
“Perfect dress for a wake then,” he says and laughs.