Daily Flash Fiction Challenge

The questions that follow saying I’m a gravedigger are, Do you see the bodies? Do your arms get tired? What’s the grosses thing you’ve seen?

Yes.

No, because it’s the 21st century and we use a backhoe.

Leaky bodies.

Most people are familiar with burials and cremation, but not wall crypts. On my way to work, I have my windows down and smell something sickly sweet and pungent. The smell is weird and mixed with dewy grass and wet cattails. I roll up the windows and it doesn’t help.
Pulling into the parking lot, Joseph is sitting in his golf cart with a clipboard in one hand and coffee in another, smirking. I pull up near him and roll down the window and he asks, You smell that? And I notice it’s stronger.

I ask what it is and he says, “We have a problem.”

He points his head back and I follow it to see black and brown sludge sliding down the crypt wall behind him. He says, Leaky body. He’s smiling. This is his first job for the last twenty-six years. I once asked him if we buried the bodies at night and he wore that same smile.

“Get up to the barn, grab a golf cart, and meet me back here. I already have everything we need.”

Place a body in a crypt without cutting out the drain plug inside, and the crypt becomes a microwave. The body pops and fluids seep out and smells for miles. Buzzards encircle us. We’re wearing hazmat suits. He’s scrubbing with bleach and I’m scrubbing with boric acid. I’m sweating behind a respirator and my eyes are tearing. Joseph keeps chuckling. I keep gagging and thinking about how this is what happens to a corpse. This is us.