Chapter 13
Chapter thirteen
Bess
"Hello, Bas."
Basil Alexander Everett is, as usual, silent as the grave.
"Jeanette and Lutek couldn't be here today, so it's just me." This is no different from any other visit, but I like to pretend they could be here if they wanted to.
Jeanette and Lutek find my grave visits somewhat morbid. They are, however, happy to give me messages to pass on to their former headmaster. Like me – like most local children – their time at Port Derrum Primary School was not often a happy one.
The dog turd has gone from the grass in front of Basil's headstone. Hopefully it liquefied as requested, but most likely it was cleaned up by a well-meaning but wholly ignorant groundsperson.
What it does have is a headstone offering courtesy of Jeanette. Other graves sport flowers, some real, most plastic. Bas' headstone now has a jar of bloated rat suspended in the brown water it drowned in nestled at its foot.
She found it in a bucket of rainwater in the garden and immediately thought of Headmaster Everett.
I offered to make a present of it.
Today, there is not a single suggestion of imminent rain. I have all the time in the world. "Hey, Bas. Remember when you said if ever there was a case for eugenics, I was it?"
I pause to allow him time to reflect on the abhorrence of telling anyone that, let alone a child.
"Well, I'm very happy to prove you wrong and tell you I sold five pieces of art and made eighteen and a half thousand pounds in one week. One week, Bas! Imagine that. And all because of my soaring popularity with the masses."
I imagine his hollow, worm-ridden skull imploding with the weight of this news.
"And it's had a flow on effect courtesy of our online store.
Sales are up four hundred percent and climbing.
Jeanette's sold all but one of her new buttock butter dishes and Lutek's completely sold out of bird bookmarks. "
I pull out my phone. "Speaking of Jeanette, I have a message from her, which I've taken the liberty of paraphrasing to give it a little more.
..colour." Opening the Notes app I read: "Hi Basil.
It's Jeanette Gilbert here. The one you said was a travesty of girlhood, do you remember?
I thought you'd like reminding that I'm a raging Ellen Degenerate.
Though I prefer the term 'vagitarian' due to the high amount of Vitamin C in my diet.
And I'm not talking oranges here, Basil.
So I take your contempt for 'boyish' girls and raise you a whole liberated sexual identity, you haemorrhoid of a man. "
I raise my head and grin at the grave. "She sure told you, Bas." I put the phone back in my pocket.
"Lutek didn't give me a verbal message to pass on to you today. Only this." I pick up his air rifle from the ground and hold it out towards Basil's headstone.
Having the usually mild-mannered Lutek suggest I take it with me was somewhat surprising, but perhaps this new level of sales has given him a confidence he should have felt his whole life were it not for the man whose grave lies in front of me.
"So, I'll let it do the speaking for him."
I aim the gun at the jar and take the first shot.