Bones, Only Bones
A Skeleton Triptych
1.
A skeleton who doesn’t have a partner lies down on the beach next to a jellyfish and whistles an empty-chested sigh. “Food became hard to digest, so I stopped eating.”
“Lucky me, I have only one orifice,” says the jellyfish. “Stuff in, waste out.” But its polite pipe is drowned by the skeleton’s clatter-chatter: “My idol, whose name I don’t recall. Her grave is awkwardly situated, on a hill. She’s taking her time decaying. I can’t hang around indefinitely…”
The jellyfish dreams of catching mini shrimp in ocean depths. When it wakes, the skeleton is still talking. “Don’t you ever shut up?” the jellyfish asks.
Clish clash. “I believe in everlasting love. Although I never found it. When young, my acted-upon impulses caused offence, so I learned not to act upon impulse. Haha.”
Wish wash, the jellyfish thinks one moment you’re beautiful and graceful, next moment cast up on the beach, a lump of jelly. Oceanic sadness.
The skeleton wants to put its hand in the jellyfish. “If you do that, I’ll die,” says the jellyfish.
“Romantic, though.”
“Not in a nice way.”
Hish hush, the tide comes in. “Ow!” — the skeleton leaps up. The jellyfish is lifted and cradled. “Goodbye!” it calls.
2.
A skeleton can’t stop doom scrolling. It makes an appointment to see a life coach who suggests hypnotherapy. “No thank you,” says the skeleton.
“Was your death traumatic?”
“No more so than anyone else’s.”
3.
When you’re a skeleton, you take a nap on your parents’ grave. The grave is kind to bones, unlike your orthopedic mattress.
When you’re a skeleton lying on a grave, other cemetery visitors point and exclaim. “Look! How weird. Perhaps badgers dug it up.”
When badgers dig up graves, they scavenge gold rings from arthritic joints and sell them in the Jewellery Quarter, to fund political fightback campaigns. Badgers object to being stupidly scapegoated for bovine tuberculosis. They’ve started to hate humans.
When wild creatures learn to hate, it’s the End Times.
When it’s the End Times, you visit your parents’ grave and wait till dusk. At dusk they climb out, shrieking. Dad makes ‘jokes’ (see above, parts 1 and 2). Mum keeps touching your skull — “It’s beautiful!”
Frances Gapper’s stories have been published in three Best Microfiction anthologies and in online lit mags including Splonk, Wigleaf, Twin Pies, Meniscus, 100 Word Story and New Flash Fiction Review.
