Thanks to BeKindRewrite for the inspiration again this week. I’m so pleased to be forced to write this morning, although now I’ve got the bug and really want to spend the rest of the day at the keyboard fictioning, rather than racing around the house doing all the stuff I should be doing! Curse you, inspiration!!!
Nobody Films a Funeral
“Nobody films a funeral,” Aunt Alice said. “It’s indecent.”
“That’s what he wanted though.” Hugo slid the handwritten pages across the table, his finger picking out the paragraph entitled Funeral Arrangements.
Aunt Alice poked at her glasses, knocking them further down her nose, so that her menacing appearance was only enhanced by the move she had once thought coquettish. “I should like to be buried at St Mark’s, having a full Catholic Mass funeral, which will be video-taped and then archived with Fish Brothers in Bath. They have my instructions as to what to do with the recording,” she read, somehow managing to sound all too much like her dead brother. “Well, it is simply ludicrous.”
She pushed the Will back towards her nephew, tutting under her breath.
“Maybe I could contact this Fish Brothers company? See if they can give us any more information?” Hugo suggested. “They might have an explanation. Or, at least, knowing what they are going to do might help us to understand.”
“Young man,” Aunt Alice began, pausing only to poke at her glasses again, “My brother, the only relative I have left in this world, has just died. I can be expected to be devastated. I am grieving. I do not have time for chasing across the country, following strange puzzles which he left in a Will which, frankly, is so recent it was probably written in a less-than compos mentis state. And I do not want the paparazzi attending upon my grief. We will have the Catholic Mass, although God knows he never attended one when he was alive, but I will not have video cameras at my brother’s funeral. Is that understood?”
Hugh rose to his feet. He had never stood up to his Aunt before, and to do it now, he felt he needed the advantage of height. “My father’s wishes are very clear. I should like to follow them if it’s at all possible.”
Aunt Alice pushed back her chair and got to her feet, giving her several inches’ advantage over Hugo. For a moment, her hand hovered inches above the table as if to slap him, then she turned and stalked out of the kitchen. Hugo let out the breath he’d been holding, and walked over to the phone.
elmowrites 
Oh – I’m beginning to wonder if the dead man added that to his will just to chafe his sister. I want to find out more. Also the contrast of the menace versus being coquette.
One little thing – Aunt Alice said she lost her last relative, but wouldn`t her nephew be a relative?
Thanks Craig – i’m not sure why he put it there, to be honest, but maybe in a longer version of this story I’d have moved onto one of the other prompts “you only live twice” and had him come back!
I wanted to explain that bit but I couldn’t work out how to fit it into the story – Alice is just being a bitch because she doesn’t really like the nephew. Maybe I should have changed it though, because as it stands I agree it looks wrong.
Back to the drawing board!
The dislike between them came across well-enough, without you having to beat us with it, so that is a plus, I’d say.
This is what I was thinking! That something very strange is going to happen at that funeral and that it’s merely a stage for some big revelation. Maybe they’ll find out that the dead man isn’t a dead man after all, like you said in your comment, or maybe there will be other conspirators among the mourners. There’s something very odd about those instructions, I felt that it had to be more than just being contrary. A plot’s afoot, I say.
Heh. Now you’ve gone and made me all curious.
Thanks for your thoughts, evenstar. I’m sorry for the curiosity and I don’t promise to resolve it any time soon. Maybe I’ll write the novel and get published and you’ll have to buy it and I’ll make MILLIONS… OK, maybe not!!!
Do it so I can brag to people that someone wrote a book to satisfy my curiosity. Of course it won’t be true, but that’s not likely to stop me. 😛
Haha, OK. You’ll have to buy it though! 😉
You do so much to establish character so quickly! I’m dying to know why he wanted it filmed – and rooting for Hugo to find out!
Thanks, bekind – as ever, you gave me a fantastic prompt, and this time I decided to take it completely literally!
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