George was having a particularly bad day. It was not at all helped by his sister’s nagging.
“You have to come! I don’t understand why you won’t!” He sighed. This was why he didn’t like to keep in touch with family all that much. They didn’t understand that his workplace was cutting corners, and that meant high risk. He had started taking extra shifts and worked overtime to 1, get the extra pay in case he got fired, or 2, seem essential so that they wouldn’t fire him. This meant however, that he was going to miss his great-grandmothers funeral, and dodge a whole lot of family talk. This, he was fine with. It was not fine with his sister, however.
“The least you could is show up. You don’t even have to talk to anyone, just show up and leave.”
“I can’t, it’s right in the middle of my shift.”
“That you picked up.”
He sighed, as he often did when he couldn’t form a proper argument.
“I’ll pay my respects later”
“When? If you don’t ask for time off for the funeral, heck, if you won’t stop asking for work for the funeral, then when will you make time for visiting?”
“I don’t know.” It was her time to sigh. “Bye.” He knew he had handled it badly, but he was too tired to care. Turns out humans weren’t designed to work night-shift and day-shift.
The next day, the day of the funeral, saw him at work. It did not, and had not, been going well there. He was an electrician, and the electrics were going haywire. George had no idea what was going on, and it must have showed, for his coworker, Jim, told him to “Get home, I can handle all this.” though George seriously doubted that, he knew he wasn’t going to be any help at all. Once he got home he stumbled over to his favorite chair in his apartment, and started to take off his shoes when he heard a hoarse “Oi!” from right beside his ear. He jerked up, as is natural when you hear a hoarse “Oi!” from right beside your ear. He looked around, trying to locate the source of the word, presumably a robber.
“Right here, you dingle dork. Now get off’a me!” He had frozen when he heard “Dingle dork” for it was a name most familiar to him, but at the end of the sentence he was shoved from the chair by, apparently the chair. He scrambled to his feet and froze as he looked back at the chair, for it appeared to him as if his great grandmother was sitting in his favorite chair, in her disgruntled way.
“Everyone was there, y’know. Even Arnold, your uncle, and he hated me, though I guess he did cuss at my coffin.” she shrugged, like it was of no consequence, which, he realized, it wasn’t. “G-g-grandma?” he asked tentatively. “Great” she amended. “wha-why-how are you here?” “‘what am I here?’ that’s not a question. Why am I here? Cause you ain’t respecting me. How?” she grinned. “that’s on a need to know basis. Now, why did YOU not show up to my funeral, hmm? And I know how you could’ve done it too, so that’s a kinda rude thing to do, ain’t it, seeing as I died. I’d understand if I hadn’t died, but I did, so where were you, hmm? At work. And why-o-why were you there?” “I might get fired if I don’t, they’re-” “Your an electrician! You’re one of the better ones there! They ain’t firing you, they might have to pay some other lout to do electrical stuff. Besides, what’s the point of having a job that makes it so that you can’t even go to a funeral? There’s no point to having a job without a life! What’s the point of money if nothing interests you? Go have a life! put flowers on my grave! Or I’ll keep haunting your workplace.” with that, she began to fade away. “Wait, what? What did you do?” but she was gone. He stared at the chair for a while, then called his sister. “Hey, where was the graveyard?”
School Essays 