Black pansies and the rictus of a smile
By
D.X. Lewis
"Ooh yuck! I don’t want to live here, Daddy!"
Sophie, our seven-year-old daughter, has spotted seven tombstones at a property we’re visiting.
The estate agent assures us the garden is not a cemetery. There are no bodies six feet under. When leases on local burial plots expire, relatives may recover the headstones of deceased relatives. The coffins and bodies remain interred.
"And then they put more dead people on top?"
The agent gives Sophie a wan smile, nods.
She shudders with excitement. "Ooohhh!"
I exchange glances with Laura, my wife.
Reassured that the garden harbors no human remains, we buy the house. And in due course create our own cemetery under the convenient headstones.
For Henry Hamster, Sophie dresses in black and forces us to attend a funeral — plaintive tunes on the recorder, wreaths of daisies and dandelions. Sophie writes "SADDLY MORNED" in felt-tip pen on the inside of a cornflakes packet and sellotapes it to the gravestone behind Henry’s corpse.
Subsequent ceremonies are devoted to Billy Budgie, Rilla Rat, Timmy the Cat. and four goldfish (nameless). Sophie’s spelling improves, but in each case her writing bleeds as the cardboard goes soggy.
Two summers later, my mother encourages Sophie to remove the ivy from the gravestones and take rubbings of their inscriptions, as if they are brasses in a church. We discover that all the stones are etched with dates from the 18th century and bear a surname similar to our own.
"Isn’t that weird, Daddy?"
I have to agree.
And it gets weirder. Clutches of black pansies appear in front of each gravestone. My mother hasn’t planted them. Sophie hasn’t planted them. Laura hasn’t planted them. And nor have I.
Laura wants to throw them on the compost heap, Or burn them. I think the pansies look rather nice. Black flowers are rare, and appropriate for tombstones. We let them stay.
For Halloween, we organize a party for Sophie and six friends. We hollow out pumpkins and set candles inside them. We float ducking apples in a pail. The kids dress in black, don witches’ hats, paint skulls on their faces, parade lanterns around the garden.
As they process past the gravestones, Laura and I watch from the terrace as seven ghostly figures emerge from the earth, screech like angry scarecrows, and wave their arms. The children tear towards us screaming, clutching at us and each other for comfort.
Forcing a laugh through my own terror, I pretend the apparitions are a trick set up by me.
And then we realize Sophie is missing.
We find her cold and rigid in front of the seventh gravestone, newly etched with her name and dates.
Black pansies are sprouting from the rictus of a smile.
A recovering journalist and former writer on AIDS for WHO, D. X. Lewis now devotes himself to other forms of fiction -- from novels and works for the stage to increasingly short fiction. His short stories, flashes and micros have been published by Story Nook, Writers’ Forum, Flash Fiction, 101words, Splonk, Planet Paragraph, Fairfield Scribes, National Flash Fiction Day, and in Bath, Fish and Oxford anthologies. The first chapters of Made in Hungary, an unpublished novel, were published as Crossing the Curtain and nominated for a Pushcart Prize by Panorama Journal, which also carried his short story The Perfect Guide in November 2023. His novella-in-flash A Life in Pieces was published in February 2024 by Alien Buddha press and is available on Amazon. His prize-winning flash story Geoffrey Swaps His Cage features in the April 2024 edition of Writing Magazine. He live in France, just over the border from Geneva, Switzerland.
By
D.X. Lewis
"Ooh yuck! I don’t want to live here, Daddy!"
Sophie, our seven-year-old daughter, has spotted seven tombstones at a property we’re visiting.
The estate agent assures us the garden is not a cemetery. There are no bodies six feet under. When leases on local burial plots expire, relatives may recover the headstones of deceased relatives. The coffins and bodies remain interred.
"And then they put more dead people on top?"
The agent gives Sophie a wan smile, nods.
She shudders with excitement. "Ooohhh!"
I exchange glances with Laura, my wife.
Reassured that the garden harbors no human remains, we buy the house. And in due course create our own cemetery under the convenient headstones.
For Henry Hamster, Sophie dresses in black and forces us to attend a funeral — plaintive tunes on the recorder, wreaths of daisies and dandelions. Sophie writes "SADDLY MORNED" in felt-tip pen on the inside of a cornflakes packet and sellotapes it to the gravestone behind Henry’s corpse.
Subsequent ceremonies are devoted to Billy Budgie, Rilla Rat, Timmy the Cat. and four goldfish (nameless). Sophie’s spelling improves, but in each case her writing bleeds as the cardboard goes soggy.
Two summers later, my mother encourages Sophie to remove the ivy from the gravestones and take rubbings of their inscriptions, as if they are brasses in a church. We discover that all the stones are etched with dates from the 18th century and bear a surname similar to our own.
"Isn’t that weird, Daddy?"
I have to agree.
And it gets weirder. Clutches of black pansies appear in front of each gravestone. My mother hasn’t planted them. Sophie hasn’t planted them. Laura hasn’t planted them. And nor have I.
Laura wants to throw them on the compost heap, Or burn them. I think the pansies look rather nice. Black flowers are rare, and appropriate for tombstones. We let them stay.
For Halloween, we organize a party for Sophie and six friends. We hollow out pumpkins and set candles inside them. We float ducking apples in a pail. The kids dress in black, don witches’ hats, paint skulls on their faces, parade lanterns around the garden.
As they process past the gravestones, Laura and I watch from the terrace as seven ghostly figures emerge from the earth, screech like angry scarecrows, and wave their arms. The children tear towards us screaming, clutching at us and each other for comfort.
Forcing a laugh through my own terror, I pretend the apparitions are a trick set up by me.
And then we realize Sophie is missing.
We find her cold and rigid in front of the seventh gravestone, newly etched with her name and dates.
Black pansies are sprouting from the rictus of a smile.
A recovering journalist and former writer on AIDS for WHO, D. X. Lewis now devotes himself to other forms of fiction -- from novels and works for the stage to increasingly short fiction. His short stories, flashes and micros have been published by Story Nook, Writers’ Forum, Flash Fiction, 101words, Splonk, Planet Paragraph, Fairfield Scribes, National Flash Fiction Day, and in Bath, Fish and Oxford anthologies. The first chapters of Made in Hungary, an unpublished novel, were published as Crossing the Curtain and nominated for a Pushcart Prize by Panorama Journal, which also carried his short story The Perfect Guide in November 2023. His novella-in-flash A Life in Pieces was published in February 2024 by Alien Buddha press and is available on Amazon. His prize-winning flash story Geoffrey Swaps His Cage features in the April 2024 edition of Writing Magazine. He live in France, just over the border from Geneva, Switzerland.
