The Grim Reaper is Waiting

Several things are certain in life and among them are death and taxes.  I worked at a funeral parlor, doing odd things like greeting guests, cleaning up and helping the mortician lift the dead bodies into the caskets.  Everybody deals with depressing things in different ways and for some people, it helps to laugh and in this place morbid jokes were always present.  Most of my coworkers resembled the Grim Reaper, as they never really said all that much, they were always pleasant and they seemed to have this constant grin on their faces.  None of them actually went around wearing a long, dark, black hooded cloak with a hood covering their face, wielding a scythe, but they all seemed to be a bit on the creepy side.

We would get together from time to time after a long day at work and have drinks at the place across the street.  This may sound strange, but they would all order this drink called the Grim Reaper.  I tried it and it was a delicious cocktail being blended with Kahlua, white rum and grenadine.  It’s fruity and rich, and the flavor is like a mix of cherry and chocolate mocha with hints of caramel.  One night the mortician told me a joke about 3 Europeans that just arrived in America and they all got captured by native American Indians who want to kill them.  The Europeans all beg to have their lives spared.  The native Americans agreed to not kill them on one condition, that they must go into the forest and bring back a fruit and they will be informed what to do with it.  So the first guy comes back with a peach.  The native American says “Shove it up your ass, if you laugh we kill you.”  So, he shoves the peach up his ass and he laughs, and the native Americans kill him.  The second guy comes back with a grape.  The native Americans tell him the same thing.  He laughs and they kill him.  These guys both see each other in heaven and the first guy says to the second guy, “I had a peach and peaches are fuzzy so that’s why I laughed, but you had a grape, what happened?”  The second guy says, “Oh yea I was doing just fine until I saw the other guy come back with a pineapple!”

These jokes went on all the time, like the one about the three dead bodies that were delivered to the mortuary and each of these men had a great big smile on their face.  The coroner examined the bodies and then called the police to tell them what has happened.  The coroner tells the police officer that the first body is a Frenchman, about 60 years old, and he died of heart failure while making love to his mistress.  The Inspector says that is why he has that enormous smile.  The second body was determined to be Scotsman, about 25, who may have won the lottery, and probably spent it all on whisky, dying of alcohol poisoning, hence the smile.  The coroner says that the third body is Billy-Bob a redneck from Oklahoma, around 30, who was struck by lightning.  The Inspector asks why is he smiling then and the coroner tells him that he thought that he was having his picture taken.

Today was my birthday and I got the strangest birthday card.  On the front there were these gruesome hands shooting out lightning bolts above what appeared to be a picture of Mary Shelly, you know the lady who wrote the Frankenstein novel.  Below that were these grave stones and what looked to be like a bottle of poison in the middle of them.  When I opened up my card on the inside of it, there was a picture of the grim reaper and it said, “Happy Birthday, I’ll see you soon!”

Written for Reena’s Exploration Challenge #Week 43 photo prompt.