Billie the Blimp
My name is Author. That's not a typo. Let me repeat that. My name is Author. My name is not Arthur. Do you understand? No? If you can't even comprehend my weird name, then stop reading right now, because you certainly won't believe anything else I say if you can't even believe I know my own name.
I hate writing. Unfortunately it's one of the things I hate least and am least bad at. My parents always thought it'd be "crazy sweet" if their kid named Author was an author. So they got me to do all sorts of writing workshops. I didn't like it, of course, but you have to make money somehow. So here I am.
I would say I'm your typical British man, excluding my name of course, and the fact that I'm barely British at all. I was born in England, but I've lived in America since I was two. I maintain a mostly fake British accent and attitude because it makes me popular with all the ladies, and I'd have gotten nowhere in life without that. I still didn't get very far. I write articles for the newspaper. Not any particularly interesting stories, I pick up the mundane things no one else wants to write about.
So when the local eccentric decided she had to have her dear cat buried in a real graveyard, I was called upon to write about it.
I interviewed the mourners after the burial and even toned down my constant sarcasm to prevent offending any of them too severely. Everything was going great. At nine that night I was nearly finished, when I wrote the closing sentence which required the cat's birth date. I remembered seeing it on the gravestone, but I couldn't recall for the life of me what it was. Not even remotely. I spent an hour searching the Internet for the answer and wondered why the newspaper didn't have anything about the cat, when I finally remembered there was no article because I hadn't finished writing the article yet.
There was only one thing to do. I had to go to the cemetery and check the gravestone. I cursed myself for not thinking to write it down when I was there earlier. I am an undying sluggard, loath to go anywhere not entirely essential. However, there was nothing I could do except call the eccentric herself and ask, or go to the cemetery and look on the gravestone, with calling the lady being completely out of the question. So I put on my overcoat and flipped up the collar and wished I could pull off the dramatic Sherlock Holmes thing. I shrugged and headed out.
The cemetery really wasn't very far away, a bit over a mile, but I am far too lazy to walk, as you probably already guessed. Besides, I'd look like some creep if I walked there this late at night, I consoled myself.
I parked near where I thought the cat was buried. Have I mentioned that whenever I ever guess anything I am invariably wrong? I'll take a guess that I have told you that already. Oh, blarney, I'm wrong, aren't I? Most people would consider this a curse, but my parents always told me it was a good thing, got rid of the temptation to waste my money gambling.
My parents became millionaires by playing the lottery. I'll wait a moment so you can let that sink in. You understand the irony of that, good job. I'll move on now.
So I looked around for the cat's grave and I realized I parked by the old section of the graveyard with civil war era graves. At least I guessed they were civil war era, which means they weren't. I was never good with American history. Which is fine, because I'm British, right?
I walked towards the newer section, I wasn't just guessing, because there was really only one direction to go, and the graves became gradually newer as I strolled along. I spied a tiny fresh grave a little ways off.
I heard a strange sound. I'm not sure how to describe it exactly, because I'm a failure of a writer, but it sounded like something shifting beneath me. Kind of a crack, but softer and mushier. I looked around, thinking someone else must be there, then when I saw nothing, I just shrugged and walked on. If you haven't noticed yet, I shrug quite a lot. I also tend to ignore things a lot when I shouldn't.
Such as the huge gaping hole in the ground right in front of me.
To be fair, I didn't exactly ignore the huge hole, it just didn't fully register in my mind until I fell head first into it.
"Blimey, hello!" I exclaimed as I got over the shock of falling onto something quite hard and found myself face to face with a man. Something didn't seem right about him. Something seemed a little off about everything around me actually. I heard a car motor running. Then I realized that I was on the hood of a car, staring through the windshield at the driver's face. The car was in the hole in the ground. And it was running. I wondered why the car was in the ground. Then I decided I should probably think about holding on tight because it was moving. At first it just moved slowly and jerkily as it tried to gain traction in the dirt. I thought about trying to jump off before it sped up, but the sides of the ditch were too steep except in the direction the car was driving, and if lying on a moving car is madness, jumping in front of it is pure insanity.
So I just stayed there and kept staring at the man. He looked familiar but it took me a moment to place him. I'll blame it on the fact that I got a minor concussion from literally diving into the car head first, but you can believe that I'm just bad at remember people, and you'd be quite right.
For whatever reason, it took me a while, but I did remember him. I wrote his obituary about a year or so ago. His name was "Billie the Blimp" It was an unusual burial because his parents opted to bury him in his favourite car. Which means I was lying on a car coffin being driven by a dead man. A zombie actually, I suppose. Which seemed highly improbably, but I didn't need to pinch myself because the bruised feeling all over my body made it quite obviously not just a dream, and as Sherlock would say, "When you've eliminated the impossible-"
I didn't have a chance to finish reciting that to myself because I was interrupted by a girl screaming. Then I realized it wasn't a girl, it was me, screaming quite shrilly, and with good reason because I was flying through the air as the zombie driven coffin car finally escaped the ditch. It went so fast it flew off the ground, but miracle of all miracles, I managed to hang on by grabbing the roof racks, which I have no idea how I manged to do, because I'm not a very fast or clever thinker, but it happened, and the zombie driver went speeding out of the graveyard into town. My hands and arms burned with the effort of holding on, and my face felt like it must have frozen off from the wind. I guessed that any moment I would lose my grip and get flung to my death by the crazy zombie.
We were going at least ninety miles per hour, I guessed. I tried to look down into the car to see if I could get at least one guess right before I died. It took some doing, but I did manage to look. We were going eighty-five. Suddenly we went around a sharp turn I hadn't anticipated and I lost my grip and flew off the car. This is what I get for wishing for one right guess, I thought to myself, though I don't know how I managed to think such silly things while flying through the air. I even thought about how I should have been a better person, I should have been productive with my life, I should have sent my mother flowers randomly and told her how wonderful she was even though she took me away from England, and I should have thanked my father for paying for my education and taking care of me . . .
Then I realized I'd stopped flying through the air. I stayed still for a few moments. It wasn't exactly how I pictured heaven. Just dull fluffy whiteness everywhere. That was it and nothing more. It almost looked like a mass of pillows.
"Ello, these are pillow!" I exclaimed to myself.
"Course they are, what did you expect to find when you jumped in the window of the pillow factory?" a gruff southern accent said. Usually I hated southern accents, but when you thought you were dead, any human voice is welcome, I think.
I tumbled out of the pillow pile and landed on the floor. I groaned, I had never been more bruised in my life, I was sure. I looked up to see a crowd of factory workers staring at me.
"What happened to you?" a woman asked. I shook my head and answered with my heavy sarcasm.
"If I tell you, you'll think I'm drunk."
