The Graveyard

An idea I've had for quite some time now. This might infuriate a whole bunch of people, who've never thought of it that way, but oh well.

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I shiver as I stand outside the Graveyard. Its very existence is contrary to my two greatest fundamentals: futurism and environmental protection. Yet before me stands one of the largest cemeteries for some of the Earth's most important life-forms.

As I walk through the gates, the gravekeeper shuffles up to me. "Can I help you with anything?" she asks, in that sweet voice that you know is never sincere.

"Uhh... no thanks," I reply, "I'm just... getting something for my mother."

"Alright then," she says, retreating back to her counter, eyeing me with a steely stare. I try not to look at her.

I walk slowly through the crypt, trying not to bump into the other people jostling around. The bright colours of the headstones hurts my eyes. I can't help feeling for the dead surrounding me on all sides, piled together and stacked up on hundreds of shelves, crammed into niches all over the place. With all the computers and digital information and everything, why all these useless deaths? All these murders?

A couple of the tombstones are accidentally knocked over, and they spill over the ground with loud thudding sounds. As the customer hurriedly picks them up, I notice that some of the bodies are all bent, the eulogies on the backs dented. We humans show so much respect to our dead, even out own dogs and cats; why not show that same respect to the trees?

I find the right section and lift a fragment of dead forest gently off the shelf. I shudder to think of what it would feel like, if someone sawed me off at my ankles, chopped me into little pieces, mixed the bits in with chemicals and then printed words all over the product. And my mom wanted me to get one of these things! Doesn't she understand at all?

I brought the mangled corpse over to the gravekeeper. A graveyard of trees, that was what it was. "$19.70," said the lady, roughly stuffing the body into a plastic bag and sealing it with tape. I handed over the money, feeling dirty and sacrilegious as she passed the bag over the counter. "Thank you, come again," she said brightly.

"Not on your life," I muttered, as I left the bookstore.

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Well yeah, not the most epic of ideas, but I thought it would be vaguely interesting. A bookstore or library is still just a vast graveyard of trees, after all.

I still love reading though,
The Edna Man