An Old Friend
Spathiphyllum wallisii
Had a funeral on the mountain this morning. Haven’t had to do that in a long while. It’s nice though, a little ritual, a little solemnity. A very little, this corpse’s animating spirit will not be missed. She’ll be welcome in Hell, though, a new lackey for the upper demons. And a fitting afterlife for her, indeed. Chrissy was a client a few years back. She’d antagonized a fellow witch (actually she’d thrown garbage at the ninety-year-old woman for being late on her HOA payment), a weaker one, who’d cursed her husband in return. The pair ended up here, where I cured her husband, and turned Chrissy into a rabbit. The dogs chased the unpleasant woman/rabbit into the woods.
I thought being forced to live as a small, quiet, herbivore would mellow her out, but no, it made her worse. Quite an aggressive little creature, continually harassing the other monsters on the mountain, ankle biting, squealing incomprehensibly at all hours of the night and day. As I understand it, she came upon a dogman (I have a few on my mountain) eating a deer and tried to fight him for it. He threw her into a tree. She didn’t survive. He then tried to eat her, but apparently her meat was too bitter. And then her little bunny corpse started shouting in her old human voice about all the indignities done to her in the forest. She was a real pain, I guess. So much so that the dogman and a cadre of other monsters dumped her at the dogs’ feet and insisted they bring her to me. And I absolutely agreed that she needed a proper burial. Sweet devils what a noisy sack of meat. Now, by proper burial I don’t mean a typical burial. I mean a ritual burial.
When the boys dumped her on the porch I brought her inside and cleansed her body with rosemary oil and salt. This would remove any negativity from the other monsters from of her, and I thought might calm her down. It did not. She complained the entire time. Rehashing wrongs done to her from the time she could walk straight up until the present. I can’t say that I’ve ever come across another person who had such a fixation with perceived personal injustice. In reality, her life was very privileged, even more so because she was such a bully.
But I digress.
I washed the body in rosemary oil and salt (which you can also do if you’re alive and want a nice negative energy cleanse). From here the body gets treated a little like the vampires of old. Not the vampires with the fetish nightclubs, the bloated ambulatory corpses who drain life energy or feed on meat instead of blood. Old school vampires. I made a comfy little box out of pillows and pinewood. Which, by the way, she hated. ”There’s no silk lining! This is not a casket! I require a proper casket! Where are all the mourners? There should be HUNDREDS!” And so on and so on and so on… Once she was laid in the box I opened up a bag of rice and dumped it in a silver bowl. Then I added bleach, and spoke the following: