Missy Anderson’s Funeral

by Viktor Athelstan

Missy Anderson’s death was highly expected for everyone that was not her family. The Andersons thought she would live forever. And no wonder they did. She was one hundred and ten years old and still going strong. Or at least she had been going strong until she tripped over her cat and smashed her head on her glass coffee table, shattering that into a million pieces as well. She probably would’ve survived the initial fall and the initial head smashing with comparatively little damage had she had been wearing her life alert button. But Missy Anderson was a proud woman and refused to wear it. She always said she’d rather starve to death on the floor of her house and get eaten alive by her pets than wear one of those buttons.

Well, that is almost exactly what happened to Missy Anderson.

Her son Eric, discovered her on the floor of her house with several bites taken out of her frail elderly body and a very nonchalant looking tabby cat named Mr. Snookums and a very guilty looking golden retriever named Eugene standing over her prone body. The names of the pets are not really relevant to this story, but it is necessary for you to know as it sets the scene of what kind of horrifying madness Eric walked into. Eric was convinced and could not be convinced otherwise no matter what anyone said that Mr. Snookums put Eugene up to eating his mother alive.

He never liked that cat.

Ironically enough Missy did survive the fall and the head smashing and the mildly being eaten alive. Eric rushed her to the hospital himself. It was a shock to the hospital staff and Eric did look a bit like a cannibal carrying his semi-eaten mother into the Emergency Room, but he didn’t really care too much about that. If he saved his mother’s life, he figured she would have to love him despite his beauty. (His beauty is relevant to the story, but not at the moment. We will get to that part soon.)

At the hospital, Missy Anderson was put in the intensive care unit and given about a million antibiotics and a copious amount of rabies shots. The doctors did not expect her to make a full recovery. But her children were insistent. Until this point in her life, Missy Anderson had survived just about everything and of course at one hundred and ten years old she would survive this as well. She had survived bee stings despite being highly allergic, she had survived bicycle accidents in which she rode into a telephone pole without a helmet, she survived giving birth to seven beautiful children and three ugly ones; hell, she had even survived accidentally being shot one time on a hunting trip. She seemed immortal.

And Missy Anderson did survive. She survived and escaped the hospital in a wheelchair of her own volition. No one could convince her to return. But no one had ever been able to convince Missy Anderson to do anything she did not want to do, so this was not a surprise to anyone.

What ended up killing Missy Anderson was the second time she fell and smashed her head and was eaten alive by her pets. This time, neither Eric nor any of her children came to the house in time to save her. Why would they? She refused to wear a life alert button or own a cell phone. Or accept any visitors from Wednesday to Monday. After birthing ten children of various appearances, and coming from a family of twenty other siblings, Missy Anderson valued her time alone and regrettably for her, her children respected that.

On Tuesday morning, Eric found his mother dead and with significantly more bites taken out of her than last time. And this time, Eugene the Golden Retriever didn’t even have the common decency to at least look a little guilty. Mr. Snookums the Cat ignored Eric as he shouted at them both and could only be convinced to stop eating Missy Anderson when he was forcefully thrown into his carrier cage. (And not without great bodily injury to Eric.)

Her family grieved tremendously. No one grieved more than her three ugly children whom she loved dearly and significantly more than the beautiful ones. After all, they would survive anything like her. In a world where beauty is everything, it’s easy to get ahead in life when you are stunning. So naturally she favored her ugly children. She had to. No one else would. (None of her seven beautiful children could find spouses or good jobs due to their lack of self esteem in any capacity. Her ugly children were all very successful as they had good hygiene and radiated enough confidence that they could convince a saltwater fish to buy ocean water.)

The Andersons were a close knit family, despite the blatant favoritism. At least that’s how it seemed to every outsider. Secretly they all hated each other with the passion of eleven trillion fiery suns. They only pretended to like each other for their mother’s sake. It’s all she had going for her. After all, she was constantly getting herself into all sorts of scraps and accidents and near death experiences. They had to give her some kind of win.

But now she was dead. And they didn’t have to do that anymore.

Nor would they.

Each of the seven beautiful children, Eric included, decided to make the entire circumstances surrounding planning their mother’s funeral the worst experience anyone has ever had in their entire life organizing a funeral. Of course, organizing a funeral is always a horrible experience, but sometimes it can be less horrible than others. The beautiful children were determined to make it exceptionally horrible. If there was a Guinness Book of World Records entry for worst funeral experience in the world–no! In the universe!–Missy Anderson’s funeral would’ve won it.

But there isn’t, so it didn’t.

The first thing the beautiful children did once everyone got to her house after Eric called them was try to resuscitate their mother. This was their revenge for years of mistreatment. It did not matter to them that Missy Anderson was very and extremely obviously dead. She had gone past rigor mortis and was now green and rotting. They were going to have the EMTs do CPR whether they wanted to or not. And the EMTs did not. However, the seven beautiful children threatened to sue if they did not try to resuscitate Missy Anderson. So, the EMTs did resuscitate Missy Anderson. Well, they tried. After a brief moment where life actually and miraculously seemed possible, it soon became apparent nothing would in fact work and any attempt at trying was futile at best and borderline ridiculous at worst. Missy Anderson got all over everyone and everything. It was only when the seven beautiful children and the three ugly children were covered in the fluids of their dead mother, were the seven satisfied that she was in fact gone and not coming back.

Now the real revenge could start.

Despite the fact Missy Anderson had indeed anticipated her death and pre-planned everything for her funeral, her beautiful children decided that wasn’t good enough. For one, the coffin she had picked out was tacky. It was silver and metallic and had little daisies painted all over it. No, that simply would not do for their mother. She was–had been a classy woman.

(Never mind the fact Missy Anderson collected about a billion Beanie Babies in her lifetime and only wore bootleg shirts with cartoon characters on them. Fun hobbies, but certainly not classy ones. There is nothing classy about getting into a fistfight at a Hallmark store over the Princess Diana memorial Beanie Baby while wearing a T-shirt with a bootleg Tweety Bird on it.)

Their mother’s coffin could be no less than mahogany and hand carved by a master carver from England or Germany or maybe Spain or Austria or Italy or maybe even Peru. Either way it had to be expensive. It did not matter that the silver daisy coffin was prepaid. They would sell it on eBay for a small profit. Who would buy a preowned silver daisy coffin was beyond anyone’s guess but the seven beautiful children were insistent. And the three ugly children were too much in mourning to argue much at that time.

So the ugly children let the beautiful children buy the expensive mahogany coffin. After all, they sort of loved their siblings. Well, they loved them enough that they weren’t going to cause a big scene at the funeral home.

Their resolve would not last.

After they bought a new coffin, they needed to pick out a plot. It did not matter that Missy Anderson had already picked out and pre-paid for a plot. The beautiful children insisted they needed a new one. It also didn’t matter that Missy Anderson’s previously pre-picked out and pre-paid plot was very expensive and on a cliff overlooking the ocean. With climate change causing all sorts of nasty storms, the cliff was slowly wearing away. Did the ugly children really want their mother’s body to fall into the sea? Is that what they wanted? They knew it! They didn’t love their mother like the beautiful children did!

The three ugly children relented to avoid causing another scene at the funeral home.

Now, the funeral which previously would’ve been free, was getting very expensive. Over ten thousand American dollars. And of course, the ugly children would be expected to pay for it. After all, the three ugly children were a CEO of a massive health insurance company, an Intellectual Property lawyer for a major media monopoly that created cartoon animals and a variety of overpriced theme parks, and a plastic surgeon for celebrities. They were also all on TikTok with about one million followers each. Some of those followers were just hate followers, but they still had at least one million followers each. Meanwhile, the seven beautiful children worked in retail, nursing homes, elementary schools as teachers, daycares for poor children, and public libraries. Clearly, the ugly children contributed much more to society than the beautiful ones. Why else would they be paid so much? Why else would everyone love them with a burning passion of ten trillion suns? People must have loved them! At the end of the day, they were the ones in newspapers and the ones everyone always talked about.

(Perhaps not always positively, but that didn’t really matter. The point was that people were talking about them and they were making a ton of money which is really the only marker of success in this world besides being beautiful. But they were not beautiful, they were ugly, so really they were the ones at a disadvantage here in the miserable existence humans call life. Obviously.)

After they sorted out the coffin and the plot, it was now time to decide whether Missy Anderson would be embalmed or not. Missy Anderson had not wanted to be embalmed. She wanted to go straight into the dirt and be worm food. At least be worm food once her silver daisy coffin disintegrated…whenever that would be. It could be a few decades, it could be a few months, it could be millennia. No one really knew and no one really cared to know. No one actually wanted to dig up Missy Anderson to make sure she was in fact, worm food. Missy Anderson not being embalmed potentially could have been something all ten of her children, no matter their beauty status, could have agreed upon. There was something nice about the thought of their mother going back into the earth.

But then, Missy Anderson’s most beautiful daughter, Denise, remembered that one time when she was seven years old her mother had made her dig in the rose garden, despite the freezing weather with no winter coat or proper boots. Missy Anderson had claimed such hardships build character. Additionally, when Denise was twelve years old, her mother made her forage for wild mushrooms. Again to build character…or so Missy Anderson claimed. Denise suspected that in reality her mother was trying to poison her. She had no proof of this, so her ugly siblings did not believe their mother would intentionally do such a thing. Their mother probably had some kind of brain damage from all the freak accidents she had been in. Years later, at a Thanksgiving meal, Denise tried to point out the fact that their mother insisted she pick the red mushrooms with the white spots on them. The classic poison mushroom! The ugly children had scoffed and called Denise crazy and that their mother did not know the mushroom was poisonous so she could not blame poor old Missy Anderson.

(Even at twelve years old Denise knew they were poisonous. But she was going to eat them to please her mother, even though she knew she would probably die. Her father stopped her just in time. At that point in her life, Denise did secretly hope she would die. Then everyone would stop seeing her mother as the paragon of the community. How could she be the perfect mother, the perfect wife, the perfect everything if her child died of eating a poisonous mushroom that Missy Anderson had made her eat? Of course, Denise, as she grew older, realized that her mother would deny being responsible in any way whatsoever for her daughter’s tragic death. She’d probably milk it too! So despite feeling slightly suicidal at all times, Denise never acted on it to spite Missy Anderson)

Denise insisted her mother be embalmed. And because Denise, one of the seven beautiful children, wanted this, the other six agreed with their beautiful sister. They fought long and hard for this. A shoe was thrown at one point. It didn’t hit anyone or anything besides the wall of the funeral director’s office, but a shoe was thrown. The act of complete and utter barbarity infuriated the ugly children. What if the shoe had hit one of them and broke their nose? Then they would be even uglier!

(Of course, the plastic surgeon could have fixed their noses, but what if it hit the plastic surgeon? What would they do?! Nevermind the fact her entire circle consisted of successful plastic surgeons.)

By this time, it was apparent to the funeral director, Alina Rollo, that the Andersons were not in fact, a perfect family and they really fucking hated each other.

But she had seen this all before, and was not phased by it at all. Just about every single family fell to pieces once the matriarch or the patriarch perished. And with the Andersons, it had been unexpected…at least to them. That always makes the family falling apart even worse. Alina Rollo’s apprentice, Judy Brick, had not seen this all before and was quite alarmed and bewildered and shocked and dismayed and horrified. How could such a fine family just evolve into senseless squabbling? How could they decide to spend so much money when everything had been paid for? Why would they decide to go against their mother, Missy Anderson’s wishes? What kind of family was this?!

(The answer is that they were an average family. But Judy Brick being new to the mortuary business, did not know this quite yet. She would learn. Oh, how she would learn. The Andersons would teach her quite well.)

After the shoe was thrown, the beautiful children and the ugly children had a nasty blowout fight right smack dab in the middle of the funeral director’s office. They shouted! They called each other names! They slandered each other! They brought up embarrassing past childhood stories! They insulted each other’s professions! Declarations of all sorts of crimes, state and federal and white collar and blue collar and otherwise, were thrown carelessly around in horrible accusations! Oh the humiliation! Oh, the depravity! Oh, the shame!

The fight was so loud that the people having funerals and wakes in the other parlors could hear the Anderson family meltdown. They were shocked and appalled. How could the Andersons have been anything less than perfect?

Their reputation was crumbling.

And oh, how it would crumble further!

It would crumble not only to dust, but straight into the sea!

(A metaphorical sea of course. And not a nice one either, with gentle waves, crystal clear cerulean water, and with some nice fish and peaceful dolphins. A metaphorical sea with choppy waves, harsh brutal winds, and a wide vast variety of bloodthirsty man-eating sea monsters!)

Eventually, the humiliation of the three ugly children by the seven beautiful children became too much and the ugly children relented once again! How could they not? Their personal reputations and professional careers and TikTok stardom were on the line! Missy Anderson would have to be embalmed. Just like the seven beautiful children wanted.

(Well, what Denise wanted. But that is neither here nor there.)

Despite being exhausted by the battle, it was now time to decide what kind of funeral Missy Anderson would have. Would it be big? Would it be small? Secular? Or perhaps religious? What kind of religion, if so? Was Missy Anderson even religious? None of the Anderson children actually knew. Their mother tended to switch her religions whenever she wanted something and the previous one was not giving her what she wanted. She cycled through evangelical Christianity, New Age paganism, atheism, and Buddhism with an alarming regularity. Sometimes she was even Wiccan for a week or two until she decided she hated Halloween. It was all very confusing. And the children did not know what she wanted. So in this sentiment, they did all agree on one thing and one thing only: Missy Anderson would have a secular funeral to avoid the children the trouble of hunting down some sort of religious leader.

Alina Rollo smiled and nodded and said that could be done. Judy Brick sighed with relief.

The fight picked up again when they had to decide what Missy Anderson would wear for the rest of her earthly existence when she was finally buried. The three ugly children wanted to pick out her favorite bootleg Tweety Bird shirt. The one she wore most often and loved perhaps even more than her husband or her children. It was the one she was wearing when she got into the fistfight at the Hallmark store over the Princess Diana memorial Beanie Baby. It was the one she wore to every fancy event. Even to the expensive galas her ugly children often hosted and attended. Missy Anderson did not care that she was going to meet important world leaders including but not limited to the President of the United States, several African Presidents, Prime Ministers, and Royalty, all the Prime Ministers in Europe and the Emperor of Japan! She was going to wear her bootleg Tweety Bird shirt, whether her children liked it or not!

It was quite embarrassing sometimes to have Missy Anderson as a mother. But she had survived so much! What harm would there be to letting her wear the bootleg Tweety Bird shirt to meet important politicians? Sometimes those politicians needed to be brought down a peg and realize that some people did not actually care if they were important or not.

(Privately, however, all of her children silently suspected Missy Anderson’s total lack of respect for authority and her extremely accident prone life were perhaps related. But none of them would ever say that out loud because that would be insane. After all, what politician would care enough to assassinate their mother? Even though she was their world, their creator, their tormentor, she was merely a blip in the radar to the authority figures of the world.)

Also, the three ugly children wanted Missy Anderson to be buried in the bootleg Tweety Bird shirt so they would never have to see that damn thing ever again.

The beautiful children wanted Missy Anderson to be buried in something classy like a little black dress and with a string of pearls and maybe even a real diamond tiara. And they also wanted to frame the Tweety Bird shirt like it was a signed sports jersey and make copies so they could all wear similar ones to the funeral.

Naturally, this caused another fight that the seven beautiful children won once again.

However, secretly the ugly intellectual property lawyer child was planning to file a lawsuit against his siblings for copyright infringement, even though he did not actually work for Universal Studios or whoever owns the intellectual property rights to Tweety Bird. He didn’t actually know or care. (He just knew his company did not own the rights.) He would ruin his seven beautiful siblings! He would ruin them for all they were worth! He did not care that none of the seven beautiful children made more than $30,000 a year (if even that). Most of them made closer to $25,000 or $20,000 or sometimes even $10,000 a year. He would sue them each for half a billion dollars. And he would win. After all, the copyright infringement of a bootleg Tweety Bird shirt was the most fighting and pressing matter of his time.

(It would turn out later, even though he did win and put all of his seven beautiful siblings highly into debt and homelessness, that the average Joe, who the lawyer never really interacted with nor cared to, would indeed care. He would be shot dead on the street. And none of his siblings would come to the funeral. Especially not the CEO and the plastic surgeon siblings, as they had also gotten caught up in the lawsuit because they were also wearing the Tweety Bird shirts. Even though they made buckets and buckets of money every single minute, half a billion dollars was still a lot of money that they really did not want to lose in a stupid petty lawsuit. The plastic surgeon and the healthcare CEO would conspire and lobby and end up making more money through new government regulations and laws they bribed Congress and Senate to pass. They would be fine even if slightly annoyed for an extended period of time.)

Anyway, the rest of the funeral planning went relatively uneventfully and there is no point to recounting it here. The funeral itself happened on a pleasant fall evening. Many people came. They mourned. They told funny stories. They had some cake and coffee at the reception. The Anderson children wore the Tweety Bird shirts. They were sued into oblivion. And the Anderson family never recovered.

The end result was exactly what Missy Anderson would have wanted.

BIO

Viktor Athelstan is the author of the 2022 Shirley Jackson Award nominated story “Brother Maternitas.” His short story “Okehampton Fog” can be heard on the Creepy Podcast. He recently published the novel “Decessit Vita Matris.” When Viktor isn’t writing short stories, he writes webnovels about medieval monks.