Mr Teddy Bear Digs Up a Grave
Summary: Mr Teddy Bear suspects his wife is a zombie. So he decides to dig up her grave to make sure… A surreal comedy starring a talking teddy bear.
Genre: Comedy
Type: Short story
Note: This is a comedy version of the story I shared last week— while that was a horror, this is a comedy. I wanted to challenge myself, so I took the same theme and turned it from a horror to a comedy. I really recommend you read the previous week’s story to enjoy this one!
I chose a bad evening to dig up my dead wife’s body.
There was a strong wind blowing and I could see thunder and lightning far off in the distance. The weather office had given a storm warning and advised people to stay inside. I saw one of my neighbours move their prized yellow roses inside. The other one was covering up his car. Each person was protecting what was most important to them.
I was digging up a body.
My next door neighbour saw me. “Yo, Teddy Bear. Where are you going at this time? And why with a shovel? The TV told us to stay inside.”
The TV also told us to eat unhealthy crap and watch their stupid shows all day long, I didn’t say.
Instead, I said, “Yeah, my dog ran away. Going to find him.”
If he wondered why I was looking for my dog with a shovel, he didn’t say. Either he was too polite, or he cared more about his prized yellow roses. Which were ugly.
Just like my wife.
I reached the main road and was hit with such a strong gust of wind that I was forced to close my eyes. Dirt and gravel had entered my eyes.
As I said, it was a bad evening to dig up a body.
But what choice did I have? If I went on a sunny afternoon, the graveyard would be full of goody shoes people visiting their dead relatives like they had nothing better to do. At least, this way I would get some peace and quiet. Nothing as irritating as people harassing you when you are doing hard work.
Gee, why are you digging up a grave? It’s against the law. Blah blah blah.
The roads were empty too and I reached the graveyard in record time. The idiot caretaker had locked the main gate so I would have to jump over. More hard work, but I was prepared for it. Hard work didn’t scare me. Dogs playing poker scared me, as did clowns dancing to hip-hop music. But not hard work.
You might be wondering why I was digging up a grave in the first place? To which I would say, mind your own business.
But you did buy my book, so let me tell you.
#
It all started a week ago when I killed my wife.
I’d finally had enough of her bad cooking and non-stop complaining. So when we were up on the mountain top, out for a little walk, I gave her a nudge. Just enough to send her over the edge.
I didn’t even find the dead body, but the local doctor did. I did cry copiously at the funeral. The real reason was: I found out how much work cooking actually was. I’d just spent three hours preparing breakfast (boiled eggs and mashed potato, if you must know), and was crying that I would now have to spend another four hours cooking lunch after the funeral. But people thought I was crying because I missed my wife.
What a bunch of losers.
So what went wrong?
As soon as I came home from the funeral, I found a letter from my wife.
Dear husband, that was a nasty thing to do, pushing me over like that. No matter. The grave is quite comfortable. Thanks for paying the five dollars extra for the flowers.
I just knew it was her. The handwriting was hers. And no one else could know I had pushed her over.
One letter might have been a bad joke. But I started getting regular letters.
Dear husband, one began, you burnt the mashed potatoes last night. You are only supposed to boil them for ten minutes, not the whole night. But that’s fine. There are some potatoes in the freezer, please use those. Also, can you not use my mother’s dishcloth to wipe your beer glasses? It is very precious.
Now I just knew it was her. That damn dishcloth her mother had given her was the bane of my life. She moaned every day about how I didn’t love her, how I never gave her any presents, how I had, seven years ago, torn a thread in her mother’s lovely dishcloth.
And the letters got more specific after that. Things only my wife could know. Secret, shameful things, things to do with the bedroom.
Like I brushed my teeth with baby toothpaste because it had Batman on it and tasted like bubblegum.
Also, my you-know-what didn’t always respond when asked to.
I’d finally had enough. I was going to dig up her grave and find out if she was still in there. If she wasn’t, I would find her and put her back. I did pay two hundred dollars for the goddamn grave, no way was it going unused.
I jumped over the fence and entered the graveyard. It was almost dark, but not completely. The summer sun still had a little light left. If it hadn’t been for the storm, there would have been a little more light. But it was enough to see what I was doing.
The wind was still howling like mad when I found her grave.
“Right, babes, let’s do this,” I said and started digging.
#
The thunder crashed loudly as soon as my shovel hit the hard ground.
Back in the distance, and own howled and a cat screeched.
The cat and the owl were having an affair, and the owl was a little rough.
But still, shagging in the graveyard. Shame on them. This was a respectable place, a place of God. A place to observe a dignified silence. These people had no morals or respect for the dead, I thought, as I continued digging the grave.
The thunder boomed again and I heard wolves howling now. I could hear the sound of chains, the sound of sinners screaming in agony, and the sound of heavy breathing right behind my neck.
But none of that scared me. As I said, only dogs playing poker scared me.
Digging the grave was hard work. I was sweating like a pig in minutes; no offence to any pigs reading this. Took me a good hour to dig up the damn thing.
It was dead dark by then.
The graveyard was as silent as…well a graveyard.
I took out my torch and kept digging. Finally hit the coffin and opened it.
The horrible foul smell hit me.
Mrs Teddy Bear was not a pretty sight. And that was when she was alive. Now that she was dead, she was even worse.
The cotton inside her was all pouring out. Her gears and metal parts were starting to rust. Computer viruses in the ground had started to eat her software.
I couldn’t breathe anymore and had to get out of the grave. I almost threw up.
Yup, the wife was in there.
Rotting and ugly, but she was there.
Wait.
I just saw something. A tattoo.
Her right hand never had a tattoo. And the ring was on the wrong hand.
I jumped in to take a closer look. The face had been smashed, but the hands were okay. And that was not my wife’s hand.
The bitch. How did she survive the fall? And how did she convince a doctor she was dead?
“So you found the fake body, did you?” I heard a voice behind me.
Of course, it was her. She didn’t look dead.
“Hello, Mrs Bear.”
“Hello, Mr Bear. Having a good day?”
“I was. Until I saw you.”
She laughed. “You are wondering how I survived?”
“Yeah. Also, where did you get that expensive purple dress? I never bought you one.”
“No. My lover did.”
“Your lover? How rude! To cheat on your loving husband.”
“You tried to kill me.”
“But I never cheated with you.”
“You spent a lot of time in the toilet with those lingerie magazines.”
“Hey! That isn’t cheating. I was, eh, just checking out, umm, the latest fashion and stuff. But hey! You cheated on me with a real person.”
“Goodbye, husband.”
She brought out a shotgun, and before I could complain, shot me in the head.
#
The darkness enveloped me.
The darkness gets to you. It envelopes you and smothers you.
The darkness of death smothered me.
There was no sound.
Only the sound of my breathing.
The silence was oppressive.
I could smell rusting iron from the corpse they had buried me with. It was horrible. As bad as my farts after my wife’s cooking; if not worse.
I had to get out of here.
Luckily, my wife’s grave digging skills matched her cooking, and she had done a shoddy job.
I could move the dirt easily.
My hand shot out first, then my head. I saw the bright clear moon shining brilliantly. I slowly crawled out of the grave, moaning and grunting as I did so.
No, I wasn’t a zombie.
An old robot friend from the future had given me a special brain. Normal bullets couldn’t shatter it. I was sure the paint had come off so I’d have to have it fixed later.
Limping and groaning (from the hunger), I made my way to my wife.
The door was open. The wife was with the doctor. The same one who had signed her death certificate.
He was playing doctor-patient with her on our sofa. She was a doctor and on top of him.
The bastard.
The town was going to hell. From people having sex in the graveyard to doctors sleeping with their patients. Did no one have any morals anymore?
I burst into the room. I wanted to scream and shout, but the only words that came out were: “Raarh, raargh.”
She lost her arousal pretty quickly and jumped off the sofa. “Zombie!” she screamed.
I’m not a zombie, I wanted to say. All that came out was: “Raargh, raargh.”
The idiot kept screaming. The doctor started screaming too.
“Please don’t eat me! I haven’t even used my three-for-two coupon for pizza,” he kept screaming.
I am not a zombie, I tried to say again. But the throat was dry and the sound wouldn’t come out.
To make things short, the neighbours got tired of the screaming and called the police. My wife called zombie control and someone else called the media.
Which is how I found myself facing ten machine guns.
“Shoot him!” cried Mrs Bear.
Luckily for me, the policemen were the smart kind.
“Didn’t you die last week? So it must mean you’re the zombie,” said the cop.
“He’s covered in dirt, he’s the zombie,” she replied.
“Let’s just shoot both of them to be safe,” said the zombie control guy.
“Mmmffff!” I said.
Damn it, this dry throat wasn’t helping.
I picked up a bottle of juice and gulped it down. A bit of it spilt down my chin.
I heard a few people scream in horror. What the hell now?
I looked in the mirror. The juice was tomato juice and my lips and chin were now covered in red.
Bloody hell.
Zombie control got ready to shoot. The police started ushering people out. I had to act now.
“I’m not a zombie!” I screamed, but no one was listening.
It was the time to act, not talk.
I looked around for something to help. Anything.
The only thing on the table was a swimsuit magazine. Still unread. It would have to do.
As quickly as I could, I opened the magazine. And at the same time, I dropped my pants.
“Look here, people! No, down here. Would a zombie get a stiffy like this? Go on, think about it.”
The crowd stared at me with an open mouths.
#
“And that is why, your honour, I was caught naked and exposing myself on camera. I was trying to protect my life and liberty, not to mention protect my property from intruders.”
The judge stared down at me from his glasses.
“You are here for the attempted murder of your wife, Mr Bear. Your sexual peccadillos are your own business.”
“I know your honour. I just wanted to get this out there, so people don’t think I’m a pervert. Also, what’s a pecan-dildo?”
The judge rolled his eyes. “I have heard all the evidence. I find both you and your wife guilty of attempted murder. Since both of you failed due to incompetency, I won’t send you to prison but the punishment must still be meted out. You will both be whipped fifty times. Also, forty lashes to the doctor for falsifying records. Any last comments, or anything in your defence?”
“Yes, your honour. I feel really hungry. Are there any brains, sorry, chips around?”
“No.”
I was taken for my punishment. I knew the lashes would hurt, but only for a moment. I had some experience being whipped, with…ummm…a mistress I know. She gave me…ummm…some psychological help. Nothing sexual or anything like that.
Overall, I had come out on top. Unlike the mistress, who charged me for the whipping, the government did it for free, bless their kind hearts.
Also, Play-Middle-Aged-Men magazine offered me a contract for semi-nude modelling. Evidently, there were middle aged people out there who fancied me.
Life was good. I was rid of my wife, would make some money and get a few glamour modelling gigs.
All in all, digging up my wife’s grave had turned out to be a sweet deal. I should go up digging dead wives’ graves more often.
The End