Neil Serven

But to Evelyn, death was its own uncanny presence. It showed up like a clown in a horror film, it rendered you ridiculous, it could make any word a last word, even if that last word was sponge. All you could do was laugh at it. 

Sometime earlier this year my friend Soren posted that it was Varnish Day at the casket factory near where she lives, and that it sounded like the beginning of a Tom Waits song. I commented that I wanted to use the line as the first line of a story.

That’s what I did, and now it’s been published at Monkeybicycle. With immense thanks to Soren for the inspiration and to editor James Tate Hill for giving it a lovely home.