Add to Dom's Story Writing Challenge July 1, 2010 - August 1, 2010

Reading and Deliberating

Details

Here's the deal: I have begun writing a story that I can't finish for some reason. You are free to dissect it, add to it, subtract from it, make poetry out of it, whatever. But the title needs to remain the same. Keep it under 300 words. The text is pasted below. Copy, paste, and away you go. When you're done, re-post your finished masterpiece here so we can all read it and judge what you've done. On the deadline of 8/1, I'll have the contestants email me their choice of the winner........
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CARL. IN THE WORDS OF THOSE WHO DIDN'T KNOW HIM

No one knew what to say when Carl died. But they gathered around; actors as old friends reacquainting themselves, trying to have a reunion of sorts although they were really only strangers sharing the common legacy of recollecting a dead acquaintance.

Carl had met a most bizarre of fates when he chased a runaway spaniel through a wheat field in central Nebraska and been brutally run over by a grain harvester, along with the dog. He was a hero they guessed. After the accident, the authorities couldn’t figure out which body parts belonged to who, so they just kept them together. The accident was so morbid that they couldn’t even make fun of it. It didn’t qualify as black humor; more like chuckling shades of grey, ochre and crimson. A Danse Macabre of blood, steel, and bone.

But Carl had had a better life than his crazy end would indicate, and those left in charge of his eulogy didn’t know him well enough to be qualified for the task, yet they were all his memory had.

And the people who barely knew him were put in charge of remembering him at his funeral, a funeral no one wanted to go to. These people didn’t know each other, either. But there they were, pretending to remember each other and remember him; a parade of amnesiacs in false mourning.